The Class 12-capable design is based on the company's OMAP platform and puts an applications processor, digital baseband, analog baseband, power management, an audio codec and a single-chip Bluetooth device on a credit-card size board.

The reference design, called TCS3500, is a third-generation design, building upon the company's GSM/GPRS announcement last year, which was based on an OMAP730 processor. To meet the baseband-processing demands of Edge (Enhanced Data Rates for GSM Evolution), the company added a 'C55 DSP to the '730 and renamed it the OMAP850, said Tom Pollard, director of marketing for wireless chipsets at TI. The company worked with Comsys for the DSP elements at Layer 1 and also added multimedia support for a 2-megapixel camera with enhanced frame-buffer management and hardware accelerators.

"We're entering with a compelling multimedia solution by Q4 '04 and we need an Edge product that will take advantage of all our technology," said Pollard. "Reference designs are becoming important to our business as it helps designers get to market faster," he said, adding, "reference designs are also getting more full featured with more integrated, such as Bluetooth, and daughtercard modules."

Along with the '850 applications processor with digital baseband, the reference design includes the TWL3027 integrated analog baseband, power management and audio codec, a quad-band RF section from an as yet unnamed third party and TI's own BRF6150 Bluetooth chip.

The daughtercard components include a TNETW1230 802.11a/g-based wireless LAN card, an assisted-GPS card, a camera interface module and a keyboard interface module. Other support devices include a handset interface with color LCD, a debug board with interface cable and antennas.

"We also provide extensive operating system support," said Pollard, "including Symbian, Microsoft, Linux and Palmsource, as well as Nokia's Series 50 terminal software. Also, we're finding customers are particularly interested in our hardware security blocks that allow for secure downloading."

TI expects to begin testing the design with operators over the coming months. Samples will be available in the first quarter of 2004, with volume production by the fourth quarter. Pricing is expected to be approximately $35 per 10,000 units for the core chipset (OMAP850, TWL3027, BRF6150).