Much of the analysis of the mobile chip industry in the past year has centered on devices, particularly whether Intel could make Atom a major force at last, or if anyone could unseat Qualcomm. However, equally important changes have been happening on the wireless infrastructure front, where Intel and Qualcomm are both eager newcomers, and Texas Instruments and Freescale are the incumbents in the base station. The final weeks of the year are seeing M&A activity in this space, with Intel buying the small cell assets of Mindspeed (formerly Picochip) and Avago snapping up LSI for its storage and wireless infrastructure offerings. These deals highlight important trends for 2014, particularly the expansion of generic silicon platforms into many previously separate…