Ceva unveils IP for first 5G smartphone chips

Processor IP firm Ceva will unveil technology for next-generation silicon chipsets for LTE-Advanced Pro and 5G smartphones later this month at the Linley Mobile & Wearables Conference in Santa Clara, California.

By Richard Wilson - Electronics Weekly, Jul. 18, 2016 – 

Linley Gwennap, principal analyst of the Linley Group, writes:

"Ceva has a long and successful heritage in DSP IP for LTE, and in fact, powered the first-ever LTE phone launched in the US in 2010. It is well-positioned for the future with a single, coherent portfolio of LTE reference architectures for LTE-Advanced-Pro use cases, from IoT through to smartphones and beyond."

The IP called, CEVA-X2 is designed for specific LTE-Advanced-Pro and 5G use cases where the emphasis of the DSP is PHY control processing.

For example, where the PHY Datapath tasks such as per-channel measurement and decoding are not required to run on the DSP, the IP offers reduced die size and improved power efficiency compared to previous technology.

The IP will also run both the PHY and MAC for a range of other communication standards, including IEEE 802.15.4g, ZigBee, Thread and power line communications.

Michael Boukaya, general manager, Wireless Business Unit at Ceva believes the IP addresses the DSP 'design gap' that exists for companies developing next-generation modems, including those targeting LTE-Advanced Pro and 5G.

"Many existing DSP architectures simply don't have the performance to tackle these advanced use cases efficiently," said Boukaya.

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