May 24, 1999, Issue: 1062
Section: Semiconductors
Giants' latest chips target basestations and handsets -- TI,
Motorola heat up cell-phone DSPs
Stephan Ohr
Houston - Texas Instruments Inc. is expected to take the wraps off the
TMS320C6203 this week-the newest and most powerful version of the Cx
family of VLIW digital signal processors, which are aimed at basestations. The
C6203 is claimed to produce 2,400 Mips at 300 MHz, with power consumption
of more than 0.09 mA/Mips.
Meanwhile, Motorola Inc.'s Semiconductor Products Sector (Austin, Texas) is
introducing a new version of the DSP56300. The 56311 is targeted at cell-phone
handsets.
Jean-Pierre Demange, development manager for TI's wireless-infrastructure
business, said basestations require small form factors and low power
consumption as well as higher performance. The worldwide transition from
second-generation to third-generation (3G) systems-capable of supporting higher
data rates and multimedia-poses a "real dilemma" for basestation manufacturers,
Demange said. On one hand, they are in a race to get new signal-processing
boards out into the field; on the other, standards are in a state of flux.
Manufacturers need to keep modem and baseband functions close to the
transcoder (the RF transceiver) in the basestation, said Demange. One way to
meet the need for flexibility and performance is to install what he calls
"multiprotocol equipment"-essentially DSP boards with downloadable software
that are capable of executing the separate standards evolving in the United
States, Europe and Japan. These include EDGE (an extension of GSM), UMTS,
wideband CDMA and CDMA 2000. But 3G standards will be 10 times more
complex and difficult to execute than second-generation cellular standards.
It is within this environment that TI is promoting the C6203, which is not only
the most powerful of the C6x family, but also the biggest power miser. The
device is intended to meet the needs of basestation manufacturers for hardware,
flexibility and reuse, increased channel capacity, lower cost per channel and
quicker time-to-market, said Henry Wiechman, TI's DSP marketing manager.
The 2,400-Mips capability of the C6203 (2,000 Mips at 250 MHz) supports 42
channels of GSM-EFR, 50 channels of G.729.A voice coding, 36 channels of
G.723.1 and 24 channels of V.90d modem activity.
Not surprisingly, the C6x family has been designed into products of eight of the
top 10 wireless basestation manufacturers-Alcatel, Ericsson, Fujitsu, Lucent,
Motorola, NEC, Nokia, Nortel, Qualcomm and Siemens, said Wiechman. The
C6203, expected to sample in the fourth quarter of this year, is code-compatible
with other devices in the C6x family, like the C202-and has already received
strong interest from Ericsson.
The C6203 includes 7 Mbits (896 kbytes) of internal memory (one of the largest
memory spaces of any DSP device), and three multichannel buffered serial
ports that connect directly to T1/E1 port lines. The 7 Mbits is partitioned as 3
Mbits for program memory and 4 Mbits for data.
The low power consumption of the device-1.5 W typical, or 0.09 mA/Mips-and
small package size (18 mm2) is due to TI's 0.18-micron (drawn), 1.5-V process
technology.
In contrast, the Motorola DSP56311 introduced this week has a power
consumption of 0.7 mA/Mips with a 1.8-V supply (0.9 mA/Mips at 2.5 V).
Fabricated with a 0.23-micron (drawn) process, the device also is targeted at
the wireless infrastructure, most particularly cellular handsets.
The HiP4DSP process technology is a variation on Motorola's HiPerMOS
process, where "DSP" stands for dual-gate oxide-SRAM-performance, said
David Bazewski, Motorola's strategic marketing manager.
150-MHz speed
The device has a DSP56300-derivative core, a 24-bit word length and clocks at
150 MHz. It includes an enhanced filter coprocessor (EFCOP) for hardware
filtering and echo cancellation. The filter coprocessor offers significant
speedups for finite impulse response (FIR), infinite impulse response and
adaptive FIR filter operations, essential for echo cancellation, Bazewski said.
Though analysts differ in their market-share calculations, Bazewski uses market
data from Cahners' In-Stat Group (Scottsdale, Ariz.) to show that the
Lucent-Motorola combo is not that far behind Texas Instruments in the DSP
market. Motorola's 11.8 percent share of the 1997 DSP market, and Lucent's
27.6 percent share give those two companies a more prominent position than
Texas Instruments, with 38.3 percent.
The In-Stat estimate conflicts with data compiled by Forward Concepts
(Tempe, Ariz.), which gave TI a 45 percent share of a $3.25 billion market in
1997, and an even larger share in 1998.
Will Strauss, principal analyst at Forward Concepts, also argues that while
Motorola and Lucent operate a joint design center in Georgia, that does not
mean that their DSP sales can be in any way considered a single entity, either
now or when both companies place StarCore products on the market. |
