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CoWare Joins WiMAX Forum(TM) to Accelerate WiMAX SoC Design; New WiMAX Reference Library for CoWare Platform-driven ESL Design Accelerates Design of WiMAX SoCs by Six Months
SEOUL, Korea & VIENNA, Austria—(BUSINESS WIRE)—May 22, 2006—
CoWare(R) Inc., the leading supplier of platform-driven
electronic system-level (ESL) design software and services, announced
simultaneously at the Wireless Broadband World Forum 2006 in Seoul,
Korea, and the WiMAX World Europe Conference & Expo 2006 in Vienna,
Austria, a new WiMAX Reference Library integrated into CoWare Signal
Processing Designer (formerly known as SPW). Covering IEEE 802.16/16e
standards, this library will allow SoC design teams using the CoWare
platform-driven ESL design solution, to reduce time-to-market
introduction by six months for every product generation. The CoWare
solution allows optimization of WiMAX SoC implementation performance
for the noise performance relevant in rural areas and interference
performance in densely-populated areas, both of which impact the
operator's network capacity.
"We are happy to hear that the supply chain for WiMAX systems is
now extended into the design tools area," said Ron Resnick, president
of the WiMAX Forum. "With CoWare on board, solutions that enable WiMAX
products to be optimized at the algorithm and architecture level are
now more readily available. It's at these design levels where the
network operators, who invest multi-hundreds of millions to one
billion dollars for their networks, have the most to gain."
"Complex standards like WiMAX are implemented on platforms which
evolve over time," said Johannes Stahl, director of marketing at
CoWare. "We are glad to be part of the growing WiMAX community with
our platform-based ESL design solution that enables design teams to
rapidly deliver optimized WiMAX chips to the market."
When system engineers start thinking about
Orthogonal-Frequency-Division-Multiple-Access (OFDMA), the most
complex operation that comes to mind is the Fast-Fourier-Transform
(FFT), a common digital signal processing (DSP) operation. While the
OFDMA principle based on FFT is responsible for the reliable
transmission of high-speed data over a fading channel, much more needs
to be done to OFDMA to make it a scalable, efficient, and robust
system for network operators and end users. In OFDMA, a whole range of
randomization, data packaging, coding, and frequency mapping takes
place, which is controlled by a large set of protocol parameters that
need to be specified and verified. Also, support of multiple users and
the allocation of resources of varying sizes from the OFDMA
time-frequency grid to each of these users make OFDMA system design a
highly-complex task. CoWare's WiMAX reference library contains all
OFDMA mechanisms and are ready to be used by designers; resulting in
cutting their time from written specification to a working reference
simulation by three months compared to having a team of two to three
engineers developing all models from scratch.
IEEE 802.16 -- Design Managers' Challenge
Compared to other competing wireless access standards, such as
ITU/3GPP's 3G cellular standard, the IEEE's 802.16/16e standard does
not come with a clear set of minimum quality of service (QoS) targets.
While the 802.16/16e standard contains a certain limit in overall and
individual peak performance of the system, network operators will shop
for the solution with the optimum performance. This is because
additional performance translates into top-line growth (selling more
bandwidth) or bottom-line savings (using less networking equipment).
Optimization of the WiMAX receiver system, across the range of
possible scenarios, is a daunting engineering task and has to be
solved long before actual hardware becomes available. CoWare's
solution with the new WiMAX Library helps automate this task.
CoWare Platform-driven ESL Design
Platform-driven ESL design starts with the creation of new
hardware and software components at the algorithm level. These
components are often complex, signal processing functions bound to a
particular standard, just as in this case for WiMAX. The algorithmic
design includes modeling and performance simulation, as well as
fixed-point optimization, specifically for hardware components. The
new WiMAX Library for CoWare Signal Processing Designer provides
ready-to-use reference systems, all delivered with source code, from
which design teams can start to add their particular implementations
and optimize them in the overall system context by executing Signal
Processing Designer simulations on a server farm. After that, Signal
Processing Designer can package an entire subsystem into a SystemC
peripheral model for CoWare Platform Architect where it is used for
system-on-chip platform exploration and validation.
Furthermore, algorithms designed with CoWare Signal Processing
Designer are often implemented as programmable accelerators using
CoWare Processor Designer. This integration into the CoWare design
solution makes the new WiMAX Library a very powerful enabler for
design teams that cuts six months off the overall schedule from
specification to working products.
Availability and Pricing
CoWare Signal Processing Designer WiMAX Library is available
today. For pricing information please contact the CoWare sales office
nearest you at http://www.coware.com/corporate/offices.php. The FREE
trial version can be downloaded, and more information on CoWare Signal
Processing Designer and CoWare's other products can be obtained at
http://www.coware.com.
About CoWare
CoWare is the leading supplier of platform-driven electronic
system-level (ESL) design software and services. CoWare offers a
comprehensive set of ESL solutions that enable electronics companies
to "differentiate by design" through the creation of system IP
including embedded processors, on-chip buses, and DSP algorithms; the
architecture of optimized system-on-chip (SoC) platforms;
hardware/software co-design; and virtual hardware platforms for device
software development. The company's solutions are based on open
industry standards including SystemC. CoWare's customers are major
systems, semiconductor, and IP companies in the market where consumer
electronics, computing, and communications converge. CoWare's
corporate investors include ARM ((LSE:ARM); (Nasdaq:ARMHY)), Cadence
Design Systems (Nasdaq:CDNS), STMicroelectronics (NYSE:STM), and
Sony Corporation (NYSE:SNE). CoWare is headquartered in San Jose,
Calif., and has offices around the world. For more information about
CoWare and its products and services visit http://www.coware.com.
About the WiMAX Forum
The WiMAX Forum is an industry-led, non-profit corporation formed
to help promote and certify the compatibility and interoperability of
broadband wireless products using the IEEE 802.16 and ETSI HiperMAN
wireless MAN specifications. The Forum's goal is to accelerate the
introduction of these devices into the marketplace. WiMAX Forum
Certified(TM) products will be fully interoperable and support
Metropolitan Broadband Fixed, Portable, and Mobile Applications. For
more information about the WiMAX Forum and its activities, please
visit http://www.wimaxforum.org.
CoWare is a registered trademark of CoWare, Inc. WiMAX Forum and
WiMAX Forum Certified are trademarks of the WiMAX Forum. All other
trademarks are the property of their respective owners.
Contact:
CoWare, Inc.
Mindy Palmer, 408-392-8513
Email Contact
or
Armstrong Kendall, Inc.
Public Relations for CoWare
Jean Armstrong, 503-672-4680
Email Contact
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