Airspan Networks upgrades 4G LTE base stations to NetLogic's XLP multi-core processors

BOCA RATON & SANTA CLARA, USA: Airspan Networks Inc., a leading provider of broadband wireless access networks, and NetLogic Microsystems Inc., a worldwide leader in high-performance intelligent semiconductor solutions for next-generation Internet networks, announced that Airspan Networks is upgrading its 4G LTE base stations to NetLogic Microsystems’ best-in-class XLP316L multi-core processors.

Airspan has selected the industry-leading XLP multi-core, multi-threaded processors to power and boost the performance for its next-generation Air4G family of 4G LTE base stations.

The global deployment of LTE mobile services is driving a dramatic increase in performance requirements for base station processors. NetLogic Microsystems’ innovative XLP316L processor is ideally suited to address the dramatic performance requirements of LTE base stations by combining the powerful XLP processor core featuring quad-issue, quad-threading and superscalar out-of-order execution with a high-performance floating point unit and a low latency tri-level cache architecture to deliver significant data plane and control plane performance.

“We are pleased to have selected NetLogic Microsystems for our Air4G family of LTE eNodeB products to achieve higher throughput, higher capacity and better use of the spectrum,” said Uzi Shalev, COO at Airspan Networks.

“Because of its breakthrough architecture and advanced 40nm technology, NetLogic Microsystems’ best-in-class XLP multi-core, multi-threaded processor delivers unmatched LTE control and data plane performance in a variety of 4G environments. We have consistently observed dramatic performance gains for the XLP processor across a wide range of our LTE and LTE-A benchmarks.”

Airspan’s Air4G base station is optimized to provide the highest quality, capacity and range on a network by integrating advanced capabilities such as MIMO and advanced Frequency Domain Scheduling. These capabilities enable higher throughput and capacity and better use of the spectrum which all translate to an improved user experience at a lower operator cost. It is available with two to four transmitters and two to four receivers and can be deployed with a remote radio head (RRH). The Air4G products operate in the 700 MHz, 1.4 GHz, 2.3-2.7 GHz and 3.3-3.8 GHz bands.

“We congratulate Airspan on upgrading their innovative Air4G base stations with higher performance and functionality while reducing the power profile to address next-generation 4G LTE network requirements,” said Chris O’Reilly, vice president of marketing at NetLogic Microsystems. “Airspan is clearly pushing the envelope on technical excellence by taking full advantage of our quad-issue, quad-threaded and superscalar out-of-order processor architecture to complement Airspan’s strong systems and software technologies.”

NetLogic Microsystems’ XLP316L multi-core processor integrates 16 NXCPUs capable of operating at up to 2.0 GHz. Manufactured in the advanced 40 nm process node, the XLP316L processor is designed to offer unparalleled performance of 20 Gbps and 30 million packets-per-second (Mpps) for converged data plane and control plane processing in LTE and LTE-Advanced base stations.

The XLP316L multi-core processor integrates advanced wireless security technologies to support SNOW3G and KASUMI protocols, multiple lanes of Serial Rapid I/O (SRIO) interfaces, and IEEE 1588v2 hardware time stamping for Ethernet backhaul timing synchronization.

In addition, the 16 NXCPUs are fully cache and memory coherent for software applications to seamlessly run in Symmetric Multi Processing (SMP) or Asymmetric Multi Processing (AMP) modes. The unique combination of superior processor cores and scalability to 16 NXCPUs makes the XLP316L the industry's highest performance multi-core communications processor for original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) developing next-generation LTE mobile infrastructure.