LTE and LTE advanced baseband processing get performance boost from MIPS multi-threaded cores

SPAIN: Imagination Technologies announced that its multi-threaded MIPS processor cores show significant performance benefits compared to single-threaded platforms for LTE baseband processing in user equipment (UE) such as mobile handsets and tablets.

Results were achieved on reference platforms for both LTE and LTE Advanced, which will be demonstrated at Mobile World Congress, being held February 25-28, in Barcelona, Spain.

Leveraging the power-efficient MIPS multi-threaded cores, Imagination and SAI Technology achieved a performance increase of 45 percent over a single-threaded platform when executing SAI's LTE Advanced software stacks on SMP Linux. As the next major milestone in LTE evolution, LTE Advanced signifies a dramatic increase in network capacity and considerably higher data rates enabling high bandwidth, media-rich services to be delivered to residential and business/enterprise users.

Designers of next-generation systems such as picocells, femtocells and advanced handsets can leverage the MIPS-Based multi-threaded solution--which supports new LTE Advanced Release 10 features including carrier aggregation, as well as MIMO, EMBMS and Voice-over-LTE (VoLTE)--to build high-performance, low-power products.

Imagination is also teaming up with SAI and Mentor Graphics to create an integrated multi-threaded solution for 4G LTE. The solution will include multi-threaded MIPS processor cores, the popular Mentor Nucleus VSMP Real Time Operating System (RTOS) and LTE software stacks from SAI that are optimized to take advantage of multi-threading.

For LTE systems such as dongles, smartphones, tablets, and high-volume embedded devices within the 'Internet of Things,' the MIPS-Based multi-threaded solution can enable designers to build products with advanced real-time capabilities, low power consumption, and high performance.

The LTE and LTE Advanced reference platforms highlight the benefits and feasibility of integrating the solution elements into production 4G systems. Imagination's proven multi-threaded MIPS processors, including the popular MIPS 34K core and the latest generation interAptiv multiprocessor, are available for licensing today.

Designers can get a head start on creating a broad range of highly performance-efficient LTE systems by leveraging multi-threaded MIPS cores together with SAI's verified software stacks for LTE and LTE Advanced Systems, as well as industry-standard SMP Linux and Mentor Graphics' Nucleus RTOS.

Companies can also benefit from the scalability of the solutions, leveraging common tools and architecture for development across a wide range of mobile and wireless systems.