- New System-on-Chip (SoC) silicon platform accelerates the
development of Open RAN radios with lower size, weight, power,
cost, and cooling.
- Solution includes digital pre-distortion (DPD) for PAs, PIM
cancellation, split 7.2X support, and Ethernet or JESD interface
support.
- MaxLinear Sierra feature capabilities will be demonstrated at
MWC 2024 in Barcelona.
MaxLinear, Inc. (Nasdaq: MXL), a leader in wireless
infrastructure silicon solutions, today announced it has launched
the MXL17xxx family of devices (“Sierra”), a highly integrated SoC
optimized for 4G/5G Open Radio Access Network (RAN) radio units
(RU). Sierra is an innovative single-chip platform that flexibly
supports major RU applications including traditional macro, massive
MIMO, picocell, all-in-one small cells, and more.
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MaxLinear Launches Single Chip for 5G
Open RAN Radio Units (Graphic: Business Wire)
Sierra integrates the following sub-systems into a single chip,
providing a complete software-programmable radio signal processing
engine for Open RUs (O-RU):
- RF transceiver supporting up to 8 transmitters, 8 receivers,
and 2 feedback receivers
- Digital Front End (DFE) including DPD, crest factor reduction
(CFR), and Passive Intermodulation (PIM) cancellation
- Low-PHY baseband processor supporting 5G, 4G, and NB-IoT air
interfaces
- O-RAN Alliance Split 7.2x fronthaul interface
“Infrastructure vendors have been waiting for an open-market
silicon solution that can enable them to develop O-RUs without
compromise on performance or cost,” said Sean Martin, Senior
Director of Wireless Infrastructure. “By integrating our highest
performance RF and system technologies in Sierra, MaxLinear is
empowering these radio vendors to rapidly and cost effectively
develop new O-RUs with reduced size, weight, and power
consumption.”
Sierra’s complete system integration yields a feature-rich,
high-performance RU building block with low power consumption,
board footprint, and implementation cost that reduces the need for
multiple FPGAs/ASICs and massively simplifies new O-RU development.
Designers can rapidly build new macro and picocell O-RUs using just
a single Sierra device by adding an appropriate RF front end.
Massive MIMO O-RU are created by tiling an array of Sierra devices
and connecting them to a central beamforming solution. This system
modularity and flexibility makes Sierra an ideal radio platform
building block to maximize design reuse and dramatically speed up
the development of new O-RUs.
“Open RAN momentum continues to build and is set to account for
20 percent to 30 percent of worldwide RAN revenues by 2028,” said
Stefan Pongratz, Vice President and Analyst at the Dell’Oro Group.
“New optimized off-the-shelf O-RU silicon solutions like Sierra
play an essential role to enable improved radio supplier
diversity.”
At the heart of Sierra is MaxLIN™, MaxLinear’s leading
field-proven DPD solution for wideband power amplifier
linearization, supporting up to 400MHz of occupied bandwidth.
MaxLIN’s linearization performance exceeds the 3rd Generation
Partnership Project (3GPP) and U.S. Federal Communications
Commission (FCC) unwanted emissions requirements with margin while
delivering high PA efficiency, thereby minimizing RU energy
consumption, and making radios lighter and more cost-effective.
MaxLIN’s advanced algorithms feature enhancements to correct for
both long-term and short-term nonlinear dynamics including GaN
charge trapping and thermal transients, critical for high-power
Macro applications. It optimally supports different power amplifier
(PA) architectures, technologies, and power levels for all
potential RU applications from macro to picocells. In addition,
OEMs also have the option to implement their own DPD using the
Sierra on-chip compute resources.
More about Sierra
Sierra’s RF transceiver uses a low power wide band Zero-IF (ZIF)
architecture and supports 8 transmitters (TX) and 8 receivers (RX)
with 2 feedback receivers (FBRX). Each RX supports wide signal
bandwidths up to 400MHz and each TX and FBRX supports signal
bandwidths up to 900MHz. It can operate in 8T8R single-band or 2 x
4T4R multi-band configurations.
The digital front-end (DFE) integrates digital pre-distortion
(DPD), crest factor reduction (CFR), passive intermodulation
cancellation (PIMC), digital up conversion (DUC), and digital down
conversion (DDC) blocks. MaxLinear's advanced DPD/CFR technology,
MaxLIN™, linearizes power amplifiers (PA) up to 400MHz of occupied
bandwidth and dramatically improves PA energy efficiency while
meeting spectral emission masks with margin. The PIMC block cancels
passive intermodulation products in the uplink paths to improve
receiver sensitivity and relax the specification of expensive RF
filters. The DUC/DDC supports up to eight component carriers per
transmit and receive path.
The Low-PHY baseband processor supports 4G, 5G, and NB-IoT air
interfaces, including uplink PRACH processing. It can process up to
eight component carriers (CC) per transmit and receive path with
subcarrier spacing (SCS) of 15kHz, 30kHz, and 60kHz and it is
software configurable for different modes and parameters including
dynamic spectrum sharing (DSS), bandwidth parts, mixed numerology,
and windowing.
Sierra supports an O-RAN fronthaul Split Option 7.2x Category A
interface with up to four 10 or 25 Gbit/s Ethernet interfaces.
