TI unleashes industry's most powerful wireless base station SoC

LTE NORTH AMERICA, DALLAS, USA: As operators worldwide strive to increase their network capacity in more cost effective ways and keep ahead of swelling user data consumption, Texas Instruments Inc. (TI) has unveiled the industry's first wireless base station System-on-Chip (SoC) with the 4G class performance required to tame the wireless data deluge.

Built as a wireless data engine from its inception, the TMS320TCI6616 SoC is based on TI's new TMS320C66x digital signal processor (DSP) generation using TI's new KeyStone multicore architecture, and delivers more than double the performance of any 3G/4G SoC in the market. The TCI6616 also boasts the industry's first multicore DSP that processes both fixed- and floating-point math, an innovative capability that simplifies wireless base station software design.

To facilitate customers' development of more robust, multimode base stations that help operators optimize their spectral, financial and network resources, TI developed the TCI6616 SoC incorporating three critical elements: field proven PHY technology, an autonomous packet processing engine and programmable DSPs enabling full multicore entitlement.

Implemented as configurable coprocessors, TI PHYs enable Software Defined Radio (SDR) which allows operators to migrate to emerging standards without needing external components. Autonomous packet processing in the TCI6616 manages packets from both core and radio networks, offloading packet processing and freeing cycles for algorithms that enhance spectral efficiency.

The autonomous operation of the packet coprocessors simplifies design and reduces costs for developers. Together, these configurable coprocessors, which target all major wireless standards, yield the performance equivalent of over 250 DSPs.

The TCI6616 delivers unprecedented programmable performance with TI's new C66x DSP cores, which boast five times more processing performance than any other DSPs, as seen in the independent BDTI benchmarks.

The four C66x DSP cores in the TCI6616 provide the performance needed for custom IP implementations that base station developers rely on for product differentiation. Additionally, TI's new multicore KeyStone architecture effectively manages the competition for processing resources and offers the first true network-on-chip infrastructure to unleash full multicore entitlement.

"Our TCI6616 SoC is going to shake things up as there is no other base station technology in the market that solves operators' challenges like ours," said Brian Glinsman, general manager of TI's communications infrastructure business.

"We are delivering on all fronts of performance, price and innovation. TI's PHY technology, packet coprocessor and multiple DSP cores work together to provide developers a SoC with immense compute power ideally suited for the challenges of 4G networks."