February 29, 2012, Seoul, Korea – Freescale Semiconductor (NYSE: FSL, www.freescale.com ) announced the innovative QorIQ Qonverge multimode platform, the first large-cell base-station-on-chip product. The new QorIQ Qonverge B4860 baseband processor delivers superior performance compared to other macrocell base-station-on-chip SoCs supporting LTE, LTE-Advanced, and WCDMA standards. Providing exceptional throughput and capabilities, the single-chip B4860 solution is compatible with Freescale's QorIQ Qonverge small-cell products and combines efficient high-performance cores, application-specific accelerators, and an optimal price-to-power ratio.

Freescale is introducing the B4860 product one year after announcing the QorIQ Qonverge small cell series as the first composite standard product family that shares the same architecture and covers everything from small cells to large cells. The QorIQ Qonverge portfolio, a software-compatible single-chip base station product, is developed based on a common architecture in which Power Architecture® microprocessors, StarCore digital signal processors, and wireless acceleration technology are integrated into a single chip. This architecture is based on proven technology deployed in base stations of all sizes and supports software reuse, enabling customers to maximize the value of their research and development investments.

"The Freescale QorIQ Qonverge macrocell family provides OEMs and service providers with the performance, energy efficiency, and cost-effectiveness to address the challenges associated with the global surge in wireless data," said Tom Deitrich, Executive Vice President and General Manager of Freescale Networking and Multimedia Solutions Group. "The QorIQ Qonverge B4860 macrocell baseband processor enables OEMs to develop differentiated products that allow service providers to accelerate LTE, launch LTE-Advanced deployments, and meet the stringent cost requirements associated with WCDMA base station processing."

The B4860 Macrocell baseband processor achieves a groundbreaking leap in computational capacity by leveraging Freescale’s intelligent integration capabilities and advanced 28nm process technology to deliver programmable performance exceeding 21GHz. This Macrocell SoC integrates four dual-threaded 64-bit e6500 Power Architecture cores, featuring an AltiVec SIMD engine operating at up to 1.8GHz. Optimized for Layer 2, control, and transfer processing, the e6500 core incorporates an extended version of the proven and widely adopted high-performance AltiVec Vector Processing Unit, significantly enhancing the performance of Layer 2 scheduling algorithms. The e6500 core has achieved the best performance profile per watt to date for an embedded processor in the CoreMark® benchmark. The B4860 also integrates six of the latest improved high-performance SC3900 StarCore FVP cores operating at 1.2GHz. All these technologies together provide a balanced programmable architecture that supports all baseband digital processing layers of next-generation base stations.

"The Freescale B4860 processor is an impressive technology, featuring next-generation processing cores, intelligent integration, and software compatibility across the QorIQ Converge single-chip base station family," said Stéphane Téral, Senior Analyst for Mobile Infrastructure and Carrier Economics at Infonetics. "This new device clearly guarantees Freescale's performance advantage in the single-chip base station market while directly addressing the diverse needs of both OEMs and service providers."

The B4860 is one of the first single-chip LTE base station products to support three 20MHz sectors and is designed to replace current channel cards that can contain up to six individual devices. Along with design simplification and board-level efficiency resulting from reduced component count, the B4860 offers four times the cost savings and three times the power savings compared to similarly deployed discrete solutions. It is one of the only solutions to support a true macro base station capable of handling everything from antenna IQ samples to backhaul IP networks, and is one of the first SoCs to comply with the LTE-Advanced standard (3GPP Release 10, March 2011). It also simultaneously supports Multi-RAT (e.g., composite standards) and multi-mode (e.g., LTE-A, LTE, WCDMA) standards.

Introduction to New StarCore SC3900 DSP Technology
The exceptional performance of the B4860 processor was recently reported by Berkeley Design Technology, Inc., an independent signal processing technology analysis firm. This is largely attributed to the completely redesigned and improved Freescale SC3900 StarCore DSP core, which achieved the highest floating-point BDTIsimMark2000™ benchmark score on www.BDTI.com . At 1.2GHz, the SC3900 core's registered BDTIsimMark2000 performance benchmark score is 37,460, which is nearly double that of competing DSP products on the market. (BDTIsimMark2000 provides a concise measure of digital signal processing performance. For more details, visit www.BDTI.com .)

Key improvements over Freescale's previous generation StarCore technology include 32 16-bit MACs per cycle, additional baseband-specific instructions, enhanced control code execution capabilities, up to 8 instructions per cycle, and 8 data lane vectors within a single instruction (SIMD8). Other enhancements include high memory bandwidth, core clustering, and perfect hardware cache consistency both within the core and across the entire device. The SC3900 FVP core is fully programmable and enables the flexible and highly efficient implementation of the physical layer of software-definable wireless systems supporting previous and next-generation wireless standards, such as LTE, WCDMA, TD-SCDMA, WiMAX, and LTE-Advanced.

The Freescale MAPLE-B baseband acceleration platform supports not only FEC, FFT, and UMTS chip-rate processing but also the development of advanced receiver algorithms such as parallel and sequential interference cancellation techniques, single and multiple-user MIMO, LTE relay for improved spectrum efficiency, and carrier integration. Utilizing these capabilities can significantly reduce processing latency compared to existing techniques. The ease of single-core programming on multi-core SoCs is enabled by a cache-coherent multi-core fabric. In addition, interoperability with industry-standard interfaces such as CPRI, Serial RapidIO, 10G Ethernet, and PCI-express is guaranteed, and future-proof scalability is provided by default. Precise partitioning of system software is supported through a best-in-class DSP core and a CPU core that includes baseband acceleration for Layer 1 processing and security and IP packet acceleration for Layer 2, control, and transmission processing.

Market traction
Industry leaders Fujitsu and Alcatel-Lucent have long used the core technology underlying the QorIQ Qonverge B4860 baseband processor, and Alcatel-Lucent is already planning to design lightRadio™ base stations based on the Freescale QorIQ Qonverge B4860.

Wim Sweldens, President of Alcatel-Lucent’s Wireless Business Unit, said, “Market-changing solutions like Alcatel-Lucent’s lightRadio™, which provide flexible mobile broadband capabilities anywhere while realizing groundbreaking cost and energy savings, require components that deliver significant technological innovation, such as Freescale’s new semiconductor technology,” adding, “Freescale’s large-cell CoreIQ Converge platform provides the density, performance, energy efficiency, and exceptional scalability required for Alcatel-Lucent’s innovative lightRadio™ product family.”

"Fujitsu has successfully utilized Freescale's current-generation QorIQ and StarCore products, and we are thrilled that Freescale has developed semiconductors that integrate all of these high-performance technologies into a single chip," said Minoru Sakata, President of Fujitsu Limited's Access Network Business Unit. "Fujitsu expects to be able to develop base station solutions with even greater performance while balancing power and BOM costs by using Freescale's latest QorIQ Qonverge product family."

Support tools and software
Freescale is a very comprehensive multi It provides a rich system of interconnected products and services supporting the B4860 family, including the Eclipse-based CodeWarrior IDE (Integrated Development Environment) that provides a core development environment. Provided tools include the B4860QDS development board, C-optimized compilers for Power Architecture and StarCore platforms, multi-core source-level debuggers, core and device simulators, optimized device drivers, and software analysis tools for profiling and program/data tracing. Additionally, Freescale's partner network offers highly efficient DSP and MPU operating systems that include BSPs and optimized device drivers.

Supply situation
Freescale plans to begin supplying samples of the QorIQ Qonverge B4860 device in the second quarter of 2012. Further details can be found at www.freescale.com/QorIQQonverge .