PicoChip and Intel are collaborating on a 4.9 GHz WiMax reference design for state and local governments for possible use in public safety networks. Launched in May at IWCE 2006 in Las Vegas, PicoChip’s WiMAX physical layer chip will be teamed with Intel’s IXP2350 network processor in the Vida reference design from Tyco Electronics’s M/A-COM subsidiary.
PicoChip uses Wintegra processors in its own reference designs, though MA-Com has helped customers develop WiMax solutions based on Intel and Freescale processors. M/A-COM combined Intel’s WiMax media access control processors with picoChip’s PHY in its first-generation Vida system.
Rupert Baines, picoChip’s vice president of marketing, said the scale of government and public-safety networks could dwarf even large carrier-based WiMax rollouts. In June, M/A-COM agreed to supply $2 billion worth of P25 radio networks to New York State (pdf), and future government use of WiMax could approach that scale, Baines said.
