BREW Evolves into OS !

Qualcomm Inc of the US is revamping its Binary Runtime Environment for Wireless (BREW) software platform for mobile phones mounting its own chips. BREW has offered an application execution environment for some time, but BREW 4.0, which is a new architecture, will offer functionality on a par with high-performance operating systems (OS). It is likely to provide improved control to mobile phone users, and to provide major changes in development methods and time requirements for manufacturers of handsets or handset components. The firm has said that the development of BREW 4.0 will take about another year. It plans to begin providing it with chipsets to handset manufacturers from the end of 2007, and expects the first BREW 4.0-based mobile phones to appear in about 2008.

Reducing Cost, Time

According to Jun Yamada, president of Qualcomm Japan Inc, a key turning point for manufacturers of handsets, components and other related items will be when third parties begin to develop their own device drivers, in the same way as Microsoft Windows and similar products. Until now, driver software for integrated circuits (IC), sensors and other components peripheral to the Qualcomm chipset required device drivers developed jointly by handset and component manufacturers (see Fig). This is because BREW information disclosure was restricted to mobile phone manufacturers licensing the chipset. Component manufacturers had no choice but to develop drivers in close cooperation with the handset manufacturers.

"Qualcomm changed its policy in response to requests by component manufacturers," explained Shigemaru Nishiyama, engineer, senior staff/manager, Qualcomm CDMA Technologies of Japan. The firm reviewed its prior stance, and made the decision to release BREW 4.0 information required for device drivers at a relatively early stage to component manufacturers. Qualcomm provides the tools required for driver development, predicting reductions in mobile phone development time and cost.

Building into OS

In BREW 4.0, the firm decided to build in OS functions, and review the entire architecture. As Nishiyama explained, "We support parallel processing for tasks and threads. We refer to this as component service." Native applications will run in the CPU cores on top of component service, along with conventional BREW applets.

Compared to past versions of BREW, which have been designed to provide an execution environment on top of an OS in a manner similar to Java, the new version offers major expansions in function.



BREW 4.0 also adopts a microkernel architecture capable of processing different applications individually, making it easier to reserve memory for mobile phone needs or assure security. "And even if a buggy application crashes, it won't affect the entire system," added Nishiyama. In prior versions, only a single User Interface Task ran at once, but the next-generation version of BREW will run multiple BREW application processes under OS control with prioritizing.

Application independence was heightened because of the rapid increase in the quantity of applications running on mobile phones, and the provision of financial services by mobile phone operators. There is also a need for stronger security, driven by fear of software like Winny.

The Qualcomm chipset will cover not only the initial North American schemes (cdmaOne and CDMA2000), but also the W-CDMA adopted in Japan, Europe and elsewhere.

The firm is continuing to expand the range of software capable of running on it, hoping to establish a solid position as a mobile phone platform provider.

by Takahiro Kikuchi

(August 2006 Issue, Nikkei Electronics Asia)