Date: 18/02/2010

New six-core processor from Freescale Semiconductor eliminates use of FPGA in telecom

Freescale Semiconductor has introduced the MSC8155, a new digital signal processor (DSP) that includes acceleration and interconnect technologies for broadband wireless base station equipment.

The MSC8155 DSP supports existing 3G-UMTS, TD-SCDMA and WiMAX base station deployments and upcoming 3G-LTE standards such as FDD-LTE and TDD-LTE features including Turbo/Viterbi FEC.

The MSC8155 processor integrates six SC3850 StarCore DSP cores running at 1 GHz on a single die, delivering 6 GHz of DSP performance. The enhancements to the MSC8155 include a Freescale's multi-accelerator platform engine acceleration block (MAPLE-B2L) and the new interconnect Serial RapidIO Gen2 technology. Freescale claims the raw performance of the fully programmable cores and the MAPLE-B2L acceleration technology also eliminate the need of FPGAs or develop ASIC devices for 3G-LTE and WiMAX base stations.
The enhanced MAPLE-B2L accelerator features turbo encoder, a high throughput turbo decoder and Fourier transforms acceleration engines. The MAPLE-B2L offers turbo decoding with rate de-matching and HARQ-combining capacity of up to 330 Mbps at eight iterations, Viterbi decoding of up to 200 Mbps and turbo encoding with rate matching capabilities up to 900 Mbps. The embedded FFT engines support up to 900 Msps of FFT/iFFT or 630 Msps of DFT/iDFT throughputs. And it also provides CRC check or insertion with up to 10 Gbps throughput.
To support the high throughput generated by the six high-performance cores and MAPLE-B2L, the MSC8155 is equipped with Serial RapidIO Gen2 standard serial interface supporting up to 5 Gbaud per lane and featuring enhanced messaging unit support for Type 9 streaming that enables the combination of multiple and different types of data streams over the same interconnect. It delivers up to 16 Gbps bandwidth for each direction to enable high throughput interconnect between multiple devices on multi-DSP multi-sector base station channel cards. Other high bandwidth peripherals include Dual Gigabit Ethernet SGMII/RGMII and 64-bit DDR2/3 memory interface at 800 MHz.
"The MSC8155 DSP brings even greater functionality and higher system performance to baseband and industrial applications," said Scott Aylor, general manager of DSP products for Freescale's Networking and Multimedia Group. "Building on the innovation and market traction of the MSC8156 device, the enhanced MSC8155 offers OEMs the scalability and connectivity they need for their common base station platforms."
"The MSC8155 continues Freescale's demonstrated expertise in delivering DSP devices that support multiple standards to meet the base station requirements of today and tomorrow," said Will Strauss, president of Forward Concepts, a leading analyst firm tracking DSP technologies. "The flexibility of Freescale's enhanced MAPLE technology, together with the high performance of Freescale's StarCore technology, should prove appealing to OEMs looking to keep up with carrier and consumer demand for ever more bandwidth as smart mobile devices advance and the number of Internet users worldwide continues to explode."
This multicore DSP chip gives Freescale an edge over its competitors and also with high performance FPGA vendors, for whom the telecom and wireless is a key market.
Package: 783-pin FC-PBGA package
Availability: In Q3 2010

For more details visit www.freescale.com