Date: 25/02/2013

SimpLight designs LTE modem chip using Tensilica’s reference platform

SimpLight Nanoelectronics, Ltd. of China has achieved first silicon success for their LTE modem chip SL3000 for low-power handsets and tablets using Tensilica’s ATLAS reference platform, which implements a complete, fully programmable modem subsystem for the LTE Layer 1 PHY.

“By using Tensilica’s LTE ATLAS reference platform, we were able to dramatically reduce our time to market and product development cost,” stated Min Liang, SimpLight’s vice president of R&D. “SL3000 is a multi-mode, multi-core SoC that could support 2G, 3G, 4G and other customized broadband baseband processing. This multi-core programmable platform, combined with Tensilica’s powerful vector DSPs and SimpLight’s proprietary high-performance, multi-threaded microprocessors, is the best balance between performance and power consumption. Our LTE solution based on SL3000 is ready for the IoT test organized by China’s MTNET, the official testing lab in China for mobile wireless communication.”

The ATLAS LTE reference platform uses Tensilica’s ConnX BBE16 DSP coupled with the ConnX SSP16 and ConnX BSP3 dataplane processors (DPUs) for offload signal processing acceleration. Tensilica says ATLAS also benefits from Tensilica’s efficient implementation of the complex forward error correction algorithms in the ConnX Turbo16MS, a programmable offload accelerator that can handle multiple standards (3G, LTE, and WiMAX).

“SimpLight has been an excellent customer and partner and was able to produce this modem chip in record time,” stated Eric Dewannain, Tensilica’s vice president and general manager, baseband business unit. “Our LTE ATLAS Platform was instrumental in providing this low-power, dual-mode (CDMA/LTE) solution that should appeal to handset and tablet manufacturers.”
Author: Srinivasa Reddy N