Octasic Announces DSP Core for Cutting-edge Wireless, Media Gateway Apps

Octasic Inc. has launched its second-generation Opus2 DSP core, a high-performance, ultra-low power, asynchronous DSP architecture optimized for baseband processing and multimedia transcoding. To facilitate customer evaluation of the core, Octasic is making available an integrated development environment with support for multi-standard cellular infrastructure applications.

The Opus2 core, based on Octasic's asynchronous Opus DSP architecture, offers the lowest power consumption available in a fully programmable, high-performance DSP. Opus2 is code compatible with the currently shipping Opus1 core. Opus1, the DSP processor used in Octasic's Vocallo devices, is widely deployed as a media processor in voice and video media gateways for wireline and wireless, session border controllers (SBCs), IPBXs, and as a baseband processor in multi-carrier GSM basestations.

Incorporating the experience gained from extensive application development on Opus1 and improvements to the asynchronous design, Octasic has doubled the platform's performance, while improving its power efficiency. For example, a single device based on Opus2 can provide all the necessary processing for a complete 64 user HSPA+/LTE basestation while consuming less than 2.5W.

In addition to basic architecture improvements, Opus2 has been optimized to efficiently support the air interfaces of the existing 2G and 3G standards, as well as the emerging 4G/LTE standards. Unique instructions to improve power and performance for W/CDMA and OFDMA physical and media access control (MAC) layer algorithms have been added, including instructions for rate matching, turbo encoding, code generation, equalization, chip rate processing and encryption. Enhancements have also been made to support a dynamically reconfigurable hardware accelerator, tightly coupled with the Opus2 core, to improve performance and maintain software flexibility for functions such as: Random Access Channel (RACH) search; FFT/DFT; and advanced error correction algorithms, such as turbo decoding and Convolutional Turbo Code (CTC).

Opus2 is fully supported by a rich highly integrated software development environment that includes an optimizing C compiler and timing accurate simulator.

Octasic