Blue Boc is intended to work in accordance with the Blutooth Special Interest Group's PAN profile, which is expected to be finalised in the next few months. The profile makes it possible to use Bluetooth in conjunction with the TCP/IP protocol without the normal detour via a serial protocol. According to Spirea, this makes it easier to scale up designs to handle more users. A Blue Boc and radio chipset can handle seven users at the same time.
Blue Roc or "Bluetooth Router-on-chip" is a reference design for close packaging of eight or more Bluetooth transceivers.
Spirea will not be selling complete systems, just the individual chips, manufactured by UMC of Taiwan. Blue Boc chips are expected to become commercially available during the second quarter of 2002, when the first version of the PAN profile will also be ready.
Gittan Cedervall