TI Unveils Industry's Most Complete Base Station Solution

Texas Instruments Inc. (TI) has launched the TMS320TCI6612 and TMS320TCI6614, said to be the industry’s most comprehensive System-on-Chips (SoCs) for developers of metro, pico and enterprise small cell base stations.

Based on TI’s innovative KeyStone multicore architecture, the small cell SoCs are enabled with production ready software and are the highest performing devices available for small cells. These scalable SoCs encompass a mix of processing elements including radio accelerators, network and security coprocessors, combined fixed-and floating-point digital signal processors (DSPs) and an ARM RISC processor, providing the ideal foundation for layers 1, 2 and 3 and transport processing for high performance small cell base stations.

The TCI6612 and TCI6614 SoCs leverage TI’s broad resources to bring the most comprehensive portfolio of processing, software and complimentary support devices to small cell developers. The devices are powered by an all-inclusive software suite, based on TI’s field-proven wireless application specific libraries, and a full portfolio of complementary analog products such as data converters, RF products, power management, clocks and amplifiers, which complete the integrated solution for small cell developers, reducing system cost and development time. The TCI6612 and TCI6614’s processing elements include two or four TMS320C66x fixed- and floating-point DSP cores, as well as a power efficient ARM Cortex-A8 RISC processor. The ARM core is typically used for control plane processing. The remaining base station functions, including all baseband and packet processing, are handled by the DSP cores coupled with configurable wireless, network and security coprocessors.

The TCI6612 and TCI6614 SoCs are code compatible with TI’s entire KeyStone multicore portfolio, as well the TMS320C64x DSP generation, ensuring all previous software investments made by TI customers can be reused. This flexibility allows base station manufacturers to develop a wide portfolio of products at a lower cost, lower power, and in less time than with competing solutions.

The TCI6612 and TCI6614 SoCs feature network coprocessors, which offload the processing of intensive functions typically performed by DSPs. This frees up MIPs for differentiating features, such as advanced interference cancellation and management techniques, which reduce noise on wireless networks. With TI’s new SoCs, developers can differentiate their products and come closer than ever before to the boundary of Shannon’s Law which defines the limits of wireless data capacity. The result is increased spectral efficiency and higher data rates for operators and a more satisfying user experience.

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