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Technology Stocks : Lucent Technologies (LU) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Ted Downs who wrote (6415)	2/23/1999 8:33:00 AM
From: KYA27	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 21876

Lucent Introduces Wireless Base Station DSP With 50 Percent Better Performance Than Competing Products Chip Consumes One-Fifth The Power, Is One-Third The Size Of Nearest Competitor CANNES, France, Feb. 23 /PRNewswire/ -- Lucent Technologies Microelectronics Group today introduced a digital signal processor (DSP) chip that performs more than 50 percent better than all wireless base station chips. Lucent's DSP16410* performs up to 800 million multiply and accumulate operations per second (MMACS) -- more than a 50 percent performance improvement over the chip's nearest competitor. The chip also consumes up to five times less power (.38 watts) and is less than one-third the size (15 by 15 millimeters) of the nearest competing chip. These features help to dramatically lower component and system costs of base stations while increasing overall performance and versatility. Lucent's chip, the latest version of the company's DSP16000 product family, is being introduced today at the GSM World Congress in Cannes, France (Feb. 23-25, Booth A12). ''Lucent's new chip is further evidence why the company is the world's number one provider of DSPs for wireless base stations,'' said Will Strauss, president of Forward Concepts, a DSP market research firm based in Tempe, Arizona. ''The DSP16410 proves that Lucent is heavily committed to providing higher-performance, lower-power, and more compact solutions using its well-regarded DSP16000 architecture. Couple this broadening of the DSP16000 product portfolio with the company's focused and multi-faceted DSP initiative involving StarCore*, and Lucent clearly is attacking the communications DSP market on several different fronts.'' The DSP16410 can process greater than three-and-a-half more voice channels in the same amount of circuit board area as the nearest competing chip. As a result, base station manufacturers can fit more DSPs on the same size circuit board or develop smaller boards and use fewer DSPs. Both benefits help lower costs and increase versatility of base station components and systems without sacrificing processing power. The DSP16410 includes two DSP16000 cores. The chip houses more than 3 megabits (388 kilobytes) of Random Access Memory -- a large amount for base station DSP devices -- that enables more flexibility in the amount and types of DSP programming available using this chip. A centralized direct memory access (DMA) controller off-loads memory-to-memory and memory-to-peripheral transfers, thereby increasing the chip's processing efficiency. Higher-bandwidth enhanced on-chip interfaces have also been included, enabling the chip to process data, which is becoming a requirement for 3G wireless infrastructure systems. ''Having two DSP cores on the DSP16410 is like having two high-powered engines on one chip,'' said Aaron Fisher, vice president of the wireless business unit with Lucent's Microelectronics Group. ''That extra horsepower now means more DSP speech coders can fit on one chip -- for example 29 Enhanced Full Rate speech coders -- which translates to the need for fewer DSPs, thereby lowering costs. We continue to emphasize minimizing power and size of DSPs while increasing performance as the key to satisfying our customers.'' The DSP16410 can be used in all wireless voice and data standards including third-generation Wideband Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA), Narrowband CDMA, Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM), and Time Division Multiple Access (TDMA). The company's DSP16410 product is scheduled to be available in sample quantities in this year's second quarter and in volume quantities in this year's fourth quarter. The chip, which will be priced at $80 in quantities of 10,000, is expected to be manufactured in production quantities using Lucent's .16 micron process technology. The wireless base station DSP market amounted to approximately $160 million in 1998, according to Forward Concepts. The market is projected to grow at a 20 percent compound annual growth rate to reach approximately $410 million by the year 2003. For more product information, customers may call the Microelectronics Group Customer Response Center, 800-372-2447, Dept. R93 (in Canada, 800-553-2448, Dept. R93; fax number 1-610-712-4106 (especially for callers outside of North America) or write to Lucent Technologies, Room 30L-15L-BA, 555 Union Boulevard, Allentown, Pa. 18103. Lucent Technologies Inc. designs, builds, and delivers a wide range of public and private networks, communications systems and software, data networking systems, business telephone systems and microelectronics components. Bell Labs is the research and development arm for the company. For more information on Lucent Technologies, headquartered in Murray Hill, N.J., USA, visit its web site at lucent.com. Lucent's Microelectronics Group designs and manufactures integrated circuits and optoelectronic components for the computer and communications industries.