Freescale Buys CommASIC

Chip maker Freescale Semiconductor Inc. (NYSE: FSL) is buying its way into several hot wireless markets with the acquisition of Californian startup CommASIC for an undisclosed sum. (See Freescale Acquires CommASIC.)

Freescale -- which was spun off from Motorola Inc. (NYSE: MOT) last year -- says the buy will give the company baseband processing capabilities in the Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM) field. OFDM is the wireless technology behind buzzwords like WiFi and WiMax -- it helps to enable megabit per second data transfer speeds across these connections.

"This acquisition gives Freescale a base architecture and system expertise that can be leveraged across any OFDM-based technology such as wireless LAN, WiMax, and Digital Video Broadcast (DVB)," says Sumit Sadana, Freescale's senior VP of strategy and business development in a statement.

Freescale already makes an array of RF components and power amplifiers, which can be combined with the CommASIC technology.

CommASIC was founded in 2001 and currently has 30 employees.

— Dan Jones, Site Editor, Unstrung