Freescale DSP family delivers new levels of performance for the next wave of wireless base station deployments
/ contains 3x video / Two years and multiple field deployments after introducing the industry’s highest-performing programmable baseband DSP, Freescale Semiconductor announces two next-generation products that deliver more than twice the throughput of their industry-leading predecessor.Freescale’s new MSC8157 and MSC8158 products are the next generation of the widely deployed MSC8156 DSP.
The new DSPs are based on Freescale’s SC3850 core
running at 1.2 Ghz, which recently earned the highest BDTIsimMark2000™ fixed-point
performance score of any DSP architecture tested to date by independent signal-processing
firm Berkley Design Technology, Inc (BDTI).
The MSC8157 product supports a broad array of 3G and 4G wireless standards,
while the MSC8158 is cost-optimized to enable more efficient and higher
throughput deployments for WCDMA networks. Both products help lower bill of
materials costs by integrating technologies that eliminate the need for
additional, costly ASICs and FPGAs required in competing solutions.
“With the introduction of the MSC8157/58 product family, Freescale leverages its
deep understanding of wireless networking technology to address the needs of
service providers to dramatically reduce network costs while increasing
bandwidth,” said Lisa Su, senior vice president and general manager of
Freescale’s Networking and Multimedia Group. “These new products balance
leadership performance, cost and energy efficiency to meet the needs of next-generation
3G/4G networks.”
As the industry migrates to higher-speed, lower-latency, data-centric 3G-LTE
mobile networks, OEMs increasingly demand DSPs that deliver higher throughput to
address growing base station computational complexity. Freescale’s newest DSPs
meet this demand with an enhanced version of its MAPLE-B baseband accelerator.
The flexible MAPLE-B2 accelerator packs a high level of throughput in a small
area of silicon, optimizing for cost and power while providing extremely low-latency
implementations of advanced antenna processing algorithms.
The MSC8157 and MSC8158 DSPs offload many mathematical and baseband intensive
tasks to the enhanced MAPLE-B2 block, freeing the processors’ six cores to
handle other tasks. For example, floating-point MIMO processing is handled by
the MAPLE-B2 block, significantly improving latency over floating point DSP core
implementations. The MAPLE–B2 block additionally provides OEMs a single hardware
platform that supports multi-mode operation and allows for the adoption of
additional standards with a simple software switch. This flexibility facilitates
the creation of highly scalable equipment that helps service providers reduce
costs, lower capital expenditures and boost throughput.
“Freescale’s new MSC8157 and MSC8158 DSPs take an innovative systems-level
approach in addressing the unique power, performance and cost requirements of
the wireless communications equipment market,” said Will Strauss of Forward
Concepts. “This systems-level mindset reflects the company’s long track record
of supplying the world’s top networking equipment manufacturers with its QorIQ
and PowerQUICC lines of microprocessors.”
Technical features
- The MSC8157 delivers the peak throughput possible in 3G-LTE 20 MHz bandwidth,
delivering 300 Mbps in the downlink and 150 Mbps in the uplink, with 4x4 DL and
2x4 UL MiMO, as well as various interference cancellation schemes to support
hundreds of users. The DSP also supports multiple WCDMA sectors of 42 Mbps in
the downlink and 11 Mbps in the uplink, together with multi-mode simultaneous
operation of 3G-LTE and WCDMA.
- Hardware-accelerated features include FEC, FFT/DFT, MiMO MMSE (Minimum Mean
Square Error), and MLD (Maximum Likelihood Decoder) flexible equalizers, as well
as matrix inversion made possible by floating-point arithmetic and IRC
(Interference Rejection Combining) receivers.
- The MSC8157 incorporates a high speed DDR interface, ample internal memory,
CPRI (Common Public Radio Interface) 6G antenna interfaces and two Serial-RapidIO
Gen 2, enabling 5G per lane with sophisticated messaging capability.
- The MSC8157 and MSC8158 DSPs include advanced WCDMA Chiprate acceleration,
eliminating OEMs’ need to develop their own ASIC or FPGA. The high throughput
and flexible Chiprate acceleration with capacity of up to 512 physical channels
allows OEMs to deploy their own variant of Chiprate algorithms.
Development support
Freescale helps OEMs achieve fast time to market with its CodeWarrior suite of
development tools embedded with highly optimizing compiler technology, the
MSC8157ADS evaluation board, and fully optimized software kernels for 3G-LTE and
WCDMA.
Availability
Freescale plans to sample the MSC8157/58 DSPs to selected customers in Q1 2011.
Contact local Freescale sales offices or authorized distributors for pricing.
Freescale Semiconductor
201011171118.11.2010TelecommunicationFreescale Semiconductor