Icera releases two LTE and HSPA+ platforms based on its 40nm soft baseband processors

Icera has made available two platforms for multimode LTE and HSPA+ based on its 40nm Livanto ICE8060 and ICE8061 soft baseband processors. The two platforms are:

1. Espresso410: This platform is based on ICE8061 baseband and ICE8261radio. The platform adds 4G LTE in software to its multimode HSPA+ / 3G / 2G technology and offers peak data rates of 50Mbps in up to 10MHz spectrum. In early 2011, Icera palns to upgrade the platform to add 2G/3G voice, with 4G circuit-switch fall-back (CSFB) integration and a Radio Interface Layer (RIL) for Google's Android operating system. These upgrades will enable the customers to build high performance LTE smartphones, tablets and mobile broadband USB sticks.

2. Espresso400: This platform is based on ICE8060 baseband and ICE8260 radio. The platform supports 21Mbps HSPA+, scaling to 42Mbps and beyond. The new platform also integrates a USB port and an SDxC controller

Steve Allpress, CTO & VP Modem Software, Icera Inc., said: "Our soft modem architecture is an LTE game-changer, enabling early multimode LTE devices that are comparable with current HSPA devices in terms of form factor, power and cost. Icera's software-defined modem approach is leading once again with performance and early availability of the latest air interfaces."

Icera's new ICE8060 and ICE8061 soft baseband processors are 40nm DXP based chips which run 4G/3G/2G modem physical layer, protocol stack, drivers, voice codecs, echo cancellation, noise reduction and equalization in software on a single small die. These processors are scaleable up to 1.3GHz. They are available in 8x8 BGA packages. The ICE8261 RF transceiver chip is offered in a 7x7 BGA package and supports LTE in US bands 4 and 17, in European Digital Dividend bands and in Japan's band 1.

Availability: Expected in early 2011.