Israeli startup targets femtocell baseband

The device, codenamed PRC6000, will be the first in the company's Aquilo family and it is set to be used to produce low power, 3G, HSDPA, HSUPA, and HSPA+ femtocells. The first chips are expected to be available for mass production in the first half of 2009, according to Percello.

PRC6000 serves as the central processor in a standalone femtocell and as a sub-system element for residential gateway systems.

The chip's architecture combines programmable multi processing DSPs and dedicated hardware accelerators. Percello claims that its SoC architecture results in a low cost, small die, low power and high performance processor. PRC6000 is designed to simultaneously support existing Rel-99, Rel-5 or Rel-6 user devices as well as future Rel-7 user devices.

The company's three founders, CEO Shlomo Gadot, vice president of R&D Rafy Carmon, and vice president of product management Yoav Volloch, held top positions at LSI Logic Israel. The company employs about 15 at the moment.

Gadot was also the CEO and founder of Modem Art Ltd., which was sold to Agere Systems. And Carmon was a department head for Motorola Israel, where he led the development of secured cellular and TETRA two-way communication handsets.

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