Designing Application-Specific Processors for Wireless 5G SoCs


Traditional architectures for wireless baseband applications are no longer adequate for recent and next-generation modem standards. Supporting complex and still evolving standards like 5G in a single modem is only possible by using SDR techniques, which place increasing demands on performance and power consumption on the SoC. ASIP architectures enable full customization of a processor, which... » read more

Accelerating 5G Baseband With Adaptive SoCs: Part II


In my previous blog, we discussed 5G split architectures with focus on the widely adopted option 7-2 split. In this article, we will cover the implementation of the fronthaul and L1 Hi-PHY for 5G base stations. The 5G distributed unit (DU) can be implemented to process fronthaul data with O-RAN processing and partial offload for Hi-PHY processing which includes the LDPC encoder, LDPC decoder an... » read more

Week In Review: Auto, Security, Pervasive Computing


Security Ninety-one percent of commercial applications contain outdated or abandoned open-source components —a security threat, says Synopsys in its recently released report 2020 Open Source Security and Risk Analysis (OSSRA). In the fifth annual edition of the report, Synopsys’ research team in its Cybersecurity Research Center (CyRC) found that 99% of the 1,250 commercial codebases revie... » read more

5G Design Changes


Mike Fitton, senior director of strategic planning at Achronix, talks with Semiconductor Engineering about the two distinct parts of 5G deployment, how to get a huge amount of data from the core to the edge of a device where it is usable, and how a network on chip can improve the flow of data. » read more

The Basics of Amplitude Modulation


Modulation is the process of varying a higher frequency carrier wave to transmit information. Though it is theoretically possible to transmit baseband signals (or information) without modulating it, it is far more efficient to send data by modulating it onto a higher frequency "carrier wave." Higher frequency waves require smaller antennas, use the available bandwidth more efficiently, and are ... » read more

DAC 2017: A Glimpse Of How The Future Is Enabled


Last week’s Design Automation Conference in Austin gave great examples on how the future is enabled with next generation tools today. My favorite portions were Uhnder’s overview on “Agile Emulation” in the cloud, SirusXM’s presentation on how they used our portfolio of emulation and FPGA-based prototyping, the panel on “Smarter Verification” that I had organized and – of course ... » read more