Toshiba today announced the launch of "TC35661SBG-501", a Bluetooth IC that is compliant with both Bluetooth Basic Rate and Bluetooth Low Energy communications. Basic rate communication offers interoperability with a wide range of applications, such as smartphones, while low energy is a newly adopted Bluetooth V4.0 standard that reduces power consumption.

The two communication methods are not interoperable; they require different devices that match the communication method of the host applications. The new IC incorporates both the Serial Port Profile (SPP) that is used for Basic Rate communication and the Generic Attribute Profile (GATT) used for Low Energy communication. This realizes a single device supporting two different communication methods.

Toshiba will start mass production of the IC in November.

Main specifications

- Part Number: TC35661SBG-501
- Operation Voltage: 1.8V or 3.3V
- Package: TFBGA64, 5mm, 5mm, 0.5mm Ball pitch
- Bluetooth version: Ver.4.0

- Corresponding profile:
Serial Port Profile(SPP)
Generic Attribute Profile (GATT)

- Interface: UART, I2C, GPIO
- Other features: GPIO function, Sleep mode, Host wake-up.