Texas Instruments is targeting femtocell designs with a family of DSPs which includes the TMS320TCI6485 dual 850MHz C64x+ core device.
TI sees two separate markets, one for lower cost home femtocell basestations and the other enterprise market for higher performance femtocells.
As a result there is a three core chip, the TMS320TCI6489 which is capable of delivering 2.55GHz performance for what TI called “super femto” applications.
The difference between a standard femtocell and super femtocell is that the former will support up to eight residential users while the later will support as many as 32 users in a business environment.
The DSPs support Linux and are compatible with HSPA mobile networks. They will be used with 2G/3G and 4G systems including GSM, CDMA, WCDMA, TD-SCDMA, WiMAX and LTE.
Using the software reference design available from Continuous Computing and mimoOn, which is designed to provide software for Layer 1, 2 and 3 wireless protocol processing, femtocells will support video streaming, interactive gaming, music sharing and other bandwidth-intense multimedia tasks.
TI has also teamed with Continuous Computing, a protocol software specialist, and German software-defined radio firm mimoOn to offer complete HSPA and LTE enterprise and residential femtocells.