Broadcom's One-Chip Bluetooth Radio

OK, just how many conferences are going on this week? There's JavaOne , Computex , the Society for Information Display Exhibition , and the Bluetooth Congress in Monte Carlo? OK, let's deal with it and hope we pick the right stories from each tech-fest. At the Bluetooth Congress, Broadcom just unveiled the Blutonium BCM2033 single-chip transceiver for Bluetooth wireless applications, which puts Broadcom's Bluetooth-compliant radio and baseband components onto a single IC. The BCM2033 is based on Broadcom's previous all-CMOS stand-alone radios and basebands. Features include a fractional-N synthesizer that enables Blutonium to use any existing frequency reference, including CDMA, WCDMA, GSM, GPRS, and UMTS. A version of the BCM2033 with no external memory bus is packaged in a 64-pin fine pitch Ball Grid Array (fpBGA) and a version with external flash interfaces is packaged in a 100-pin fpBGA. The transceiver is now sampling to early access customers. Cnet offers another take on the "Bluetonium."