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Jan. 2, 2013, 4:52 p.m.
Joe Hoffman Principal Analyst

PA Consulting Group develops T ime A nd R elative D imension I n S pace, fits a 30ft base station into a 3 inch Raspberry Pi.  As for the Pi, a BBC fan would tell you, “It’s bigger on the inside!”  

Well… not really a TARDIS, but they do demonstrate call processing capability for phone-to-phone communication, and to that extent, managed to shoe-horn that digital processing and switching function into a Raspberry Pi. 

While there is no way that the Pi can substitute for a cellular base station, it does show a trend of where the industry is heading, and that is towards smaller cells and off-the-shelf hardware.  Some day the cellular network will simply be RF access points with IP connections to a virtual network cloud consisting of off-the-shelf equipment.

Come to think of it, Moore’s Law is a digital TARDIS, constantly baking 30ft of ingredients into a 3-inch pie.