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Krutsch
Actually the DSP cores do not really do all the heavy processing. For some of ...
Adele.Hars
By way of information, for the QorIQ processors & DSPs, Freescale went to 45nm ...
Freescale vs. TI: Base station SoC battle
Junko Yoshida
2/14/2011 12:01 AM EST
Well-established CPU and DSP technology
Freescale’s QorIQ Qonverge processors combine on a single chip: multiple Power Architecture cores; StarCore DSPs with MAPLE packet processing acceleration engines; and interconnect fabric. Noting that there will always be waste in a system using discrete components, Su pointed out the efficiency of the QorIQ Qonverge processor, in particular, comes from its multi-core fabric. “We spent a lot of time developing it.”
“The key strength of Freescale is that it has both well-established CPU and DSP technology,” noted Joseph Byrne is a senior analyst at The Linley Group. “Nobody else is in the same position.”
According to Byrne, “Freescale's embedded-processor business has been stronger than its DSP business, which creates a particularly good opportunity for the company.”
He explained, “Freescale is well-placed to lure OEMs that had been using TI DSPs with Freescale embedded processors, eliminating TI from these designs.” TI, of course, will try to do the reverse but [the company] is not a well-established supplier of embedded processors, he added.
In all fairness, the timing for the availability of complete base station SoCs – both from Freescale and TI -- may not differ much in the end. Both are aiming at the second half of 2011. But analysts believe Freescale may have an edge. “We think Freescale’s exisitng and new customers will get to the market faster because Freescale offers more tools and endorsed, trusted third party solutions (like performance monitoring) than TI,” said Doherty. “Time to market, flexibility to change designs as market demands (more so on enterprise cell than femto cell) is criucial.”
Freescale is seeing fundamental changes in base station design and deployment. Freescale’s Su described the expected proliferation of tiny base stations enabled by Alcatel-Lucent’s lightRadio technology as akin to cloud-computing. “Instead of racks of servers, we now see a network of desktop connected to cloud,” she said. Similarly, by combining Alcatel-Lucent’s antenna and RF communications with Freescale’s digital baseband unit, “you will soon see a network of small base stations that are the size of a Rubik's cube,” enabling networks.
The Linley Group’s Byrne agreed. “The big-picture is that mobile broadband requires a dense network of base stations, but carrier’s capital expenditure is limited. Thus, some kind of solution that provides density economically is required.” He said that lightRadio looks like the kind of architecture that can do the trick.
Freescale’s QorIQ Qonverge processors combine on a single chip: multiple Power Architecture cores; StarCore DSPs with MAPLE packet processing acceleration engines; and interconnect fabric. Noting that there will always be waste in a system using discrete components, Su pointed out the efficiency of the QorIQ Qonverge processor, in particular, comes from its multi-core fabric. “We spent a lot of time developing it.”
“The key strength of Freescale is that it has both well-established CPU and DSP technology,” noted Joseph Byrne is a senior analyst at The Linley Group. “Nobody else is in the same position.”
According to Byrne, “Freescale's embedded-processor business has been stronger than its DSP business, which creates a particularly good opportunity for the company.”
He explained, “Freescale is well-placed to lure OEMs that had been using TI DSPs with Freescale embedded processors, eliminating TI from these designs.” TI, of course, will try to do the reverse but [the company] is not a well-established supplier of embedded processors, he added.
Freescale's Picocells/Enterprise-Femtocells base station SoC
In all fairness, the timing for the availability of complete base station SoCs – both from Freescale and TI -- may not differ much in the end. Both are aiming at the second half of 2011. But analysts believe Freescale may have an edge. “We think Freescale’s exisitng and new customers will get to the market faster because Freescale offers more tools and endorsed, trusted third party solutions (like performance monitoring) than TI,” said Doherty. “Time to market, flexibility to change designs as market demands (more so on enterprise cell than femto cell) is criucial.”
