Filling up the Wireless SoC gap

No doubt India has grown from being a VLSI design-outsourcing destination to a SoC development hub. India’s large talent pool has attracted many global semiconductor companies to set up R&D centers. These R&D centers, together with the Indian design service houses such as Wipro and, the EDA tools vendors such as Cadence, Synopsys, Mentor and Magma along with the global EMS companies, currently form the Indian Semiconductor Design ecosystem.

The complexity of design being undertaken has many facets. The challenges of a leading edge SoC design can be qualified by different parameters - ultra low power designs, tackling the complexities of deep sub-micron technologies at 45nm or below, front end designs of large complex digital logic, the integration of RF and analog mixed signal components with large digital logic, and implementation of complex digital wireless signal processing in hardware, etc.

Today designers in India are consistently handling these ever-evolving design complexities. For example, three years ago, Wipro completed a complex gaming chip involving 30 million logic gates where the entire design from architecture to tapeout was done solely in India. This was the beginning of more complex designs done out of Wipro, India.

The wireless SoC challenge
An important way Wipro is addressing the challenge of complex SoC designs is by developing Intellectual Property (IP) cores in complex connectivity domain. Since adding multiple wireless transceivers to consumer devices is one of the biggest drivers of the present semiconductor growth, Wipro’s strategy of developing wireless connectivity IP cores efficiently complements the evolving semiconductor ecosystem. In December 2005, Wipro Technologies acquired NewLogic Technologies GmBH, a European company of 130 employees, to complete its VLSI Front-end and back-end design capabilities with RF, Analog and Signal processing knowledge.

The combined team across India and Europe, known as Wipro-NewLogic, is developing IP cores for leading wireless communication protocols such as Wireless LAN (IEEE 802.11abg and 11n), Bluetooth and UltraWideband (WUB)/Wireless USB. What is unique about this IP portfolio is that it is a complete end-to-end solution from Software and MAC protocol, signal processing algorithm to CMOS based Radio. Hence Wipro-NewLogic can provide its customers an almost ready-to-ship product rather than bits and pieces of a bigger solution.
Complimenting the IP cores, Wipro-NewLogic, along with rest of the Wipro service arm, provides complete SoC, turnkey and software development offerings to its IP customers. Leveraging on the knowledge that the IP development has brought, Wipro has developed a full-fledged, Wi-Fi alliance authorized Wi-Fi certification lab in Bangalore. This ability to provide complete solutions inclusive of mixed signal and RF is key to further propelling the booming Indian VLSI industry so as to keep up with the demands of the market.

Flagship IP core
IEEE 802.11abg and 802.11n has been the flagship IP core from Wipro-NewLogic with more than 25 customers of this IP worldwide. The WLAN IPs consists of the MAC (Media Access Control) layer, Baseband (Signal Processing Module) and CMOS based RF solution. It is silicon proven by Wipro-NewLogic, but more importantly, through customer products. A leading semiconductor player in Europe is selling this Wi-Fi Certified IP cores as standard silicon part.

Besides standard part silicon products, this IP is going into a number of other commercial applications such as low cost, low power sensor applications, into gaming stations, as an additional communication interface for WiMAX-wireless LAN combo chipsets, as a communication port for high end audio solution and others. The complete IP has been developed over the last five years with team across India and Europe. Wipro-NewLogic team along with its customers does the adaptation of the IP in varied products such as those mentioned.

Product deployment – an example
This is an innovative semiconductor start-up wanting to develop a low cost, very low power, sensor solution based on an already popular wireless technology. This device needed to communicate wirelessly with the existing wireless LAN infrastructure. Among various competing technologies, Wireless LAN was chosen as the technology, and Wipro-NewLogic as the IP provider and development partner. The team had a daunting task to convert the existing Wireless LAN IP to a solution which can run on a single AA battery for five years.

Following the licensing of the IP, a grueling one-and-half year development cycle began with a system study where the SoC architecture including the expected area, power consumption and RF integration approach was defined among multiple options. The SoC involved an integrated Wireless LAN MAC, modem and RF with special low power features. Integration of RF into a SoC brings it’s own challenges. The RF yield is typically lower than the digital SoC part. Also on SoCs such the ones mentioned, issues such as leakage current need to be addressed in a more precise way to maintain high battery life. These aspects were also considered in the system study and architecture phase, and adequate redressal mechanisms were developed during the design and development phases.

At the post architecture development phase, the team designed the complete solution including system and RF modifications, software and application development. The power states, wake-up and sleep protocols were adjusted to ensure years of battery life, hitherto unheard in the wireless LAN world.

After the architecture and front-end development, the team performed the verification activities involving verifying the solution on FPGA platform as well as on the test chip. The team was also involved in the productization aspects of the SoC. The firmware and application software worked seamlessly with the rest of the design to make it a complete end to end solution, working at the first go. With close interaction between the customer and the Wipro-NewLogic team, the test chip tape-out happened approximately 1.5 years after the start of development.

This whole development cycle of wireless LAN IPs including this specific product design is an example of how new designs could happen out of India. This involves strategizing of portfolio development (wireless LAN components), cross-geography (India and Europe) co-operation of teams with complementary VLSI skill-sets, and working closely with the end customers to ensure mutual success.