Freescale:One-chip Base Stations Are The Future

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Some people have described the new concept as using a phone-like device to replace base stations, but it is not that simple, she said.  Small base stations may be simple, but “It is not like putting a phone on a wal – our system on a chip is radically different.

“The difference,” she explained, “that the handset is looking for mobility and low power.” This matches the ARM processor, she went on.

“In the base station you are still looking for relatively high performance, and it will not run on batteries,” she said. Base stations will have mains power, or else large batteries and solar or wind power, in the developing world, she said.

The Qualcomm of base stations?

So if there is an expanding market for low-cost base station silicon, who should be worried? Well, to start with, Picochip, which fuels most of the commercial femtocells out there, said Su.

By covering a wider range of possibilities, Freescale’s Qonverge will allow operatosr to put out scalable, upgradable  networks, she said, and thereby get ahead of specialists like Picochip (of course Picochip has a different view).

“In a network refresh, if you are refreshing a GSM network that may be twenty years old, you can refresh replace it with a technology that is future proof.”

Freescale, it seems, hopes for a big homogeneous market for base station silicon which – despite the different power requirements – might look something like that for mobile phone chips. We asked: could there be a Qualcomm of base stations?

“That is us,” said Su. “There are a lot of people attacking the top portions of the market, but I don’t think there is anyone else looking at the whole spectrum.”