DALLAS, Dec. 5, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- Continuing at the
forefront of the wireless industry with its market-leading base
station System-on-Chip (SoC) solutions, Texas Instruments
Incorporated (TI) (NYSE: TXN) today unveiled an expansion of its
KeyStone multicore architecture for emerging cloud radio access
network (C-RAN) applications and network server developers.
Specifically, TI is scaling its KeyStone architecture for the
emerging paradigm of C-RAN base stations, enabling the creation of
device pools with immense capacity for manufacturers to
develop extremely high performance and power efficient C-RAN base
station clusters. Clustering base station functions allow
processing capacity to be concentrated, which offers an innovative
alternative to operators looking to lower operating expenses by
reducing the amount of equipment in the field. By extending
its KeyStone architecture, TI provides a powerful and cost
effective path to C-RAN for developers using KeyStone devices for
small cell or macro cell base stations while protecting their
software investment.
"TI is unveiling a critical enabler for powerful and cost
effective cloud RAN solutions," said Ken
Rehbehn, principal analyst, mobile infrastructure, Yankee
Group. "Expanding TI's flexible KeyStone architecture to meet
C-RAN network topology requirements means that radio system
innovators gain a unified architecture that scales from small cells
to massive C-RAN processing pools. These enhancements offer vital
design flexibility and time-to-market advantage without adding
significant development cost."
C-RAN is taking its place beside small cells, distributed
antenna systems (DAS), active antenna arrays (AAA) and remote radio
heads (RRH) as an emerging topological tool in the wireless arsenal
being deployed to address growing challenges ranging from site
acquisition to coverage and capacity enhancement to environmental
stewardship (green base stations).
KeyStone is the first multicore infrastructure architecture
offering a comprehensive and scalable platform to base station
developers. TI's KeyStone enhancements for C-RAN include expanding
Multicore Navigator's Queue Manager to provide over 16K queues and
one million descriptors. In addition, TI's Hyperlink chip-to-chip
interface is expanded to 100Gbps with dual-port operation and its
integral wire-rate Ethernet switch is upgraded to 10Gbps per port.
Together, these enhancements allow a larger pool of TI's
KeyStone-based System-on-Chips (SoC) to interconnect and function
as a single SoC, a critical capability for C-RAN base
stations requiring large scale processing from baseband IQ through
Ethernet IP. This will ultimately enable developers to create
an entire C-RAN base station from wireless-optimized KeyStone SoCs,
eliminating the need for a power hungry x86 server and other
network processors from competitors.
"By leveraging the scalability of the KeyStone architecture, we
have provided enhancements that represent a quantum leap in
multicore processing performance," said Tom
Flanagan, director of technical strategy, wireless base
station infrastructure, TI. "With KeyStone, we can now create
device pools with unheard of levels of capacity -- nearly 800 cores
pooled to appear as a single multicore device. That's the power of
KeyStone, a true multicore platform and differentiator, when it
comes to choosing a silicon partner for C-RAN applications."
For more information:
- Watch TI's multicore Ask The Experts series
- Engage with engineers and TI experts on the TI E2E™ Community
and Multicore Mix
- Follow TI on Twitter
- Become a fan of TI on Facebook
About TI's KeyStone multicore architecture
Texas Instruments' KeyStone multicore architecture is the
platform for true multicore innovation, offering developers a
robust portfolio of high performance, low-power multicore
devices. Unleashing breakthrough performance, the KeyStone
architecture is the foundation upon which TI's new TMS320C66x DSP
generation was developed. KeyStone differs from any other multicore
architecture as it has the capacity to provide full processing
capability to every core in a multicore device. KeyStone-based
devices are optimized for high performance markets including
wireless base stations, mission critical, test and automation,
medical imaging and high performance computing. Learn more at
www.ti.com/c66multicore.
About Texas Instruments
Texas Instruments semiconductor innovations help 80,000 customers
unlock the possibilities of the world as it could be – smarter,
safer, greener, healthier and more fun. Our commitment to building
a better future is ingrained in everything we do – from the
responsible manufacturing of our semiconductors, to caring for our
employees, to giving back inside our communities. This is just
the beginning of our story. Learn more at www.ti.com.
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SOURCE Texas Instruments Incorporated