Sierra integrates an embedded CPU for system control. The CPU is
an integrated quad-core Arm® A53 processor with Neon™ extensions.
Each Arm® core has 1MB of internal SRAM and has access to an
additional 8GB of external DRAM through a DDR controller.
Sierra Availability:
Sierra is available in a 31mm x 31mm Flip-Chip Ball Grid Array
(FCBGA) package. Sierra is sampling to first customers in March
2024. Sierra samples are supported by an evaluation platform,
software, and tools to facilitate early system development.
MaxLinear will be conducting briefings on MaxLinear’s radio
solutions at Mobile World Congress – Hall 2, meeting rooms 2A54MR
and 2A63MR – from February 26 through February 29, 2024.
About MaxLinear, Inc.
MaxLinear, Inc. (Nasdaq: MXL) is a leading provider of radio
frequency (RF), analog, digital, and mixed-signal integrated
circuits for access and connectivity, wired and wireless
infrastructure, and industrial and multimarket applications.
MaxLinear is headquartered in Carlsbad, California. For more
information, please visit https://www.maxlinear.com/.
MaxLinear, the MaxLinear logo, any other MaxLinear trademarks
are all property of MaxLinear, Inc. or one of MaxLinear's
subsidiaries in the U.S.A. and other countries. All rights
reserved.
All third-party marks and logos are trademarks or registered
trademarks of their respective holders/owners.
Cautionary Note About Forward-Looking Statements
This press release contains “forward-looking” statements within
the meaning of federal securities laws. Forward-looking statements
include, among others, statements concerning or implying future
financial performance, anticipated product performance and
functionality of our products or products incorporating our
products, and industry trends and growth opportunities affecting
MaxLinear, in particular statements relating Sierra, including but
not limited to, with respect to its benefits of use, features,
demand and anticipated growth in the RAN market. These
forward-looking statements involve known and unknown risks,
uncertainties, and other factors that may cause actual results to
differ materially from any future results expressed or implied by
these forward-looking statements. We cannot predict whether or to
what extent these new and existing products will affect our future
revenues or financial performance. Forward-looking statements are
based on management’s current, preliminary expectations and are
subject to various risks and uncertainties that could cause actual
results to differ materially from those described in the
forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements may contain
words such as “will be,” “will,” “expected,” “anticipate,”
“continue,” or similar expressions and include the assumptions that
underlie such statements. The following factors, among others,
could cause actual results to differ materially from those
described in the forward-looking statements: risks relating to the
development, testing, and commercial introduction of new products
and product functionalities; risks relating to our terminated
merger with Silicon Motion and related arbitration and class action
complaint and the risks related to potential payment of damages;
the effect of intense and increasing competition; impacts of global
economic conditions; the cyclical nature of the semiconductor
industry; a significant variance in our operating results and
impact on volatility in our stock price, and our ability to sustain
our current level of revenue, which has declined, and/or manage
future growth effectively, and the impact of excess inventory in
the channel on our customers’ expected demand for certain of our
products; the geopolitical and economic tensions among the
countries in which we conduct business; increased tariffs, export
controls or imposition of other trade barriers; our ability to
obtain or retain government authorization to export certain of our
products or technology; risks related to the loss of, or a
significant reduction in orders from major customers; costs of
legal proceedings; information technology failures; a decrease in
the average selling prices of our products; failure to penetrate
new applications and markets; development delays and consolidation
trends in our industry; inability to make substantial research and
development investments; delays or expenses caused by undetected
defects or bugs in our products; failure to timely develop and
introduce new or enhanced products; order and shipment
uncertainties; failure to accurately predict our future revenue and
appropriately budget expenses; lengthy and expensive customer
qualification processes; customer product plan cancellations;
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to attract and retain qualified personnel; any adverse impact of
rising interest rates on us, our customers, and our distributors
and related demand; risks related to compliance with privacy, data
protection and cybersecurity laws and regulations; risks related to
conforming our products to industry standards; risks related to
business acquisitions and investments; claims of intellectual
property infringement; our ability to protect our intellectual
property; risks related to security vulnerabilities of our
products; use of open source software in our products; and failure
to manage our relationships with, or negative impacts from, third
parties. In addition to these risks and uncertainties, investors
should review the risks and uncertainties contained in MaxLinear’s
filings with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission,
including risks and uncertainties arising from other factors
affecting the business, operating results, and financial condition
of MaxLinear, including those set forth in MaxLinear’s most recent
Annual Report on Form 10-K, Quarterly Reports on Form 10-Q, and
Current Reports on Form 8-K, as applicable. All forward-looking
statements are qualified in their entirety by this cautionary
statement. MaxLinear is providing this information as of the date
of this release and does not undertake any obligation to update any
forward-looking statements contained in this release as a result of
new information, future events, or otherwise.
Market Information
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forecasts that are based on independent industry publications or
other publicly available information. This information involves
many assumptions and limitations, and you are cautioned not to give
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update such information after the date of this press release.
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MaxLinear, Inc. Press Contact: Matthew Lea Head of Public
Relations Tel: +1 760.415.2529 mlea@maxlinear.com
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