Qualcomm Snapdragon 855 is the First 5G Mobile Processor

5G qualcomm reference design

Most (all?) CNX Software readers already know 5G cellular technology is coming soon, and companies have already announced 5G modems such as Samsung Exynos 5100, MediaTek M70 or Snapdragon X50, some 5G picocells, but AFAIK, so far nobody had officially unveiled 5G mobile processor. Qualcomm has finally announced their Snapdragon 855 5G mobile processor platform codenamed SDM8150, also delivering 3 times improvement for artificial intelligence workloads thanks to its 4th generation AI engine. As usual, Qualcomm has not provided the full details about the processor during the first announcement, but they just listed some highlights: 4G and 5G connectivity with  sub-6 GHz and mmWave support 4th Gen AI engine with 3x performance improvement Improved photography and video via Computer Vision ISP, true 4K HDR video capture Ultrasonic fingerprint support Process – 7nm That’s it, so we have to rely on leaks and benchmarks found around the web to get some […]

Arm Roadmap to 2020 Reveals Deimos and Hercules Processors for 5G Laptops

Arm has just published a roadmap for their Cortex-A processors until 2020, where we can see 7nm Deimos, and 7 to 5 nm Hercules succeeding Arm Cortex A76 core with “laptop class performance” announced last spring. For reference, an Arm Cortex A76 @ 3 GHz is said to outperform an Intel Core i5-7300U (15W TDP) processor at a lower power envelop. The two new Cortex-A cores will offer better better performance, will be launched in 2019 and 2020respectively, and as we’ll see below Arm expects those core to outperform Intel Core i5 processors. Current Arm laptop based on Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 have generally been disappointing in terms of performance, especially considering the prices those are sold for, but after a big jump on performance for Cortex A76 cores, Arm expects a 15% increase in compute performance per year. Hercules is expected to be around 2.5 times faster than current Arm […]

Samsung Unveils Exynos Modem 5100 with 5G, 4G, 3G, and 2G Connectivity

5G will start being deployed sometimes next year, and we’ve already seen announcement of several 5G modem chips including Qualcomm Snapdragon X50, Mediatek Helio M70 , and Huawei Balong 5G01. Samsung has now announced their own 5G cellular modem chip with Exynos Modem 5100. Specifications: 5G NR – Sub-6GHz, mmWave Supported Modes (Backward compatibility) 4G – LTE-FDD, LTE-TDD 3G – HSPA, TD-SCDMA, WCDMA 2G – CDMA, GSM/EDGE Downlink Features 8CA (Carrier Aggregation) in 5G NR up to 6 Gbps (mmWave) and up to 2Gbps (Sub-6GHz) 8CA (Carrier Aggregation) in LTE up to 1.6 Gbps 4×4 MIMO FD-MIMO Up to 256-QAM in sub-6GHz Up to 64-QAM in mmWave Uplink Features 2CA (Carrier Aggregation) in 5G NR 2CA (Carrier Aggregation) in LTE Up to 256-QAM in sub-6GHz Up to 64-QAM in mmWave Process – 10nm FinFET Process (10LPP) The Exynos Modem 5100 is compliant with 5G NR (New Radio) standard defined by […]

MediaTek Helio M70 5G Modem to Launch in 2019

5G cellular technology is now being tested, and the first deployment should start next year (2019) in some countries. We’ve also seen 5G cellular modems or 5G capable SoCs with products such as Qualcomm Snadragon X50, Huawei Balong 5G01, NXP QorIQ LA1575,  or MIPS I7200, as well as 5G indoor small cells from Ericsson. Unsurprisingly, MediaTek has also been working on their 5G solution, and one of their first product will be Helio M70 5G Modem. MediaTek gas already collaborated with Nokia, NTT Docomo, China Mobile (CMCC), Huawei and others companies, and Helio M70 5G radio modem is compatible with 3GPP Release 15, supports data rates up to 5Gbps, as well as “critical carrier features”. Helio M70 will be fabricated using TSMC’s 7nm process (EUV technology), and shipments are expected to start in 2019. However, DigiTimes reports the company does not expect to sell many 5G modems in 2019, and instead […]

