I'm apparently a bit late here, since the EETimes article on NXP's technology was published 4 months ago, but I obviously didn't catch it back then and I think it's definitely quite interesting...
Software-defined basebands have now left the realm of the startup world, with NXP copying Icera's approach. The article describing NXP's approach makes it appear very similar to Icera's, and their cost analysis clearly indicates Icera was right all along when they claimed to have the smallest baseband in the business:
That implies doing Viterbi/Turbo in hardware is more efficient for a given implementation quality, but that Icera believes the efficiency gap isn't higher than the difference between plain and full-custom logic. That seems like a fairly reasonable position to take, although of course going custom means they're always a bit behind process-wise: they are going to announce their 65nm solution very soon, while the rest of the industry is already sampling 45nm basebands! I'm sure just being a smaller company contributes to that gap too, but still.
So, where does this leave Icera? The problem they have is that their new 65nm chip only supports HSPA+ AFAIK, and not LTE. Other companies, and especially NXP, are going to beat them badly to LTE - I'm not sure that matters much, but it's still a problem. And obviously, unlike other companies, they don't have the capability to integrate multimedia or RF functionality into their chips. They definitely still have a lot of potential in the datacard/laptop market IMO, but I'm skeptical they'll be able to grab a noticeable share of the handheld market on their own.
I still think this is pretty good news for software radio in general though, which is already an awesome idea today but it has the potential to become even more amazing in the future as more flexible radio technology also starts coming out.
Software-defined basebands have now left the realm of the startup world, with NXP copying Icera's approach. The article describing NXP's approach makes it appear very similar to Icera's, and their cost analysis clearly indicates Icera was right all along when they claimed to have the smallest baseband in the business:
This is one key difference between the two companies' technologies though: NXP uses fixed-function hardware for Viterbi and Turbo coding/decoding. Icera doesn't. I thought a bit about why the two companies would come to these different conclusions, and I think it's actually quite obvious: Icera does plenty of stuff in full-custom and lags behind process-wise a bit as a consequence, while NXP is cutting-edge in terms of process technology but doesn't use full custom.
That implies doing Viterbi/Turbo in hardware is more efficient for a given implementation quality, but that Icera believes the efficiency gap isn't higher than the difference between plain and full-custom logic. That seems like a fairly reasonable position to take, although of course going custom means they're always a bit behind process-wise: they are going to announce their 65nm solution very soon, while the rest of the industry is already sampling 45nm basebands! I'm sure just being a smaller company contributes to that gap too, but still.
So, where does this leave Icera? The problem they have is that their new 65nm chip only supports HSPA+ AFAIK, and not LTE. Other companies, and especially NXP, are going to beat them badly to LTE - I'm not sure that matters much, but it's still a problem. And obviously, unlike other companies, they don't have the capability to integrate multimedia or RF functionality into their chips. They definitely still have a lot of potential in the datacard/laptop market IMO, but I'm skeptical they'll be able to grab a noticeable share of the handheld market on their own.
I still think this is pretty good news for software radio in general though, which is already an awesome idea today but it has the potential to become even more amazing in the future as more flexible radio technology also starts coming out.
