Fundamental changes are sweeping the cellular industry, affecting base-station design. Smartphone users are consuming ever increasing amounts of wireless data. To address this demand, operators are upgrading their networks to support LTE and soon LTE Advanced. They are also deploying small-cell base stations to increase network capacity in congested areas and femtocells to extend coverage in sparsely covered areas.

Their revenues are not increasing commensurately with bandwidth demand, however. Thus their budgets are being squeezed—new equipment must cost less than old equipment. This trend in turn squeezes base-station OEMs. Fortunately for them, the perpetually increased transistor budget granted by the onward march of Moore’s Law and the scaling down of base stations has enabled semiconductor suppliers to develop processors integrating major baseband-processing functions in a single chip.

The market for base-station processors has suddenly become crowded, with more than a half-dozen chip companies offering products. Each differs in important ways. A Guide to Processors for Wireless Base Stations brings clarity to the market, discussing trends, detailing available base-station processors, and drawing conclusions about which chip vendors are best positioned and which of their products are best suited to operators’ needs.

The report begins with an overview of 3G (UMTS) and 4G (LTE) technology, highlighting the aspects of the cellular network, underlying technology, and relevant semiconductor technologies that most affect the design and capabilities of base-station processors. The subsequent chapter discusses the major technological and business trends affecting the market for base-station processors, providing insight into how the market will develop for this new class of product.

Following these introductory chapters, the report delivers a complete chapter on each of five major suppliers of base-station processors: Cavium, Freescale, Mindspeed, Texas Instruments, and Qualcomm. An additional chapter covers Broadcom, Design Art Networks, and Octasic. For each company, we provide a synopsis of their business, detail the key features of their products, and draw conclusions about their standing in the competitive landscape and the types of designs for which their offerings are best suited. For the primary five suppliers, we also discuss the internal architecture of their processors, system-design considerations, and their likely product roadmap.

We then dedicate a chapter to detailed head-to-head comparisons of many of the available base-station processors. The report concludes with our outlook for the leading vendors.

Covered product lines include Cavium’s Octeon Fusion, Freescale’s QorIQ Qonverge, Mindspeed’s Transcede and Picochip PC3000, TI’s KeyStone and KeyStone II, Qualcomm’s FSM, Broadcom’s Aquilo, Design Art’s DAN3400, and Octasic’s OCT2224W.

As the leading analysts covering high-performance digital communications chips, The Linley Group has the expertise to deliver a comprehensive look at the chips handling baseband processing in cellular base stations.

Coauthors Joseph Byrne and Tom Halfhill use their broad experience in communications semiconductors and embedded processors to deliver the technical and strategic information you need to make informed business decisions.

What This Report Covers:

Our coverage includes commercially available semiconductor chips designed to implement the core baseband-processing functions of a cel-lular base station. These chips are application-specific products—they have practical use only in base stations. Our coverage focuses on inte-grated base-station processors, which handle both Layer 1 and Layer 2 functions by integrating both DSP and CPU cores. Furthermore, we focus on application-specific standard products (ASSPs): off-the-shelf chips available to any OEM. Major OEMs alternatively use application-specific integrated circuits (ASICs), which are custom chips designed by or for a single OEM. We focus on products for 3GPP-family systems including WCDMA/HSPA (3G) and LTE (4G).

This report is written for:

• Engineers who need to select processors to design 3G and 4G (LTE) base stations
• Marketing and engineering staff at companies that sell base-station processors, design services, or software that runs on base stations
• Technology professionals who want an introduction to cellular base-station technology
• Financial analysts who desire a detailed analysis and comparison of base-station processor vendors and their chances of success
• Press and public-relations professionals who need to get up to speed on base-station technology

A new type of chip, the integrated base-station processor, has come to market just as powerful new forces are roiling the cellular industry. Smartphones are in the hands of ever more users, and each new iteration of these popular devices guzzles more data than the previous. Per-capita data consumption is accelerating further as tablet and laptop computers gain cellular connectivity, a trend that will soar as wireless operators introduce shared data plans. LTE, now being deployed, delivers more bandwidth than earlier network technologies and promises to reduce operators’ costs as well. LTE-Advanced increases bandwidth further.

A heterogeneous network (hetnet) combines macrocells (the dominant type of base station to date) with numerous small cells—microcells, picocells, and femtocells. This approach can increase network capacity, particularly in heavily populated areas, without the cost of creating new sites for macrocells. In the coming years, therefore, we expect increasing ship­ments of small cells to extend the range of networks for public access and for private access (e.g., only for employees of a particular company or members of a household).

Operators will pressure makers of base-station equipment to contain costs, and this pressure will transfer to chip suppliers. Moreover, OEMs that have relied on ASICs for their macro designs will struggle to muster the resources to scale down these ASICs and port the accompanying software to a broad line of base stations. This dynamic creates an oppor­tunity for suppliers of standard base-station processors with turnkey software stacks.

Integrated base-station processors meet these emerging market needs by combining all of the primary functions of a base station on a single chip. By incorporating CPU cores, DSP cores, and hardware accelerators, these application-specific processors reduce cost and power while simplifying the system design. Using these new processors, OEMs can build smaller, less expensive base stations to efficiently serve microcells, picocells, and femtocells. Some chip suppliers see the growth in small cells as an opportunity to enter the base-station market. Established CPU and DSP suppliers are forced to defend their existing sockets while trying to out­flank their competitors.

With cellular networks on the verge of their greatest leap since digital technology replaced analog, wireless infrastructure is in a state of flux, creating an opportunity for new players to upset established vendors. Navigating this storm can be treacherous without good charts, which is why we created this new report. We have surveyed the rapidly growing field of integrated base-station processors to gather in one place the information needed to understand and respond to these changes. Our conclusions include the following:

• Integrated base-station processors threaten Freescale’s discrete QorIQ communications processors and StarCore DSPs. But the company’s new Qonverge chips are among the most powerful base-station processors yet announced and are first in line to reclaim any sockets lost by the company’s discrete chips.
• Texas Instruments’ new KeyStone II TCI6636 is a powerful base-station processor competing directly with Freescale’s Qonverge B4860. But TI faces the same challenge as its rival—integrated processors are displacing the company’s discrete chips heretofore used in base stations.
• Mindspeed’s acquisition of Picochip was well timed and strategic. As Picochip’s winning 3G technology is integrated with Mind­speed’s next-generation 4G technology, the combined company becomes more formidable—but the competition is building muscle, too.
• Cavium’s new Octeon Fusion processors integrate the company’s successful Octeon processors with custom baseband technology and a tested software stack co-developed with a lead customer. Although Octeon Fusion is an impressive surprise from a market newcomer, established vendors are introducing equally impres­sive products, pressuring Cavium to differentiate.
• Broadcom entered this quickening market by acquiring Israeli startup Percello, but the Aquilo product line has not appreciably evolved for years. Broadcom must act soon to stay in the game.
• Qualcomm pioneered CDMA technology and leads the wireless-handset market, but its base-station processors have shortcomings that threaten their long-term relevance.
• DesignArt Networks (DAN) is a promising small company offer­ing a base-station processor (DAN3400) with important strengths in wireless backhaul and digital front-end processing.
• Octasic is another small but promising company fielding a base-station processor (OCT2224W) with unusual attributes.

In summary, integrated base-station processors, small cells, hetnets, and 4G technologies are shaking up wireless networks and stand a good chance of realigning the market’s players. Decisions made in the coming year will be the inflection points that determine the new winners and losers.