BENGALURU, India—Freescale Semiconductor Inc. does not expect to see the 3G Long Term Evolution (LTE) platform emerge commercially until after 2009 but the company's already doing leading-edge development for it. Advanced work is now under way in areas like architecture, efficient power amplification, RF design and integration.

Speaking at the second annual Freescale Technology Forum here, for which more than 1,000 people registered, Sandeep Chennakeshu, senior vice president and general manager of the wireless and mobile systems group, said the platform needed more intelligence, efficiency, security and reliability to address the applications that will emerge as mobile broadband becomes a reality.

"There are problems in realizing and commercializing LTE and one major issue is to address the need users have for low-power amplification," Chennakeshu said.

"No user is going to accept the new platform unless it is available in a plug-and-play format and will fit in one's pocket," he said. "It should not be bigger than a SIM card that is used now in wireless phones." Because small size is so crucial, Chennakeshu added, integration and packaging must be done on a scale never been before achieved.

"The LTE should really act as a modem," he said, "and that is how we envision it is going to be achieved. It must be IP-based . . . to reduce architecture, and transmission will be in billions of instructions per second, not in millions. At Freescale, we are at work in addressing all these issues and we believe that the special microcoded engine with specialized architecture that we are developing will be a key asset in the development of the LTE platform."

Freescale has two development centers in India. One in Bengaluru, the city known as Bangalore until Nov. 1, is among its largest centers outside the United States driving mobile software architectures. The other, in Noida near New Delhi, develops intellectual property and system-on-chip designs.