AbstractToday wireless multimedia is moving from vision toreality. Service providers are deploying third-

generation (3G) wireless basestations that enable callers tosurf the web, check e-mail,conduct videoconferences andaccess a wide range of newservices from their wirelessdevices. Users are alreadybeginning to enjoy these ser-vices, as well as making voice

calls from a much wider range of indoor and outdoorenvironments.

Underlying 3G innovations is Wideband CodeDivision Multiple Access (WCDMA) technology, whichis pushing the expectations of wireless networks farbeyond previous limitations. To deliver on thepromise of WCDMA, 3G base stations must handlegreater capacity, process higher data rates, and sup-port multimedia standards, while at the same timereducing size, cost and power consumption. Thetechnology that enables WCDMA is high-performancedigital signal processing, which provides the process-

ing power and design flexibility required to imple-ment 3G wireless base stations.

The new TMS320TCI100 digital signal processor(DSP) from Texas Instruments (TI) builds on theperformance leadership established by TI’sTMS320C64x™ DSP generation. Operating at speedsup to 720 Megahertz (MHz), the TCI100 DSP isdesigned specifically for high-performance, multi-channel 3G wireless base stations. The TCI100 DSPanchors TI’s new UMTS infrastructure chipset, whichenables a high degree of flexibility while dramaticallyreducing development and bill of materials costs andspeeding time-to-market.

The TCI100 DSP extends TI’s performance leader-ship, which began with TI’s TMS320C6203 DSP andcontinued with the TMS320C6416 DSP. Both theTMS320C62x™ and C64x™ DSPs are being usedtoday by the majority of the top 3G cellular infra-structure original equipment manufacturers (OEMs).These OEMs can quickly and easily redesign theirfirst- and second-generation systems to improve per-formance and reduce power consumption and costbecause the TCI100 DSP offers complete code com-patibility with the previous generation C64x DSPs.

TMS320TCI100 DSP Delivers the Industry’s Fastest Performance for 3G Wireless Base Stations

R E A L W O R L D S I G N A L P R O C E S S I N G™

A Leap Ahead in Wireless Technology . . . . . . . . . . . . .2

The Right DSP Technology for 3G Base Stations . . . . .2

System-Level Integration for Communications . . . . . .3

Best-in-Class Performance, Power Efficiency . . . . . . .3

Fast Software Development From Existing Designs . . .3

Performance for Tomorrow’s Wireless Multimedia . . .3

Contents

A Leap Ahead in Wireless TechnologyThird-generation standards like WCDMA (Japan),Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UMTS)(Europe) and Code Division Multiple Access 2000(CDMA2000) (U.S.), place intense demands on theprocessing power and flexibility of base stations. Toaccommodate the simultaneous transmission of voice,data and video, transmissions must be scaled on acall-by-call basis so the channel bandwidth matchesthat of the application. A video call, for instance,needs a great deal more bandwidth than an ordinaryvoice call, and a data transfer can use a varyingamount of bandwidth as it becomes available. As aresult, the WCDMA roadmap requires support for awide range of data rates – up to 384 kilobits per sec-ond (kbps) in mobile applications and up to 2megabits per second (Mbps) in stationary applica-tions. Adding to the complexity, new systems usingWCDMA must be able to coexist across all continents,and must be backward compatible with wireless stan-dards deployed today.

The outstanding performance of TI’s TCI100 DSPalso allows OEMs to implement compute-intensivealgorithms that maximize use of the full frequencyband for WCDMA’s spread spectrum transmission andscalable channels. High performance also enablesimprovements to the underlying technology, such asenhanced voice compression algorithms that allowmore efficient use of bandwidth. In addition, perfor-mance allows OEMs to introduce more channels totheir systems, helping them keep per-channel costslow in the highly competitive wireless market.

Wireless 3G base stations are appearing in newapplications that require a small footprint anddemand as much processing per channel as tradition-al large units. For these systems, high channel densitymust be accompanied by low power consumption.Components that consume less power dissipate lessheat and can thus be packed more densely. They alsoare more reliable, keeping maintenance costs down.These requirements place great demands on the per-formance, scalability, programmability and power effi-ciency of 3G base stations. The programmable TCI100

DSP offers the flexibility needed for new standardimplementations like WCDMA/UMTS/ CDMA2000,allowing standard evolution, quick modification andfaster time-to-market.

The Right DSP Technology for 3G Base StationsThe TCI100 DSP leverages the advanced very-long-instruction-word (VLIW) architecture of its C64x™DSP core with hardware innovations specificallydesigned to meet the demands of 3G wireless basestations. The core’s eight functional units include fourmultiply accumulate (MAC) units to achieve maxi-mum parallelism in processing 3G algorithms.

