Yesterday Altera and Lime Microsystems announced that they have “entered into a Strategic Cooperation Agreement focused on jointly developing and promoting programmable solutions for a diverse range of broadband wireless markets”.

On what this will mean in practice, the announcement goes on to state that:

The agreement will result in the development of optimized field programmable radio frequency (FPRF) transceivers, digital RF and baseband solutions that will enable system designers to reduce their overall costs, lower power, shorten time-to-market, and customize designs for key wireless infrastructure, enterprise, military, industrial, test and medical applications.

The announcement also noted that Myriad-RF will be used to provide developers with “access to Altera-Lime optimized reference designs, boards, and software stacks and drivers to quickly, easily and affordably build next-generation wireless systems.”

This is great news and another step towards the democratisation of wireless innovation as both organisations are committed to supporting the open source community as part of their collaboration. The chipsets and reference designs will be made available through numerous distribution channels, including global partners such as Digikey.

There is every possibility that this approach will change the RF landscape and lead to new levels of integration, while setting the standard for cost-effectiveness. Exciting times ahead!