During his more than 14 years at Apple, Rubén Caballero had to include cables and cables in every iPhone design he worked on, from the first prototypes in 2005 to the iPhone 11 models now on store shelves. Loops and cables still remain the most reliable and fault-tolerant method of data transmission.
Now, as chief wireless strategist at Silicon Valley start-up Keyssa, Mr. Caballero hopes to eliminate cords and cables from all smartphones forever. The company wants to do away with this with its chip, which is capable of transferring data almost as quickly as wires when placing two modules next to each other. One of Keyssa's first customers, LG Electronics, used this chip for connectivity .
Wireless charging is already the norm in high-end smartphones, but wireless transmission connections like Bluetooth and Wi-Fi remain too finicky to ditch cables entirely. Keyssa has raised more than $100 million from venture investors like Intel, Samsung Electronics, Hon Hai Precision Industry (Foxconn's parent company) and a fund led by Tony Fadell, another former Apple executive who helped create the iPod and then hired Ruben Caballero to the original iPhone development team.
“Every consumer product would like to solve the connector problem,” said Mr. Caballero, a retired Canadian Air Force captain who left Apple earlier this year, during an interview at Keyssa headquarters in Campbell, California. — Camera modules are connected to the main boards using thin cables. Bend them hard enough and they risk breaking, creating an unintended antenna that will interfere with cellular connections and data transmission.” He knows what he's talking about - just remember with the poor design of the antennas in the iPhone 4.
Thanks to Keyssa chips, camera modules can touch the circuit board for wireless data transfer. The chips use high frequencies that do not cause interference inside the phone or nearby devices. “The frequency is especially good in this technology,” said Mr. Caballero. “It just fixes a lot of problems.”
Beyond phones, Keyssa is testing chips with video display makers and at least one maker of the lidar sensors that underpin most self-driving cars today.
“When it comes to commercializing great technology, Ruben is a great choice,” Tony Fadell told Reuters. Mr. Caballero has experience managing more than 1000 wireless engineers at Apple in a department with a $600 million budget for hardware testing alone. Before joining the Cupertino company, he worked at two startups, and therefore knows how to work at a frantic pace (as he did during his first time at Apple).
When Mr. Caballero showed up at Apple in 2005, the first thing he did was ask where all the testing equipment and laboratories were located. “Tony Fadell said, ‘We don’t have anything, but we’ll do it,’” the executive recalls. - It hooked me. I fell asleep under my desk. When you're passionate about something, it's incredible. And I feel the same atmosphere here at Keyssa.”
Source: 3dnews.ru