Mobile phones will be a thing of the past in a few years. Instead, we will carry around devices that can communicate over the internet, play music, show live TV and probably carry out a host of other tasks that haven't even been thought of yet. That's according to the telecommunications industry's vision of the future.
But to arrive at that point, we are going to need small, light computers that can carry out a range of tasks. Putting dedicated chips for each task into those devices probably won't produce the sleek, lightweight tools that most of us want. Just look at Nokia's new N92 handset, which is extremely bulky because of the digital TV receiver that is built into it.
An alternative approach is one of adaptability, whereby digital circuits could be reconfigured dynamically depending on the task they need to carry out. It's an approach that interests Dr Robert Esser, director of Xilinx Labs in Ireland.
He gives the example of viewing video on a mobile device - with adaptable technology the device may be able to get increased bandwidth, switch protocols or even networks in order to view the video in the manner that best suits the users. "It may be for personal use, so I may just want the cheapest service available and I'm willing to have some drop in quality for that," he explains.
This kind of adaptable technology may be a number of years off, but Xilinx, which designs programmable silicon chips, has teamed up with the Centre for Telecommunications Value-Chain Research (CTVR) to look at the area of adaptive radio technology. One of the areas being researched is a system that would enable a mobile phone to intelligently alter its radio frequency system to work on any available cellular phone network.
This would be a major boost to both telecoms companies and phone users, due to the number of different standards in use across the world.
Rather than having to manually re-programme a phone when arriving in a new country, the phone would automatically find a network and reconfigure itself to work on it.
The CTVR researchers will be based at Trinity College Dublin, but Esser says they will be working very closely with the team at Xilinix Labs and will probably spend about half of their time at Xilinx's European headquarters in Dublin.
The CTVR researchers will develop the required software and, assuming the research produces the desired results, Xilinx will then implement that software in their chips.
