The picoArray and reconfigurable baseband processing for wireless basestations

Recently, a number of companies have announced that they are developing new devices for signal processing based on novel architectures. picoChip have recently sampled just such a platform, together with complete toolchain & systems library. This product is based on a massively parallel array of heterogonous processors and delivers extraordinary computational power, eliminating many of the constraints imposed by more traditional architectures. This paper will discuss how parallel architectures can be applied to demanding signal processing systems, and what are the trade-offs with such an approach. It will discuss how such devices can be programmed & how they fit into a traditional development environment. The discussion will be based around the case-study of a real design exercise for a 64 channel 3G (WCDMA) basestation.

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