Date: 27/08/2009

45-nm, four-core DSP for wireless base stations from Freescale

Freescale has introduced the MSC8154 processor, designed using 45-nm process targeted for DSP based on StarCore technology.

The MSC8154AMC (Advanced Mezzanine Card) packs three four-core MSC8154 DSPs for 3G-LTE, TDD-LTE, WCDMA and WiMAX base stations and media gateway systems.

"Freescale's MSC8154 processor builds on the success of the MSC8156 six-core device and introduces a lower cost option with optimized performance for lower bandwidth base station applications," said Scott Aylor, general manager of DSP Products for Freescale's Networking & Multimedia Group. "In addition, the AMC reference design provides OEMs with an ideal platform to take full advantage of the benefits of future wireless standards."

Key features and specifications of this device are,

Four StarCore DSP SC3850 core subsystems operating at up to 1 GHz/8000 MMACS
per core and up to 32000 MMACS per device.
Multi accelerator platform engine for baseband (MAPLE-B).
High-speed, high-bandwidth CLASS fabric arbitrates between the DSP cores and other
CLASS masters to M2 memory, M3 memory, DDR controllers, MAPLE-B and the
configuration registers.
Two DDR controllers with up to 400 MHz clock (800 MHz data) rate and 32/64-
bit DDR2/3 SDRAM data bus. Supports SODIMMs and up to 0.5 GB per controller
32-channel DMA controller
Dual RISC core QUICC Engine subsystem operating at up to 500 MHz provides
parallel packet processing independent of the DSP cores.
It supports two Gigabit Ethernet controllers supporting RGMII or SGMII, SPI
HSSI that supports two 4x SerDes ports
Four TDM interfaces, UART and I2C interfaces, Eight software watchdog timers, Sixteen 16-bit timers, two 32-bit general purpose timers per core for RTOS support, I/O interrupt concentrator and virtual interrupt support, Eight hardware semaphores.
32 GPIO ports multiplexed with interface signals and IRQ inputs
Optional SEC (MSC8154E) optimized to process all the encryption/decryption algorithms associated with IPSec, IKE, WTLS/WAP, SSL/TLS, AES, DES, RC-4, SNOW-3G and Kasumi for 3G-LTE and 3GPP
Boot options: Ethernet, Serial RapidIO, I2C and SPI
Three input clocks and five PLLs
JTAG Test Access Port (TAP) and boundary scan architecture for monitoring support
Optimized power management circuitry

Package: 783-pin FC-PBGA package

Price: start at $165 in 10K volumes
Availability: From October 2009

For more details visit www.freescale.com/8154DSP