News & Analysis
4G/LTE chips coming . . . but first, a little chaos
Junko Yoshida
3/22/2010 9:04 AM EDT
But be warned. Much of the WiMax/LTE solutions on display at the show are still point solutions. This represents a prelude to the chaos and confusion which, in the coming months, many technology vendors will be busy unraveling.
In the transition to WiMax/LTE, however, one thing will be clear to everyone. There's no going back to business as (it was) usual.
Gone are the days when baseband chip vendors could continuously hold onto their existing 3G/2G solutions -- many of them hard-wired. On the horizon is the industry's growing appetite for DSPs -- specifically designed to run software defined radio (SDR).
At least, that's the operative theory for CEVA, a DSP core intellectual property supplier.
In a recent interview with EE Times, Gideon Wertheizer, CEVA's CEO, said, "What you need for LTE basebands is a special-purpose communication DSP, not a conventional general-purpose DSP." CEVA has been pitching the company's new CEVA-XC communications processor, designed to deliver programmability and performance required by basebands in 4G LTE/WiMax cellular networks.
Many of today's popular baseband solutions are likely to get swapped out in LTE handsets. This is because "there are no current 3G baseband chips for handsets that have the 'horsepower' to handle a full LTE capability -- to my knowledge," said Will Strauss, president of Forward Concepts, a market researcher in Tempe, Ariz.
How to handle LTE stacks is a big challenge for many baseband chip suppliers. But an even bigger problem, in deploying LTE in handsets, is how well new LTE basebands are architected -- in terms of power consumption, die size and cost -- to handle the legacy 3G/2G protocols. After all, LTE basebands must be able to fall back to 3G and 2G voice and data operation.
Several semiconductor companies are working on new LTE baseband solutions combined with their current 3G/2G baseband -- either in the form of a co-processor or a chip set.
CEVA, however, doesn't think that will cut it. The company believes it's time to put a spotlight back on SDR to handle not just LTE, but also all the different permutations of 3G/2G basebands used in different parts of the world.
Next: SDR gets traction
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rick.merritt
3/22/2010 10:36 AM EDT
IMHO, CEVA has a good opportunity selling programmable chips in this transition when no what quite knows what a 4G handset should be, but by 2011-2012 when the system design gets more clearly defined dedicated chips will emerge and win the day as most cost effective.
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junko.yoshida
3/22/2010 11:51 AM EDT
That may be so; but the point here is that there are already so many permutations of 2G/3G implementation -- depending on cellular network providers and depending on different parts of the world. LTE being the first truly global standard, SDR may be just the way to go, not just as an interim solution, but as a long-term solution. At least, that was the sense I got talking to CEVA's CEO.
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Polarisgt
3/22/2010 1:34 PM EDT
True that SDR will reduce R&D cost, time to market, and tapeout risk. If you want a fast product and functional unit, SDR may be the way to go. But for very few companies who know how to do it right, hardwired solutions will yield astonishing low-cost low-power solutions with surprising high performance which is not possible given the current power of DSPs. The market will be lose or get-it-all.
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DaveKelf
3/22/2010 5:47 PM EDT
It is clear that these new vector processors have greatly narrowed the gap between custom hardware and programmable devices in terms of power consumption. The real question is the efficiency of device programming, as an effective software implementation can make an order of magnitude difference in performance. Leading companies are finding that this is the significant issue to solve, and when they do, custom hardware basebands may well become obsolete.
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tinker_dude
3/22/2010 8:09 PM EDT
Well, Rick Merritt got it right, its only a matter of time. Until that time CEVA and others can make their noise.
And to DaveKelf:
"The real question is the efficiency of device programming, as an effective software implementation can make an order of magnitude difference in performance."
How will make c-like code to compete with AND/OR/XOR gates? Well as you said that's the real question and I personally don't think today's solutions have an answer!
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Sudarshan1970
3/30/2010 1:46 AM EDT
Hi,
SDR looks interesting.
I have been working on SDR for quite sometime now. I would like to work on 4G LTE,anyone interested for this ?
contact me: sudar_ns@yahoo.com
sudarshan@spacomp.com
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xzczvxc
6/20/2010 11:08 PM EDT
what about Sequans, isn't their wimax chip in the HTC 4G phone? Also, these chip suppliers will be in CMCC TD-LTE dongles: 1. Samsung 2. Innofidei 3. Sequans 4. ST-E (T3G)
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Timothy.OBrien
11/22/2010 12:32 PM EST
"Strauss said he does not expect LTE chips for handsets before late 2012."
What about the Samsung Craft which I read somewhere uses a Qualcom chipset?
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