mimoOn & BDTI simplify processor performance evaluation for LTE base stations

Barcelona, MWC’11 – February 17, 2011 – mimoOn, a pioneer in LTE software licensing for Software Defined Radio (SDR) platforms, today announced a partnership with independent technology analysis firm BDTI to develop benchmarks for the evaluation of processors used in LTE baseband applications.

With the demand growing for software and silicon solutions for LTE, so also is the demand for benchmarking data to enable reliable comparisons between competing hardware platforms.  BDTI and mimoOn are collaborating to create a benchmark suite that will enable rapid and fair comparisons of processing platforms for LTE base stations and terminals.  The benchmarks will be embodied in the form of reference code that can be implemented on any programmable hardware platform, allowing benchmark data to be produced across a diverse range of architectures.

The LTE standard allows a wide range of configurations for base stations, from a low-bandwidth, single-antenna configuration supporting a few users and low data rates up to configurations supporting 20 MHz bandwidth, more than 8 antennas, and data rates of 300 Mbps or thousands of users in a cell. Previously, the only way to evaluate a processor’s ability to support such configurations was to actually implement an LTE standard-compliant solution on the processor.  And even after doing so, it has been impossible to make fair comparisons between processors because of differences in the LTE functionality implemented on each processor.  Similarly, it has been virtually impossible to make fair comparisons of processors for LTE terminals in terms of cost and power consumption. 

The new benchmark under development by BDTI and mimoOn overcomes these difficulties by providing a uniform workload incorporating the key elements of LTE baseband processing.

Matthias Wesseling, CTO of mimoOn, said: “The evaluation of alternative hardware platforms for complex applications can be a very time-consuming and expensive task. Having high-quality benchmarks which are tailored to these applications is a huge step in simplifying and speeding up such evaluations.”

Jeff Bier, president and co-founder of BDTI, said: “Over the past 15 years, BDTI’s benchmarks have become the gold standard for evaluating processing platforms targeting digital signal processing applications such as wireless communications and multimedia.  Now that LTE equipment has become a key growth market for processors, BDTI is pleased to collaborate with mimoOn to bring reliable benchmarks to this space.”

About BDTI

Berkeley Design Technology, Inc. (BDTI), headquartered in Oakland, California, is the most trusted source of analysis, advice, and engineering for embedded processor technology and applications. BDTI helps clients ranging from semiconductor suppliers to system designers make better decisions, reduce risk, and get better products to market, faster. For almost 20 years BDTI has been a trusted industry resource for:·        

• Independent benchmarking and competitive analysis·        
• Advice on creating credible, compelling marketing·        
• Guidance for confident technology and business decisions·        
• Expert product development advice

BDTI benchmarks are widely respected by system designers for their independence and technical rigor. BDTI’s benchmark suites have been implemented on over 100 processing platforms, including CPUs, DSPs, GPUs, and FPGAs.

For more information, contact Jeremy Giddings (giddings@BDTI.com) or visit www.BDTI.com.