Tundra Semiconductor Announces First End-to-End RapidIO Baseband Development Platform

RapidIO Enables 10 Gbps Bandwidth across the Backplane and Chip-to-Chip

Texas Instruments Developers Conference 2008, Dallas, Texas -- February 25, 2008 -- Tundra Semiconductor Corporation, a leader in System Interconnect, today announced the availability of the market’s first end-to-end RapidIO®-enabled MicroTCA™ platform for wireless baseband. The platform, offers end-to-end 10 Gigabit RapidIO Interconnect for chip-to-chip and board-to-board links across the backplane.

The platform will allow wireless telecommunication system vendors to expedite their go-to-market schedule with this “baseband-in-a-box” solution. Production-ready components, available now, will speed wireless infrastructure design cycles and free up resources to focus on application firmware and software development. Leveraging the industry’s leading semiconductor components, vendors can go to market in full volume production ahead of their competition.

"The baseband platform is a unique solution designed to specifically address wireless base station vendor requirements,” said Kathy Brown, product manager for communications infrastructure, digital signal processor systems (DSP), Texas Instruments (TI). “Base station manufacturers rely on TI’s high performance DSPs to accommodate bandwidth intense applications, and this new platform allows our customers to focus on custom base station development with a production-ready, interoperable hardware system in place.”

“This industry-leading combination of high performance products will change the way our customers develop wireless baseband stations. This ‘baseband-in-a-box’ solution is a revolutionary way for customers to take advantage of the best the market has to offer, in an off-the-shelf solution leveraging the MicroTCA and RapidIO standards,” said Daniel Hoste, President and Chief Executive Officer, Tundra Semiconductor. “This platform offers the processing power and configurability that designers of embedded solutions need to build reliable, high performance RapidIO-based systems for a wide range of scalable and high bandwidth applications”.

Four leading vendors supply the components of this industry-first RapidIO platform:

Mercury Ensemble MSW-100 RapidIO MicroTCA Switch Module, including Tundra’s Tsi578™
CommAgility AMC-6487C Baseband Advanced Mezzanine Card, which includes Texas Instruments TCI6487 Multicore DSPs and Tundra’s Tsi578 Serial RapidIO Switch
Tundra Tsi574™ Serial RapidIO Signal Analyzer
Fabric Embedded Tools RapidFET™ Probe

The AMC Baseband Card provides multicore DSP performance to address the processing needs of LTE, WiMAX and eWCDMA, leveraging RapidIO. The combined Mercury Ensemble MSW-100 MicroTCA Switch Module and Tsi574 Signal Analyzer solution deliver optimum 10 Gigabit RapidIO backplane design. System configuration and bring up is enabled by the RapidFET Probe portable diagnostic tool. Individual components in this combined solution can be purchased now, from the respective component vendors. TI’s recently announced TCI6484 EVM can be added to the baseband platform, for those customers choosing to use high performance single core DSPs for wireless applications.

“RapidIO is the interconnect of choice for next generation wireless infrastructure systems, with up to 10 Gbps data transfer rates across the backplane and chip-to-chip. Now, designers can jumpstart their base station design with an off-the-shelf solution, using proven interoperable components from leading RapidIO providers,” said Tom Cox, Executive Director, RapidIO Trade Association.

Tundra is displaying its “baseband-in-a-box solution” at the TI Developer Conference in Dallas Texas this week. For details go to www.tundra.com, or stop by their booth, #121. The new platform will be featured in the following presentation at TI Developer Conference, “Cost Reducing Wireless Baseband with Tundra RapidIO Switches and TI DSPs,” Tuesday Feb 26th 2:00 p.m.

About Tundra RapidIO® Switches

Tundra switches provide chip-to-chip interconnect between RapidIO end-points and can replace existing proprietary backplane fabrics for board-to-board interconnect. As a founding member of the RapidIO Trade Association and long-time Steering Committee member, Tundra continues to provide leadership in the development of the RapidIO standard and was the first semiconductor vendor to bring Parallel and Serial RapidIO switches to market. RapidIO is the leading serial interconnect standard for embedded systems and is supported by industry leaders such as, Alcatel- Lucent Technologies, AMCC, EMC Corporation, Ericsson, and Freescale Semiconductor. The Tundra family of RapidIO switches includes the Tsi620™, Tsi578™, Tsi576™, Tsi574™, Tsi568A™, and Tsi564A™.

About Texas Instruments DSP Baseband Solution

TI's TCI6487 offers three-times the performance of previous infrastructure solutions, providing greater channel enhancement and more flexibility while reducing design complexity for OEMs. Manufactured in 65nm process node, this new DSP is the highest performing processor in TI's TMS320C64x+™ DSP series. As a result, carriers will be able to deploy advanced networks quickly while future proofing their investments. The ability to upgrade performance with software enhancements also enables service providers to support emerging standards such as LTE, 3GPP and 3GPP+, while easily adding new features and services to their networks. This, in turn, will provide subscribers access to the latest and greatest services and capabilities that the wireless world can deliver.

About Tundra

Tundra Semiconductor Corporation (TSX:TUN) supplies the world’s leading communications, computing and storage companies with smart System Interconnect products and design services backed by world-class customer service and technical support. Tundra’s track record of product leadership includes over a decade of bridges and switches enabling key industry standards: RapidIO®, PCI, PCI-X, PCI Express®, Power Architecture™, VME, HyperTransport™, Interlaken, and SPI4.2. Tundra’s products deliver high functional quality and simplified board design and layout, with specific focus on system level signal integrity. Tundra's design services division, Silicon Logic Engineering, Inc., offers industry-leading ASIC and FPGA design services, semiconductor intellectual property and product development consulting. Tundra’s smart technology connects critical components in high performance embedded systems around the world. For more information, please visit www.tundra.com.

About the Texas Instruments Developer Network

Tundra Semiconductor Corporation is a member of the TI Developer Network, a community of respected, well-established companies offering products and services based on TI analog and digital technology. The Network provides a broad range of end-equipment solutions, embedded software, engineering services and development tools that help customers accelerate innovation to make the world smarter, healthier, safer, greener and more fun.

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