3G Solution For Infrastructure Challenges

picoChip Designs Ltd, a leader in innovative flexible wireless solutions, today announced the details of its technology. The company has developed a complete baseband platform for 3G infrastructure that solves three critical problems confronting manufacturers: dramatically reducing the cost of basestations while providing the flexibility to allow software upgrades to new revisions of the standard and accelerating development. Based on a massively parallel array of processors, picoChip’s device delivers 10 to 100 times the processing power and speed of the best available solution based on legacy DSP architectures.

CEO, Rodger Sykes, said, “Infrastructure for 3G is a multi-billion dollar market and one of the few telecoms opportunities still growing. However, it is extremely challenging, both technologically and commercially. picoChip has developed a solution that radically addresses the serious problems facing manufacturers and this has the potential to fundamentally change the way complex communication systems are designed. Our platform delivers the software-system-on-a-chip (SSOC) that manufacturers have been waiting for.”

picoChip’s offering combines a new silicon architecture, the picoArray, with an integrated toolchain, a complete set of software libraries for 3G and design support. Together, these dramatically reduce the cost of a basestation, reduce development time, enable field upgrades and support operators in field capacity reconfiguration. Manufacturers can deliver a flexible product that is easily and inexpensively upgraded with new algorithms or new versions of the standard, as and when needed.
The picoArray delivers the performance and efficiency of an ASIC, combined with the programmability and versatility of a general purpose device. It is a massively parallel array of heterogeneous processors, with more than 400 custom-designed devices linked by a patented interconnect mechanism. Each of these processors is completely programmable, allowing manufacturers to freely integrate their own algorithms & intellectual property. Alternatively, picoChip’s libraries can be used to implement a complete 3G Node B – particularly important for new entrants to the market looking to accelerate product launch. Unlike most general purpose computational tasks, signal processing applications achieve significant performance gains from such a parallel approach.

The picoArray delivers 10 to 100 times the performance of traditional architectures across a range of benchmarks; for example, 19 times the MOPS of a top-of-the-line TI C6416 DSP, even though the latter demands four times the clock rate and correspondingly higher power dissipation.

Dr Jim Gunn of Forward Concepts, author of the recently released 2nd edition of their wireless infrastructure study, commented: “It seems clear that current 3G systems would achieve more rapid and extensive commercial deployments if significant cost reductions can be achieved. Evolving standards and emerging 3G Multimedia service goals make configurability very valuable. We have predicted the need for optimized baseband solutions that can deliver the flexibility and processing power required at acceptable price points. picoChip's solutions appear to address these needs very nicely, and if the company can deliver then it has excellent potential to have a major impact in enabling the market for 3G infrastructure.”

3G basestations are approximately 100 times more complex than GSM equivalents with respect to signal processing. Traditionally, this type of processing would be done by a fixed-function ASIC, but the rapidly changing specifications for 3G, together with the high set-up costs of state-of-the-art ASIC technology, make this impractical. Instead, manufacturers use general-purpose programmable devices such as FPGAs or DSPs. However, because even the fastest parts do not have the processing power required for 3G, a huge number of expensive devices is needed, and manufacturers end up shipping at a loss. picoChip's offering is attractive because it’s faster to develop, cheaper and less power hungry than today's solutions, and has sufficient processing power to handle these demanding tasks.

According to CSFB, the market for 3G (WCDMA) equipment is worth $6.4billion in 2002, rising to $16.5billion by 2007.

Rodger Sykes, CEO, commented, “picoChip was founded by experts in 3G systems engineering. Unlike some products, our offering is a complete solution, with world-class architecture and performance, a rich tool-chain and comprehensive system software. The benefits to manufacturers are clear: we dramatically reduce the cost of a basestation, we accelerate their time to market and we deliver the strategically critical goal of a reprogrammable basestation”

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