The almost-mythological fourth generation of wireless service—4G—could be the fountainhead of an entirely new way of thinking about SOC (system-on-chip) architectures. Or it could drive a simple evolution of today’s baseband wireless ICs. It could lead to entirely new kinds of mobile services for consumer clients. Or it could simply handle your e-mail attachments better. It could be a massive engineering challenge struggling into reality in 2015. Or it could happen in a couple of years.

To understand the impact that 4G is likely to have upon SOC design, you have to dig a little bit into just what people mean by the term, understand some of the computing challenges involved in supporting the service, and hear from some system architects on how they are approaching these challenges.

Many of the differences of opinion about the impact of 4G come from a single source: the lack of a clear definition. “You have to start with definitions,” warns Bill Krenik, Texas Instruments’ chief technology officer for wireless, “because all the controversy and confusion surrounding the term have left it meaning very little.”