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Unplugfest!

Guy Kewney AnchorDesk

Published: 17 Mar 2000 16:26 GMT

After a briefing session with Nick Hunn, technical director of TDK Grey Cell, I'm inclined to be sceptical rather than optimistic; because next week, in Monterey, is when all the world's Bluetooth developers get together to see if their prototypes will talk to each other.

In the world of the universal serial bus (USB) such gatherings were terms "Plugfest" -- plug everything into everything else, and see where the problems are. So naturally, in the Bluetooth world, it's an "Unplugfest" which they'll be having.

At the end of that fest, says Hunn, "we'll know what the picture is."

There are those who are claiming that it will all be a success by summer. I hope it is, but I wouldn't count on it, because "success" is going to be pretty hard to define until we know that all the problems have been solved.

The ones that matter, include the price; the radio technology; the battery technology; and the Americans.

The wireless circuits are currently the biggest puzzle. There's a sort of religious belief, in computer circles, that if a chip doesn't work first time, you just produce a new version a couple of weeks later; within a month to six weeks, it should be fixed.

"That doesn't work with wireless," suggests Hunn. "In the RF world, you're not just laying down a new top interconnect layer on the silicon. You're trying to build active components into the three-dimensional matrix of the chip; and it can easily take six months before you're able to come up with a working chip that solves whatever problem you had with the original one."

So if there is a total success with next week's Unplugfest, then we can expect working silicon by the middle of the year, perhaps; but if there are problems with the wireless modules, then we could be looking at December before mass production is possible. And the chance of everything working perfectly in Monterey? "It would take a miracle," was the consensus of the experts I rang round. "There will be problems."

Next, is the battery technology. Bluetooth uses very little power, but it does use power; and it will be environmentally disastrous if it doesn't use very small rechargeable batteries (not to mention unaffordably costly). But it's the size of batteries you'd need to think of in the typical prototype that makes it seem a problem. We're talking of things the size of hearing aids, but with the ability to act as wireless transceivers. That pretty much rules out everything except rechargeable lithium ion batteries, and there are very, very few such devices on the market, that small.

Finally, there's the Americans....