Smart Baseband Solutions for 3G

Europe : Wireless infrastructure vendors face multiple challenges -- from intense cost pressures to rapidly evolving standards to significant R&D risks -- in their quest to deliver base station platforms for next-generation wireless networks.

Inset is David Perkins, corporate vice president of Motorola's Networking and Computing Systems who is quoted below.

Motorola helps them meet these challenges with its Smart Baseband Solutions, a comprehensive, system-level baseband processing architecture designed for 2.5G and 3G base stations. Motorola's MRC6011 Reconfigurable Compute Fabric (RCF) device and next-generation MSC8126 multicore StarCore® digital signal processor (DSP), in concert with Motorola wireless application software library modules, offer the underlying silicon and software technology for Motorola's Smart Baseband Solutions.

The MRC6011 RCF device is engineered to provide an efficient processing solution for a wide range of computationally intensive applications, such as baseband processing for 3G and broadband wireless access systems. Working in tandem with Motorola's MSC8126 StarCore DSP, the MRC6011 RCF device is designed to enable system architects to adapt algorithms and fix bugs before and after deployment, fine-tune baseband architecture and manage partition and load on the fly, design multi-standard wireless platforms, and add advanced capabilities, such as adaptive antenna (AA) and multi-user detection.

Motorola's Smart Baseband Solutions offer the advanced RCF and DSP components, along with library modules and development tools, required to develop scalable and programmable baseband processing systems that accommodate multiple standards, such as Wideband Code Division Multiple Access (WCDMA), Code Division Multiple Access 2000 (CDMA2000), Time Division-Synchronous Code Division Multiple Access (TD-SCDMA) and Enhanced Data rates for GSM Evolution (EDGE). Smart Baseband technology supports system-level flexibility, a consistent design environment for the entire baseband and efficient C and assembly programming. In addition, the technology is based on optimized processor-application mapping to increase capacity, deliver high performance and maintain low-power dissipation per channel.

"RCF technology provides a programmable alternative to more costly ASIC- and FPGA-based baseband system designs," said Will Strauss, president of Forward Concepts. "Today's wireless infrastructure market is undergoing a rapid transition toward 3G technology. During this transition, base station vendors require baseband processing solutions that will help reduce R&D and deployment costs as well as ongoing cost of ownership. RCF is an exciting new approach to meeting these needs and promises to play a prominent role in shaping the future of wireless infrastructure."

"Motorola's Smart Baseband Solutions are designed to provide a flexible, future-proof reconfigurable compute fabric, enabling manufacturers to reduce the total cost and complexity of wireless infrastructure equipment, adapt to evolving wireless standards around the world, and speed time to market," said David Perkins, corporate vice president and general manager of Motorola's Networking and Computing Systems Group. "Motorola is driving the future of high-performance, multicore RCF and DSP technology for the benefit of our wireless base station customers. Motorola's MRC6011 device represents a giant step toward our goal of providing groundbreaking silicon solutions for 3G baseband processing."

About the MRC6011 RCF Device

The MRC6011 device is designed to provide the flexibility of a programmable DSP solution for baseband processing while approaching the cost- effectiveness, power consumption and processing capability of a traditional application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC)-based solution. The MRC6011 combines six RCF cores into a homogeneous compute node capable of operating at 250 MHz, with a 100 MHz maximum operating frequency for off-core buses. The six-core MRC6011 device is designed to deliver a peak performance of 24 giga multiply-accumulates per second (GMACS). At 4-bit resolution, the device is capable of performing at 48 giga complex correlations per second.

The MRC6011 is a highly integrated system-on-chip (SoC) device that comprises two identical and scalable reconfigurable compute (RC) modules. There are three identical RCF cores per module, and each core has a powerful 16-element processing array. The RC controller is an optimized RISC processor designed for efficient C code compilation, and it features instruction and data caches, programmable timers and external general-purpose output lines. Core peripherals include large high-speed buffers, a special-purpose complex correlation unit, and a single- and burst-transfer direct memory access (DMA) controller.

The MRC6011 is manufactured on low-power 0.13-micron CMOS process technology, enabling an internal logic voltage of 1.2V and input/output voltage of 3.3V. Typical power consumption is targeted at less than 3W. The device is offered in a 31 mm x 31 mm tape ball grid array (TBGA) package.

About the MSC8126 DSP

Motorola's MSC8126 device is planned to be the first in a line of powerful, multicore StarCore DSPs designed to provide the optimal performance, price and size per channel to address the programmability, scalability and reconfigurability requirements of wireless infrastructure. An SoC device, the MSC8126 combines four StarCore DSP cores, a turbo coprocessor, a Viterbi coprocessor, a Universal Asynchronous Receiver/Transmitter (UART), four time- division multiplexed (TDM) serial interfaces, 32 general-purpose timers, a flexible system interface unit (SIU), an Ethernet interface and a 16-channel DMA engine that handles independent data transfers.

The MSC8126 device is the industry's most powerful 16-bit programmable DSP. Its four extended cores are designed to deliver up to 6400 million multiply-accumulates per second (MMACS) of DSP performance at 400 MHz. The four-core MSC8126 device is planned to be available at two core speeds: 350 MHz and 400 MHz.

Supported by a robust set of development tools, Motorola's multicore DSP solution is designed to drive exceptional cost efficiency per voice and data channels for 3G wireless base station applications. The MSC8126 is designed to be code-compatible with Motorola's existing MSC81xx devices, and pin- compatible with the MSC8102 DSP. Motorola plans to manufacture the MSC8126 on its 90 nm process technology, which will enable the device to perform at higher clock speeds.

About Motorola's Software Library Modules

Continuing the tradition of offering comprehensive solutions to its customers, Motorola plans to release a library of application software modules for both the MRC6011 and MDC8126 devices. The first version of the library is targeted at Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UMTS) applications with both chip-rate and symbol rate modules. These C-callable modules are designed to significantly reduce development and debug time.

A Full Range of Silicon for 3G Base Stations

In addition to providing RCF and DSP silicon for Smart Baseband Solutions, Motorola offers the processing intelligence and high-power radio frequency (RF) technology required by 2.5G and 3G wireless base station platforms. Wireless infrastructure designers can rely on Motorola as a "one-stop" supplier of programmable RCF devices, high-performance DSPs, PowerQUICC™ communications processors, C-Port™ network processors, PowerPC host processors, RF laterally-diffused metal oxide semiconductor (LDMOS) devices, optimized timing solutions and serializer/deserializer (SerDes) Gigabit Ethernet transceivers -- all essential components of base station platforms.

Smart Baseband Silicon Availability

Samples of the MRC6011 RCF device are planned for Q4 2003, and samples of the MSC8126 DSP are planned for the first half of 2004. Samples and production quantities of Motorola's MSC810x StareCore DSPs are available now.