28 Sep
2012
28 Sep
'12
10:16 a.m.
On 9/28/2012 11:04 AM, Eric Smith wrote:
A cell phone needs a baseband processor with
significant amount of
compute power (much more than e.g. a PDP-11) to handle the voice codec
functions (compression and decompression), and the OTA protocol (e.g.,
GSM). In most phones the baseband processor also provides GPS location
services.
I tend to use a phone as a phone.
Beyond that, cell phones usually have a separate
application processor.
For "dumb phones" the application processor only has to provide a fairly
simple user interface, so not much compute power is necessary. For
smart phones the application processor is usually quite powerful. An
example of why that is useful is the GPS navigation applications, which
provide real time 2D and 3D mapping, turn-by-turn directions with speech
synthesis, and in some cases, speech recognition.
A more useful function would be finding people in a Mall.
There is undoubtedly some software bloat resulting in
the phone needing
more powerful processors than would otherwise be required, just as is
true on desktop computers. However, there are legitimate reasons for
wanting a very powerful application processor in a phone, other than
just eye candy and bloat.
I treat it as black magic box that way, nobody will admit how that
secret part
works.
Eric
Ben.
I don't trust marketing since the advent of CD's. Now getting back into
Analog
Audio.