MIPS I7200 Processor Core with nanoMIPS Architecture is Designed for LTE/5G Communications & Networking SoCs

MIPS has recently unveiled the I7200 multi-threaded multi-core processor for advanced LTE/5G communications and networking SoCs, which also happens to be the first MIPS core based on the new nanoMIPS 32-bit ISA. nanoMIPS is a variable instruction length ISA consisting of 16/32/48-bit instructions and various other optimizations that enables performance in the smallest code size. MIPS I7200 core features: 32-bit nanoMIPS  Instruction Set Architecture with MIPS DSP ASE optimized instruction set extensions for integer DSP and 32-bit SIMD operations Balanced, 9-stage, dual-issue pipeline with Vertical Multi-Threading (VMT) Superscalar on a single thread per cycle Zero overhead context switching – can switch threads every clock cycle Implements MIPS MT ASE – can implement up to 3 fully OS visible Virtual Processor Elements (VPEs) per core, and up to 9 lightweight thread contexts (TCs) per core, assignable to the VPEs Configurable memory subsystem Support for caches, tightly coupled ScratchPad RAM (SPRAM), or […]

NXP QorIQ LayerScape LX2160A is a 16-core Arm Cortex A72 Communication Processor with 100 Gbit/s Ethernet

NXP Semiconductors has been working  on a high-end communication processor with their QorIQ LayerScape LX2160A SoC equipped with 16 Arm Cortex A72 cores, 16 Ethernet ports supporting 1 to 100 Gbit/s, as well as 24 PCIe Gen4 lanes, and four SATA 3.0 ports. NXP LX2160A key specifications / features: Processor – 16x Arm Cortex-A72 CPU cores, running up to 2.2GHz with 8MB L2 cache, 8MB platform cache Memory I/F – 2 x DDR4 72b including ECC, up to 3200 MT/s, maximum capacity of 256 GB Storage – 4 x SATA3.0 Ethernet Up to 16 Ethernet ports Supported Ethernet speeds include 1, 2.5, 10, 25, 40, 50, and 100 gigabits per second 130Gbps Layer 2 Ethernet switch PCIe – Up to 24 PCIe Gen4 lanes, supporting ports as wide as x8 24 SerDes lanes, operating up to 28GHz Acceleration Engines – 50Gbps security accelerator, 100Gbps data compression/decompression engine Security – Secure […]

Huawei Unveils Balong 5G01 5G Cellular Modem Chip, and 5G Routers

5G will start to take off in 2019. so we should be expecting hardware announcement this year, after having seen solutions by Qualcomm and Ericsson previously, Huawei has unveiled their Balong 5G01 5G Arm SoC and 5G CPEs (Customer Premise Equipment) / routers at Mobile World Congress 2018. We don’t have a whole information about the chip, except it’s a 64-bit Arm based SoC compatible with 3GPP telecommunication standard for 5G working with both sub-6 GHz and mmWave bands, and capable of achieving 2.3 Gbps peak throughput. Huawei Balong 5G01 chip is found in two HUAWEI 5G CPE, basically 5G WiFi router, one working at sub 6 GHz (low frequency) comprise of one indoor deice, and the other working at mmWave bands (high frequency) that requires two devices one indoor, one outdoor to receive the signal, since the latter would have troubles going through walls. The CPEs come with high […]

Ericsson Unveils 5G Radio Dot for Better 5G Indoor Coverage

5G cellular technology is coming sometimes in 2019, before ramping up in 2020 in several countries. The new 3GPP standard will allow maximum bandwidth up to 10 Gigabit per second, and we’ve already seen announcements such as Snapdragon X50 5G Modem which will be able to reach up to 5 Gbps download speeds. 5G apparently works at either high bands starting at 28 GHz and up to 60 GHz, which means 5G signal might have a really hard time penetrating through walls or other obstacles, or at mid bands between 3.5 and 5 GHz which will still be a challenge compared to 4G LTE operating between 600 MHz and 3.5 GHz. That means that signal from outdoor base station won’t be able to penetrate in all building, so 5G indoor small cells will be necessary for good indoor coverage. Ericsson has already unveiled their own small cells with 5G radio […]

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