Freescale launches first 'base-station-on-chip' products!

Freescale Semiconductor has announced the first “base station-on-chip” products built on its QorIQ Qonverge multimode platform at the Freescale Technology Forum China in Shenzhen.So, how are the first QorIQ Qonverge products a milestone for the wireless industry? Scott Aylor, GM, Wireless Access Division, Freescale, said: "The wireless industry is in dire need of innovative new solutions to address challenging power requirements and exploding demand for additional bandwidth. Freescale’s QorIQ Qonverge portfolio offers unprecedented scalability and software compatibility, giving customers flexibility, reduced cost and design-time savings as they move up to larger capacity systems."

And, what exactly does the Freescale QorIQ Qonverge portfolio offer to customers? Aylor added: "Qonverge provides wireless networking equipment manufacturers a software compatible, single architecture that scales from femto and pico cell base stations, all the way up to macro cells with proven DSP and MPU technology that is already powering many of the world’s LTE and other advanced base stations. It also offers OEM’s a balanced solution, based on industry-leading MPUs and DSPs. This balanced approach allows for more efficient processing, than for example, DSP-centric approaches which assign MPU-optimal processing instead to a DSP."

Some months ago, Picochip had introduced 2G and 3G femtocell base stations. That leads to the question: how different are Freescale's solutions from Picochip's?

Aylor noted: "Freescale’s Qonverge is not a point solution for a certain cell size. Instead, it is a scalable portfolio from small to large cells, all with a common architecture. Also, the DSP and MPU technology that powers Qonverge is in chips currently powering macro base stations from virtually all the top wireless base station OEMS in the world."

Also, Freescale had earlier announced a 4G base station on chip based on Linux. How different is this one from the earlier solution? He said: "We first announced our QorIQ Qonverge technology back in February 2011 at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. This announcement centers around the availability of the first three product solutions in the Qonverge family, the 9130/1/2 products, which address the femtocell and picocell markets. All of these solutions have the capability to run Linux and other operating systems."