Communication

Freescale Launches 4G Baseband SoC

The march toward 4G cellular networks is accelerating. For example, Verizon just lit up its LTE network in 38 U.S. cities. But widespread deployment will require lower-cost base stations.  Freescale is aiming to enable lower-cost base stations with its new baseband SoCs, introduced last month on the heels of Texas Instrument’s latest 4G offering. The new Freescale SoCs are based on Freescale’s SC3850 StarCore DSP core that, at 1.2 GHz has just achieved the top fixed-point score on the BDTI Read more...

TI Supports Floating-Point in New High-Performance DSPs

In early 2010, Texas Instruments (TI) announced a new multi-core DSP SoC architecture. This month, TI announced the first chips based on this architecture. This latest announcement includes details of TI’s new TMS320C66x (C66x) DSP processor core, which offers both state-of-the-art fixed-point performance and strong floating-point support. The multi-core architecture and C66x core underlie a family of new general-purpose DSPs, as well as two chips for wireless infrastructure applications, one Read more...

CEVA Launches Two New DSP Cores with Support for Porting TI Software

DSP processor core licensor CEVA has added to its portfolio with the new CEVA-X1643 and CEVA-XC323 DSP cores. The cores are the next-generation successors to the CEVA-X1641 and CEVA-XC321, respectively. The new cores roughly double the clock frequency of the prior offerings to 1 GHz and are targeted for 40 nm implementation.  Both cores rely on a VLIW architecture combined with SIMD capabilities, and the XC323 adds a vector computation unit. The X1643 targets a broad range of applications Read more...

MimoOn Fields LTE Software for Multiple Processor Vendors

With the growth in mobile data traffic, there is increasing interest in fourth-generation (4G) cellular technologies, especially the Long Term Evolution (LTE) of the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) – the successor to GSM/EDGE and UMTS/HSxPA technologies.  LTE has gained a decided momentum advantage over WiMax and is expected to be the most important 4G technology.  BDTI recently spoke with mimoOn, a company headquartered in Duisburg, Germany that licenses LTE software for both Read more...

Xilinx Announces Next-Generation 28 nm FPGA Families

Xilinx recently announced its next-generation “7 series” FPGAs, featuring new power-saving features as well as increased capacity and performance.  The series will be composed of three chip families, all fabricated in TSMC’s high-k metal gate (HKMG) 28 nm technology.  All three families will use the same logic cells, block RAMs, DSP slices, and I/O cells.  Compared to existing 40 nm Xilinx devices, Xilinx claims that, in typical applications, the new FPGAs will reduce power consumption by 50, Read more...

Freescale Takes on Texas Instruments with Multi-Core DSP Line

Freescale has announced a new high-performance DSP product line, the MSC825x, incorporating up to six StarCore SC3850 DSP cores at up to 1 GHz.  Unlike other high-performance DSPs introduced by Freescale in recent years—which were aimed almost exclusively at wireless infrastructure applications—the new chips target a range of performance-intensive applications, including medical, aerospace and defense, and test and measurement equipment.  This will put the new chips in direct competition with Read more...

Xilinx Unveils High-Performance ARM-based CPU-FPGA Hybrid Platform

Xilinx recently unveiled a new chip architecture integrating an ARM processor with an FPGA fabric. This platform centers around a dual-core ARM Cortex-A9 processor complex, including hardened memory interfaces and peripherals.  The platform architecture, shown in Figure 1, is intended to behave like a CPU first and an FPGA second.  Specifically, the CPU will boot independently—without requiring that the FPGA first be configured.  Xilinx is targeting markets that require both complex software Read more...

FPGA Start-Up Tabula Exits Stealth Mode, Unveils “3-D” Architecture and First Devices

FPGA start-up Tabula recently emerged from stealth mode and disclosed details of its architecture, dubbed Spacetime, and product line, called the ABAX family. Tabula’s products are intended to compete against existing high-end FPGAs by offering higher density with the same design methodology.  Tabula is initially aiming its chips at network, wireless, and telecom infrastructure markets–all sweet spots for programmable logic.  These markets are characterized by a need for programmability due to Read more...

Multicore Heats up with Chip Announcements from TI, Tilera

This month both Texas Instruments and Tilera announced new multicore chips.  TI announced the TMS320C6472, which includes six ‘C64x+ processor cores running at 500-700 MHz (depending on the family member). Tilera announced a new chip family, the TILE-Gx, which will include variants with 16-100 cores running at 1.25-1.5 GHz. The ‘C6472 is available now, while Tilera does not expect to start sampling TILE-Gx chips until late 2010. According to Tilera, TILE-Gx chips will be fabbed in a 40 nm Read more...

Intrinsity, Samsung Announce Cortex-A8 “Hummingbird”

This month Intrinsity and Samsung jointly announced a new, highly optimized implementation of the ARM Cortex-A8 CPU core, called “Hummingbird.” According to Samsung and Intrinsity, an initial Hummingbird sample has achieved 1 GHz in Samsung’s 45nm low-power process. The companies say that Hummingbird is both faster and lower power than other Cortex-A8 implementations, though as of this writing they have declined to provide power data. Samsung says that it is currently developing Hummingbird- Read more...