“This is the Wifi chip aimed at smartphones from Marvell. Not too much to see with so much metal on the top, however, there are some open areas. A small note of interest is that there are pads on the perimeter of this chip as well as on the bottom leading me to think that the layout was destined for flip-chip bonding, such as in the iPhone, or to be put in a standard package. There is also an orientation mark at the center of the chip. There is some speculation that this chip features an ARM core and given my past experience looking at CPUs, it is reasonable that it can be in there below all of that metal. Although I don’t do RF IC design, I would speculate that the open windows are the last stages of RF amplifier designs and are open to minimize parasitic capacitance. I am not sure if the coils on the surface are used for tuning purposes or in a DC/DC converter application to power the output stage of the RF generator. As always, if you have more insight on the chip, please share!”

Source: http://microblog.routed.net/2007/07/20/ic-friday-marvell-w8686b13/

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