Mobile World Congress News from the Hot Mobile Market

Mobile World Congress kicked off Monday in Barcelona with a number of announcements from the red-hot mobile market. Here is conference news from Intel, IBM and Nokia, and Mellanox and 6WIND. The Twitter conversation for the event can be followed on hashtag #MWC13.

Intel launches mobile solutions.

Intel (INTC) announced several new products for the mobile market segments: a new dual-core Atom SoC platform for smartphones and Android tablets. “Today’s announcements build on Intel’s growing device portfolio across a range of mobile market segments,” said Hermann Eul, Intel vice president and co-general manager of the Mobile and Communications Group. “In less than a year's time, we have worked closely with our customers to bring Intel-based smartphones to market in more than 20 countries around the world, and have also delivered an industry-leading low-power Atom SoC tablet solution running Windows 8, and shipping with leading OEM customers today."

Intel announced a new Atom processor platform with 32nm dual core Z2580, Z2560 and Z2520 products, available in speeds up to 2.0GHz, 1.6GHz and 1.2GHz respectively. The platform also features support for Intel Hyper-Threading, and an Intel Graphics Media Accelerator engine. It includes advanced imaging capabilities, including support for two cameras, with a primary camera sensor up to 16 megapixels. The platform is also equipped with Intel Identity Protection Technology (Intel IPT), helping to enable strong, two-factor authentication for protecting cloud services such as remote banking, e-commerce, online gaming and social networking from unauthorized access.

“Our second-generation product delivers double the compute performance and up to three times the graphics capabilities, all while maintaining competitive low power,” Eul said. “As we transition to 22nm Atom SoCs later this year, we will take full advantage of the broad spectrum of capabilities enabled by our design, architecture, 22nm tri-gate transistor technology, and leading-edge manufacturing to further accelerate our position.”

An Intel Atom Z2420 was announced for smartphones in emerging markets, and an Atom Z2760, the first quad-core Atom SoC ("Bay Trail").  Intel also launched a Long-Term Evolution (4G LTE) strategy, for a low-power, global modem solution that works across multiple bands, modes, regions and devices. The Intel XMM 7160 is a solution that supports smartphones, tablets and Ultrabooks, with support for 15 LTE bands simultaneously.

IBM and Nokia Siemens announce Edge Computing Platform.

Nokia Siemens Networks and IBM announced a collaboration to deliver a mobile edge computing platform that can run applications directly within a mobile base station. This new platform allows mobile operators to create a truly unique mobile experience, relieve the ever increasing strain on network infrastructure and bring completely new solutions to market. Nokia's Liquid Applications and IBM’s WebSphere Application Service Platform for Networks (ASPN) together provide an environment for operators to manage the many applications that will be deployed to the mobile edge.

“Pushing applications, processing and storage to the edge of the mobile network allows large complex problems to be distributed into many smaller and more manageable pieces and to be physically located at the source of the information it needs to work on,” said Phil Buckellew, vice president, IBM Mobile Enterprise. “This enables a huge amount of rich data to be processed in real time that would be prohibitively complex and costly to deliver on a traditional centralized cloud.”

Mellanox and 6WIND partner to help deployments of virtual and non-virtual networks.

Mellanox (MLNX) and 6WIND, a solution for data plane processing in software defined networks, announced a performance-optimized solution featuring the Mellanox ConnectX-3 Network Interface Controller (NIC) together with the 6WINDGate networking software.  As a solution for Telecom Equipment Manufacturers (TEMs)it is combined with a Mellanox SwitchX 40GbE switch to aid deployments of virtualized and non-virtualized networks and SDN on standard high-volume servers.

“Because it solves critical network performance challenges for mobile infrastructure, 6WIND’s software has been selected by multiple TEMs who provide equipment deployed in commercial LTE networks worldwide,” said Eric Carmès, CEO of 6WIND. “The addition of Mellanox ConnectX-3 support within 6WIND’s enhanced Intel DPDK library as well as the 6WINDGate software, incorporating features such as SR-IOV and RDMA over Converged Ethernet (RoCE), enables improved CAPEX and OPEX in service provider networks through the virtualization of network functions and more efficient SDN management.”