March 12, 2012, Seoul, Korea – Freescale Semiconductor (NYSE: FSL, www.freescale.com )’s QorIQ Qonverge small cell single-chip base station processor has been adopted at a rapid pace since its introduction last year. Companies that have incorporated the QorIQ Qonverge processor into next-generation designs now account for more than 50% of the small cell base station market.

To further drive success, Freescale plans to supply the QorIQ Qonverge PSC913x femtocell product along with LTE Layer 1 software for small cell base stations. This new production software, branded under Freescale’s VortiQa networking software suite, is tightly coupled with the semiconductor to provide optimal performance and support streamlined development. This solution is one of the industry’s first LTE Layer 1 software stacks on a fully scalable base station SoC platform and supports multi-mode LTE + WCDMA. Since this software has been integrated and tested with partner companies' L2/L3 and RF software, customers can leverage Freescale's software to achieve market entry at a lower cost.

Scott Aylor, General Manager of Freescale’s Wireless Access business unit, said, “In the year since Freescale announced the QorIQ Qonverge product, numerous customers have adopted Freescale’s femtocell single-chip base station technology, and soon they will have access to a more comprehensive solution including associated Layer 1 software,” adding, “Since this software is specifically designed to leverage the QorIQ Qonverge platform, customers can achieve optimal performance from world-class DSP and microprocessor technologies while going faster to market.”

A number of major wireless infrastructure base station companies, including Airvana ( www.airvana.com ) and ip.access ( www.ipaccess.com ), have adopted the Freescale QorIQ Qonverge PSC913x processor as a small cell base station solution. With Freescale QorIQ Qonverge PSC913x customers accounting for more than 50% of the total small cell market, Freescale has secured a dominant position in this rapidly growing market.

"The Freescale QorIQ Qonverge family of products provides the flexibility to cost-effectively address the broadest small cell market by offering a common architecture that supports Airbana's 3G CDMA and 4G LTE femtocell families," said Michael Clark, General Manager of Airbana's Femtocell Business. "The Freescale QorIQ Qonverge family enables Airbana to rapidly deploy world-class small cells to next-generation wireless networks."

"After an extensive review of quotes, we were able to clearly confirm that Freescale is the ideal partner to supply the decisive processors for our new dual-mode 3G/LTE access point products," said Dr. Nick Johnson, CTO of IP Access. "The Freescale QorIQ Qonverge family is a state-of-the-art system-on-chip solution that delivers exceptional scalability, performance, and multi-mode capabilities."

The Freescale PSC913x, part of the QorIQ Converge family, combines multiple Power Architecture® cores and a high-performance StarCore DSP with MAPLE (Complex Accelerator Platform Engine) multimode baseband technology, a packet processing acceleration engine, an interconnect fabric, and next-generation node process technology.

The PSC9130/31 femtocell SoC (for 8 to 16 concurrent users) was one of the first QorIQ Converge processors supplied. These processors support a wide range of wireless interfaces, such as LTE (FDD/TDD), WCDMA (UMTS, HSPA+), WiMAX, and CDMA. Since the device also integrates glueless RFIC communication and antenna interfaces, it eliminates the need for additional chips (such as FPGAs), ultimately reducing board space and costs. The ultra-high-density integrated PSC913x family also provides GPS synchronization and 2G/3G WCDMA/LTE sniffing capabilities on a single device.

VortiQa Wireless Infrastructure LTE Layer 1 Software
This Layer 1 software package includes a complete Board Support Package (BSP) containing 3GPP LTE L1 software, CodeWarrior tool support, drivers, SDOS, Linux® OS, and APIs for major accelerators (e.g., MAPLE, SEC). Customers can also use commercial operating systems and tools from Freescale's affiliate partners.