Broadcom intros first NFC chips in 40nm

BEIJING, CHINA: Broadcom Corp. unveiled a new family of NFC chips designed to drive the mass deployment of NFC in consumer electronics devices. With a powerful combination of power, size and functional requirements, the new chips provide the advanced capabilities required by OEMs to ignite NFC adoption in consumer electronics.

Manufactured in 40 nm CMOS technology, the new Broadcom® BCM2079x family slashes power consumption by more than 90 percent, uses 40 percent fewer components and has a 40 percent smaller board area, making it the smallest and most power efficient NFC solution on the market. The NFC controllers are platform agnostic with support for multiple secure elements or SIM cards – or both at the same time. In addition, Broadcom's advanced Maestro middleware allows new NFC applications to utilize Bluetooth and Wi-Fi capabilities in the device to spur new innovations in user interface and media sharing.

An accelerated adoption of NFC could transform the use of smartphones, advancing beyond contactless mobile payments and ticketing to enable radically simplified connectivity between the handset and other devices like Bluetooth headsets and Wi-Fi-enabled digital televisions. The proliferation of NFC has the ability to expand the usefulness of smartphones and inspire a range of new applications built on the ability to create simple, secure connections between devices and enable services with a touch of the phone.