Bluetooth gets smaller

Matthew Broersma ZDNet.co.uk

Published: 06 Mar 2002 18:09 GMT

The UK's Cambridge Silicon Radio on Wednesday introduced Bluetooth software aimed at pushing the wireless technology into small, portable devices like mobile phones and handheld computers.

The BlueCore Host Software (BCHS) reduces the memory and processing power requirements for adding Bluetooth to a device, making the option more attractive to hardware manufacturers.

Bluetooth is a short-range radio technology for connecting peripherals, devices and PCs to one another without cables. It is becoming available now in some mobile phone handsets and PDAs, but analysts say it will only become really valuable when it becomes ubiquitous in all sorts of devices.

BCHS runs the Bluetooth stack directly on CSR's BlueCore silicon, leaving only the profiles -- the software that defines specific Bluetooth functions -- to run on the hardware of the host device. So far it supports the Audio Gateway, Dial-up Networking and Object Push profiles.

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