Re: [Discuss-gnuradio] nVidia's Tegra 4 has SDR - the i500 LTE soft modem from Icera

[Albert Chun-Chieh Huang]

According to this web page:
http://www.fudzilla.com/home/item/30024-icera-i500-is-programmable-lte

And the features of Icera's previous platforms:
http://www.nvidia.com/object/nvidia-icera-products.html

On the photo from CES, Icera i500 platform has 8 processors on it, each
one contains its own memory. From Icera's product feature page, each
platform contains one baseband chip and one RF IC. I think the photo
depicted on CES is the baseband chip only. So this SDR platform contains
8 processors, probably specialized digital signal processors that have
their own unique instruction set. Icera does not provide any
hardware/software development tool, e.g. compiler, assembler, or
emulator. So the instruction set is not open. They provide whole
baseband chip with physical/protocol layer in software, encrypted I
guess. From normal user's point of view, it will be hard to hack. 

I know this because I am also from communication IC industry, even we
have flexible processors or coprocessors, we'll make it hard to hack. :p
But I won't say it's impossible, it just takes a lot of time. With those
hacking time, I'd rather spend time to build a scalable computer farm
that can do distributed SDR. I think the next move of GNU Radio is
toward this by introducing ICE? 



Best Regards,

Albert Huang


Alex Zhang <address@hidden> writes:

> Can anybody explain the difference between this softmodem and other
> existing wireless baseband programmable processors?
> My understanding is that, also as Marcus mentioned, it provides more
> flexibility by this array of special CPUs instead of the prefixed
> functions/blocks, within this chip. Otherwise, it won't bring big novelty.
>
> As to the ADC/DAC and RF part, maybe we need to wait for the whole SDR
>  solution to be unveiled.
>
>
> On Mon, Jan 7, 2013 at 11:29 AM, Marcus D. Leech <address@hidden> wrote:
>
>> I don't have high hopes for this specific chip - I guess the IC will be
>>> hard to buy and the modem feature on built devices will hard to hack,
>>> lacking source and documentation for its drivers, just as Android devices
>>> are hard for cyanogenmod developers to hack with.
>>>
>>> But these news do give some hope, the hope that more accessible high-end
>>> ARMs chips like TI's and Freescales' will follow up and incorporate these
>>> features in the future. Indeed, I am already working on a beaglebone-based
>>> SDR and this would be great.
>>>
>>>  It looks to me like this SoftModem chip is just an array of speciality
>> CPUs.  What I want to see is details of ADC/DAC and the RF-to-baseband
>>   transceivers -- those aren't part of the same chip.
>>
>>
>> --
>> Marcus Leech
>> Principal Investigator
>> Shirleys Bay Radio Astronomy Consortium
>> http://www.sbrac.org
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> ______________________________**_________________
>> Discuss-gnuradio mailing list
>> address@hidden
>> https://lists.gnu.org/mailman/**listinfo/discuss-gnuradio<https://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss-gnuradio>
>>
>
>
>
> -- 
>
> Alex,
> *Dreams can come true – just believe.*
> Can anybody explain the difference between this softmodem and other
> existing wireless baseband programmable processors? 
> My understanding is that, also as Marcus mentioned, it provides more
> flexibility by this array of special CPUs instead of the prefixed
> functions/blocks, within this chip. Otherwise, it won't bring big
> novelty.
>
> As to the ADC/DAC and RF part, maybe we need to wait for the whole SDR
>  solution to be unveiled. 
>
>
> On Mon, Jan 7, 2013 at 11:29 AM, Marcus D. Leech <address@hidden>
> wrote:
>
>         I don't have high hopes for this specific chip - I guess the
>         IC will be hard to buy and the modem feature on built devices
>         will hard to hack, lacking source and documentation for its
>         drivers, just as Android devices are hard for cyanogenmod
>         developers to hack with.
>         
>         But these news do give some hope, the hope that more
>         accessible high-end ARMs chips like TI's and Freescales' will
>         follow up and incorporate these features in the future.
>         Indeed, I am already working on a beaglebone-based SDR and
>         this would be great.
>         
>         
>     It looks to me like this SoftModem chip is just an array of
>     speciality CPUs.  What I want to see is details of ADC/DAC and the
>     RF-to-baseband
>       transceivers -- those aren't part of the same chip.
>     
>     
>     -- 
>     Marcus Leech
>     Principal Investigator
>     Shirleys Bay Radio Astronomy Consortium
>     http://www.sbrac.org
>     
>     
>     
>     
>     
>     _______________________________________________
>     Discuss-gnuradio mailing list
>     address@hidden
>     https://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss-gnuradio

-- 
Albert Chun-Chieh Huang(黃俊傑)
Blog: Random Notes, http://alberthuang314.blogspot.com/