February 21, 2012 -- Tensilica, Inc. announced that it is driving the transition to LTE-Advanced and has already secured lead customers for its new product, the ConnX BBE32UE DSP (digital signal processor) IP core for baseband SOC (system-on-chip) designs.

Using the ConnX BBE32UE DSP core, coupled with Tensilica baseband dataplane processors (DPUs), a fully software programmable, flexible modem for LTE-Advanced user equipment category 7 PHY (Layer 1) can be realized in less than 200mW (28-nm HPL process). It can also support 2G, 3G, LTE and HSPA+ standards.

The transition from LTE to LTE-Advanced can require up to a 5X algorithm and data-rate computation increase within a very tight power budget. Tensilica has worked with leading handset manufacturers to optimize the architecture and the instruction set of the ConnX BBE32UE for algorithms required by user equipment applications.

Tensilica's flexible, processor-based solution is ideal for LTE-Advanced because the new algorithms may well need changing during field and interoperability testing. Previous design methods with hard-wired implementations will not be able to provide the flexibility of algorithm updates, and most conventional wireless communications DSPs will fail to meet the power budget. With this new, very low-power DSP core and baseband DPUs, Tensilica can offer system developers a path to implement flexible, ultra-low-power PHY systems.

Data bandwidth, an important criterion for LTE-Advanced user equipment applications, is enhanced in the ConnX BBE32UE through the use of dual 256-bit load/ store units. In addition, designers can use Tensilica's proprietary Port (general-purpose I/O) and Queue interfaces to directly connect hardware blocks to the processing ALUs. This allows single-cycle dedicated access without the need to go over a system bus, hence reducing the required clock frequency and power consumption.

Like other members of Tensilica's ConnX family of DSPs, the ConnX BBE32UE is fully programmable in C. It is software compatible with other ConnX DSPs and supported by an optimized DSP library.

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