Freescale is seeing fundamental changes in base station design and deployment. Freescale’s Su described the expected proliferation of tiny base stations enabled by Alcatel-Lucent’s lightRadio technology as akin to cloud-computing. “Instead of racks of servers, we now see a network of desktop connected to cloud,” she said. Similarly, by combining Alcatel-Lucent’s antenna and RF communications with Freescale’s digital baseband unit, “you will soon see a network of small base stations that are the size of a Rubik's cube,” enabling networks.
The Linley Group’s Byrne agreed. “The big-picture is that mobile broadband requires a dense network of base stations, but carrier’s capital expenditure is limited. Thus, some kind of solution that provides density economically is required.” He said that lightRadio looks like the kind of architecture that can do the trick.
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kinnar
2/14/2011 3:09 AM EST
Advancements in the Base Station chip-sets is extremely required to be the maximum efficiency out of it, but simultaneously it is also required that the BTS will support all previous and future technologies and standards, by one or another way, otherwise it will be very difficulty situation in a country like India where the service provider will be having their presence thought the country.
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Davide Barra
2/14/2011 11:44 AM EST
Our Company is pleased for being mentioned upon the collaboration with Texas Instruments and would like to highlight that the correct name is Azcom Technology and not Axcom, as reported in the article herein. For further details, please go at http://www.azcom.it.
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junko.yoshida
2/14/2011 4:14 PM EST
I do apologize for my misspelling. It's my bad. Sorry!
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KB3001
2/14/2011 2:13 PM EST
I wonder what FPGA companies such as Xilinx and Altera have to say about this two-horse race? Any comments out there?
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Frank Eory
2/14/2011 6:22 PM EST
Why would they have anything to say about it? Making a "base station on a chip" is way outside of their core businesses.
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junko.yoshida
2/14/2011 8:29 PM EST
I think KB3001 does have a point; FPGA guys are also trying to get into the base station market by replacing DSP and Microprocessor functionalities. But what determines the winner in the end is not the hardware functionalities; but credible tools and ecosystem they can offer on the network equipment market.
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Jayakumar
2/14/2011 9:05 PM EST
Very good write up. We in Epigon (www.epigon.in) use Virtex 5 FPGA for OFDM Phy. For higher bandwidth ( may be higher side of 1.5 mbps), we found even Virtex 5 not able to provide computing resources. My question is : How much bandwidth processing cab be done in these two DSP's ( from TI and Freescale). In a sense, is it possible to mod and demod more then 2 mbps OFDM phy in the above DSP's. In case yes, then epigon will be happy to migrate from FPGA's to DSP's. For low bandwidth Modems we use TI5510 DSP and Blackfin DSP. you can reach me at jk@epigon.in
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viveka27
2/15/2011 12:47 AM EST
Very good write up.
"Freescale is rolling out a scalable, multimode wireless base station ....designed to scale from small cells (Femto and Pico) .... "
the Femto cell referred here is what Qualcomm also is after??? Can you please also write on where does Qualcomm stand in this race?
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05
2/15/2011 1:36 AM EST
How about LSI? As we know LSI also participate into this game and release ACP multicore and Starcore DSP. It seems they are targeting wirelesss application too. How to compare with TI/Freescale?
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ajoneill
2/15/2011 11:33 AM EST
I believe the FPGA players have a challenge defending their base station position because their chips cost so much. Moving to CPU+DSP SoCs should be able to reduce the semiconductor bill of materials by something like **90%**.
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Adele.Hars
2/15/2011 11:44 AM EST
By way of information, for the QorIQ processors & DSPs, Freescale went to 45nm SOI, which they say gave them a big edge (see http://bit.ly/hN1j0N).
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Krutsch
2/21/2011 2:59 AM EST
Actually the DSP cores do not really do all the heavy processing. For some of the key algorithms you have MAPLE (in case of Freescale); it is like you have your custom ASIC on SOC. From my point of view the strength of the solution is the integration of power, accelerator and DSP in the same SOC enabling smaller size and less power. The competition between base-station providers will move more into the RF and antenna components part..
Base-station providers can make their own SOC but I just want to see who has the money and time to do this sort of staff…
In terms of FPGA, they will be around in solutions as long as there is no common interface from ADCs to DSPs. Still hope that JESD 204 will be supported someday… or any other..
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