MIPS, 4M Wireless demo 3G/4G multimode protocol stacks on MIPS architecture

SUNNYVALE, USA: MIPS Technologies Inc., a leading provider of industry-standard processor architectures and cores for digital consumer, home networking, wireless, communications and business applications, announced that 4M Wireless, the leading provider of LTE protocol stack software, will demonstrate 3G/4G multimode User Equipment (UE) operation on the MIPS architecture during the 2011 Mobile World Congress, being held February 14-17, in Barcelona, Spain.

4M Wireless has ported its PS100 LTE Protocol Stack for UE terminals onto a platform based on the MIPS32 24K core running the Android operating system. The demonstration on this MIPS-Based platform will highlight a seamless bi-directional handover between a 3G WCDMA protocol stack and 4M Wireless’ proven 4G LTE protocol stack.

Today’s consumers increasingly want mobile phones that offer both high-speed data and voice capability, so handsets will need to support both 4G and 3G technologies. SoC developers enabling these next-generation handsets need high-performance, low-power processors with optimizations for leading 3G/4G multimode protocol stacks.

“We are excited by the traction we are seeing for the MIPS architecture in the mobile market. To speed further penetration into this huge and fast growing market, we are building reference designs and optimizations for all of the key protocol stacks, operating systems, and other technologies needed for our customers’ development efforts. We are pleased to team with 4M Wireless on this demo that shows the strength and capability of MIPS for both 3G and LTE,” said Art Swift, vice president of marketing and business development, MIPS Technologies.

4M Wireless shared benchmark results of its LTE protocol stack running on the MIPS-Based Android platform, achieving LTE CAT4 data throughput with packet sizes as low as 128 bytes over a lossy channel simulating a 10 percent transport block loss rate. By mimicking real-world data transfer scenarios, where channel errors are a frequent occurrence (especially at high data rates), these benchmark results provide a more meaningful performance indicator than theoretical tests where only error-free data is transferred. Such error-free scenarios are rarely seen in field deployments of cellular terminals. The benchmark results were realized with low CPU utilization and low power.

“The 4M Wireless LTE stack is the industry’s most mature stack available today. It is optimized for embedded performance and integrated in several commercially available customer products. We are delighted to work with MIPS Technologies to show such great results of our LTE stack running on a MIPS-Based Android platform, and we look forward to continued cooperation with MIPS in bringing our leading technology to other MIPS licensees’ platforms,” said Atif Malik, CEO of 4M Wireless.

The 4M Wireless LTE protocol stack supporting both FDD and TDD modes is available for licensing from 4M Wireless today.