Article Tools

• 

Wintegra has announced the launch of WinMax, a family of single-chip processors and associated software for WiMAX basestation (BTS) applications. The WinMax family provides an integrated silicon and software solution for the MAC (media access control) and transport functions of mobile WiMAX base stations, and offers a common architecture that is scalable from cost-effective picostations up to multisector macro base stations supporting advanced features such as adaptive antenna system (AAS) and MIMO.

The WinMAX family has market-leading subscriber density, multiple sector support and available performance for rapidly evolving 802.16e WiMAX basestations.

The WinMax system is a true software-based solution executed on the WinMax access packet processor. The WinMax processor itself is based on the recently introduced WinPath2 family of processors, which ues the same data path software (DPS) and WDDI API software architecture as the company’s WinPath1 processors.

Using the new processors, base station designers will be able to realize any specific feature within the WinMax system without the need for a new system-on-chip (SoC) revision. Indeed, customers have been developing software for their systems using a software-compatible WinPath device for more than a year now. Some customers have already begun full mobility field trials using the Wintegra solution.

The features, performance and power characteristics of the WinMax devices have been specifically tailored to the needs of the rapidly expanding WiMAX market. WinMax features a flexible data-path engine architecture based on symmetric multi-thread processor (SMTP) technology.

A flexible interface to PHYs has been developed, which allows different PHY technologies and vendors to be supported. A previously announced reference design with picoChip gives manufacturers the opportunity to develop their product using an already working reference BTS implementation.

Integral to the WinMax concept is a software suite of DPS modules that provide the user with a suite of low-level (typically layer 2 - 4) protocol and interworking implementations. DPS executes on a series of custom-designed RISC processor cores--collectively called WinComm--and are accessible from the on-chip host processor through a software API called the WinPath device driver interface (WDDI).