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 networkZONE Products for the week of May 26, 2008
Wavesat Says…
Multimode 4G Broadband Chipset
Odyssey 8500 delivers, flexibility, performance, footprint and power consumption tailored for handsets and handheld devices
Wavesat has introduced its new family of 4G Broadband Wireless chipset named Odyssey, with a unique flexible, multimode 4G architecture enabling WiMAX Wave2, WiFi, XG-PHS and seamless migration to future 4G technologies such as LTE.
The first product in the Odyssey family, the Odyssey 8500, is sampling now and is powered by a unique 4G multi-core architecture incorporating multiple ultra low power DSPs, offering flexibility, high performance and low power consumption, without any tradeoff. The SOC manufactured using advanced Embedded DRAM technology requires no external memory, thus saving customers valuable real estate, cost and power consumption for very small form-factor portable and mobile applications such as wireless USB dongle, mobile handsets and other consumer electronic devices.
"The Odyssey 8500 chipset is not just another high performance mobile Wave 2 WiMAX chipset; it is a completely new generation of silicon positioned to address the entire 4G broadband market, " said Raj Singh, President & CEO of Wavesat. "WiMAX is the first step in the 4G continuum of wireless broadband and as such, manufacturers and operators need access to a technology that can help them leverage the investment into future 4G technology development."
The Odyssey 8500 offers:
- 4G – The chipset features Wavesat’s 4G Engine, a unique programmable architecture enabling Mobile WiMAX Wave 2 and beyond, as well as WiFi, XG-PHS and future migration to 4G Broadband Wireless technologies such as LTE.
- Power – A unique architecture based on multiple ultra low power DSPs maximizes power efficiency with the chip power consumption below 150 mW for mobile WiMAX MIMO solution in active receive mode, and less than 2 mW in idle mode.
- Small – The integrated memory (DRAM) enables industry’s smallest footprint suitable for development of highly integrated consumer devices. Product roadmap also includes a single chip combining baseband processor, radio and memory.
- Speed – A customized PowerPC processor (up to 400 MHz) is embedded in the chipset enabling higher throughput and providing the power required for the WiMAX Wave 2 profile, including MIMO.
- Complete Solution – The solution includes complete MAC and management software, as well as “ready-to-manufacture” reference designs, shortening customers’ time to market.
Vijay Dube, Wavesat’s Executive VP Marketing added, "The Odyssey 8500 is being used by a broad base of lead customers to develop multimode broadband wireless devices. Wavesat's extensive internal testing in addition to the testing we have conducted with our operator partners, provides our customers with the confidence that their development efforts can remain focused on delivering their products quickly to market."
EN-Genius Says…
Packing a small 15 mm footprint and an even smaller power profile, WaveSat Odyssey 8500 multi-core, multi-standard OFDM processor stands a shot at being the Holy Grail of the mobile wireless data industry. Based on the company background in wireless and the details they were willing to share with me about Odyssey architecture, I am pretty confident that this little Montreal-based company can make good on at least most of its claims. If they do, the Odyssey transceiver ability to support both Wi-Fi (802.11b.g) and WiMAX as well as PHS and its advanced cousin XG-PHS, makes it an excellent choice for a wide range of mobile data applications.
At Odyssey’s heart is a cluster of eight specialized DSP cores that have been optimized for single-cycle FFT/IFFTs and other complex math operations used in OFDM synthesis and decoding. The architecture is derived from a two-core DSP originally developed for audio applications by as Wavesat says “a leading semiconductor maker” but it’s been radically-modified both in terms of instruction set and data flow within the chip. To ensure fast cycle times, they have eliminated the processor cache while streamlining the data path to the 4 Mbyte block of on-chip DRAM. Wavesat designers also supplemented the original DMA-based shared-memory inter-processor communication scheme with a second register-based message passing mechanism. Each processor has a set of special registers that are shared with its adjacent cores, forming a daisy chain which allows messages to be quickly passed using hardwired interrupts.
Although they shared a few details with me, Wavesat was pretty touchy about revealing too much about the DSP cores, or how they are connected, so the block diagram does not show them, but it does show the rest of the features and interfaces we’ll discuss from here on.
 Wavesat equipped the 8500 with a nice complement of I/O including USB 2.0, HPI (host port interface), SIM, SPI, UART, GPIO and SDIO, making it easy to use it in dongles, add-in cards, and embedded applications. The Odyssey uses a standard JESD-207 baseband interface that connects directly to the ADI chips that form the RF section used in the reference design. It can also be used with PMC-Sierra’s RF chip set, or any other JEDEC-compliant silicon.
The result is a processing array that’s capable of supporting a 2-channel WiMAX MIMO connection while consuming only 150 mW during most transmit and receive operations (it can draw as much as 200 mW when the PowerPC controller is active). Since the Odyssey is intended primarily for mobile data terminals and handheld applications, it is designed to spend most of its time in one of several power-saving standby modes that can draw as little as 2 mW while still sniffing the antenna for incoming RF energy.
Since the Odyssey DSP cores are based on a well-supported commercial product, Wavesat was able to inherit a very mature development tool chain that they’ve modified along with the processor architecture. They used it to develop a rich software package that includes a complete 802.16e CPE MAC, all WiMAX profiles (including WiBRO) and XG-PHS support. Most customers won’t see this however since the DSP code is pre-developed and intended to run as black box software.
In most cases, the only way a developer can get to the DSPs is via commands from the on-chip PowerPC 405 core which acts as a control plane and application processor. You can use the entire arsenal of Power Architecture development tools to customize Wavesat reference code to develop your own applications, customize the upper MAC, or implement optional standards functions. The PowerPC also supports the IEE802.20 media-independent handoff (MIH) firmware that enables seamless handoff between any wireless data standard so your product can roam from your home Wi-Fi router to a public WiMAX/WiBRO access point without dropping the connection.
From what I can see, the Oddysey 8500 packs the right mix of capabilities and features into a compact, low-power package that’s easy to integrate into a handset, adapter or dongle. Given the uncertainties of how WiMAX/WiBRO and PHS-based wireless data infrastructures are going to be rolled out, a single solution that supports them all is bound to save development and deployment costs. I also think that the Odyssey’s .Wi-Fi capabilities will win it lots of sockets in handsets and other applications that require dual-mode operation.
The Odyssey 8500 is sampling to customers now with production quantities to ship by Q3 2008. Pricing is $15 - 17 in high volumes.
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