Marvell’s single-chip solution for TD-SCDMA smartphones were chosen for the ASUS T10 and T20 smartphones for the China market, announced Marvell co-founder and COO Weili Dai.
“I am particularly excited to see the launch of the ASUS TD smartphone with the addition of mobile gaming and mobile TV features all in one device — a true breakthrough in mobile telephone technology,” said Weili Dai in today’s press release. “I believe the ASUS TD smartphones will be just the beginning of mass deployment of cost effective, advanced TD-SCDMA-based smartphones throughout China.”
The ASUS T10 and T20 series smartphones are powered by Marvell Technology Group’s PXA920 platform, the first commercially available single-chip solution to support the latest version of China Mobile’s OPhone OMS system. The small size of the PXA920 chip and its gigahertz speed enables efficient dynamic multimedia for mobile TV, live video, gaming and other applications controlled by Marvell’s Kinoma software interface.
China Mobile is by far the world’s leading cell phone carrier, with 589 million subscribers. ASUS is a Taiwanese company that has become one of Asia’s top 5 makers of PCs and mobile devices. Marvell has been aggressive in developing chips for the TD-SCDMA standard used in China. This launch represents a major step in Marvell’s ambition to secure a foothold in the world’s largest cellphone market.
Santa Clara-based Marvell (Nasdaq: MRVL) is the world’s third largest fabless chip company. It ships well over a billion chips a year. For the past decade it has been the global leader in chips used to control hard-drives used to store data, making two out of every three such chips shipped in the world.
Weili Dai co-founded Marvell in 1995 with her UC Berkeley classmate and husband Sehat Sutardja and his brother. Sutardja is Marvell’s CEO. He has led the company’s chip engineering and development efforts while Dai has been Marvell’s head of sales and business operations. The company currently employs 5,700 around the world. Since 2006 Dai has been among the Forbes 400 richest Americans with a net worth estimated at well over $1 billion. Dai graduated from UC Berkeley with a B.S. in computer science in 1984.
“I only knew about four blocks from the campus in each direction,” Dai recalls of her years at Cal when she would run between Cory, Evans, and the library carrying an enormous backpack loaded with heavy physics, CS,and math books. “Basically all I did was study. I was very busy and very focused.”
More recently Dai has become known for sporting the kind of glamorous clothes seen more often on media stars than on tech entrepreneurs.