The TCI100 DSP architecture is capable of scalingto speeds faster than 1 Gigahertz (GHz) and perfor-mance nearing 9,000 million instructions per second(MIPS) for single-core devices. The architecture isalso flexible enough to support additional featuresand multi-core designs for use in future, more power-ful 3G wireless base stations.

Two hardware accelerators that were first available onthe C6416 DSP also are present on the TCI100 DSP toprovide dedicated co-processing that dramaticallyspeeds-up the operation of key 3G algorithms andfrees the C64x CPU core to function more flexiblyand efficiently on other operations. One accelerator, aTurbo coprocessor, performs convolutional encodingfor the symbol-rate processing used in 3G, while theother accelerator, a Viterbi coprocessor, performs 3Gerror correction. The versatile C64x architecture,used in the TCI100 DSP, offers a cost effective way tointroduce different accelerators that can speed up theexecution of other algorithms in future devices in thefamily.

VCPBoost

TCPBoost

400 40

300 30

200 20

100 10

C6203at 300 MHz

C6203at 300 MHz

C6414/15at 600 MHz

C6414/15at 600 MHz

TCI100at 720 MHz

Wireless Voice CodingChannels of 12.2-kbps AMR Voice

Wireless Data CodingChannels of 384-kbps Data

TCI100at 720 MHz

~1.8X ~2X74

42

0.9134

420+

>3X ~21X

2

System-Level Integration for CommunicationsSystem-level functionality on the TCI100 DSP speedsup development and enables OEMs to achieve the fullperformance entitlement of the device. To sustaindata supply to the ultra-fast DSP core cost-efficiently,the TCI100 DSP employs a two-level cache memorywith 16-kilobyte (KB) Level 1 data, 16-KB Level 1program, and 1024-Level 2 unified data and programcaches. For greater flexibility, the four ways of theLevel 2 cache can be programmed individually to serveas direct-mapped memory blocks. A 32-channelenhanced direct-memory access (EDMA) controllerprovides efficient management of more than 2 gigabytesper second (GBps) of data input/output (I/O) fromsystem memory. Integrated peripherals that ease sys-tem configuration include an interface to the widelyused peripheral component interconnect (PCI) bus forhost computers, and a Utopia II interface for Asyn-chronous Transfer Mode (ATM) in telecommunications.

Best-in-Class Performance, Power EfficiencyWhile the C6416 DSP can support more than 64 voicechannels simultaneously, the TCI100 DSP will delivergreater performance for support of more channels ormore features, and offer a reduced level of powerconsumption.

The TCI100 DSP is based on TI’s C64x™ DSP archi-tecture, which was designed to provide high perfor-mance while maintaining power efficiency. TI hasemployed many of the power-saving techniques it cre-ated for the ultra-low-power TMS320C55x™ DSP inthe development of the TCI100 DSP. Built in TI’sstate-of-the-art 90 nanometer (nm) CMOS process,the TCI100 DSP operates with a typical power con-sumption of less than 1 watt, still the best power-to-speed ratio in this class of DSP. In 3G base stations,this excellent power efficiency will enable OEMs topack more channels in less space, saving cost in bothmanufacturing and operation.

Fast Software Development From ExistingDesignsBecause the TCI100 DSP instruction set is a supersetof the C62x™ DSP instruction set, OEMs can reusesoftware they developed for earlier-generationdesigns. The outstanding efficiency of the C64x Ccompiler enables developers to create new code andmodify existing code quickly, an important capabilityin the rapidly evolving 3G wireless field. In addition,TI’s Code Composer Studio™ integrated developmentenvironment offers the industry’s most complete andadvanced set of tools to ease the implementation ofDSP code.

The TCI100 DSP allows designers to develop differ-entiated 3G wireless technology through softwareinstead of hardware. This emphasis helps speed upsystem development by allowing rapid response tochanges in design requirements, and permits develop-ers to port their technology more easily to new sys-tems. In addition, DSP-based systems can be repro-grammed more readily in the field so that serviceproviders can keep their equipment up to date asstandards evolve. All devices in the C64x DSP genera-tion are object code compatible with earlier C62xDSPs and TMS230C67x™ DSPs, so software initiallycompiled for previous devices, such as the C6203DSP, also will run on the TCI100 DSP.

Performance for Tomorrow’s WirelessMultimedia Wireless 3G telecommunications are being deployedtoday using TI DSP technology, and TI’s new TCI100DSP will help OEMs drive 3G base stations to newlevels of channel density and low per-channel costs.More than ever, 3G base station designs require highperformance and efficiencies of cost, space and powerconsumption. As the fastest DSP available today, theTCI100 DSP offers all of these advantages, enablingwireless OEMs to build the base stations that will sup-port tomorrow’s multimedia applications.

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