Not so QuickSilver

Software-defined radio chips are said to be the next holy grail for the semiconductor business, and QuickSilver Technology seems to have a lead on most, reports Forbes.com. The company makes chips which adapt to any kind of network – whether it is GSM or CDMA or TDMA. I assume soon you could have Wi-Fi and support for other types of networks.

bq. In that way the Adapt2000 from Quicksilver Technology, a San Jose, Calif., startup, is something of a contortionist. Put the chip in some kind of handheld device and one minute it can be the central brain of a digital music player, the next a PDA, the next a wireless e-mail device that can encrypt messages on the fly–then seconds later go back to being a music player.

I had first met with this company almost four years ago, when I was working with Red Herring. It has taken a long time for the company to ship some products, and not to a cell phone maker. A Japanese camera maker is using the chip. I have some doubts about the “swiftness” of this chip. I suspect it will be a long time before we will see this chip in mainstream cellphones. But for global roamers, a QuickSilver powered handset would be a god send.