CES 2012: Altair Semiconductor Announces Commercial Availability of an Embedded Linux Software Development Kit for Its FourGee™ LTE Chipset

HOD HASHARON, Israel and LAS VEGAS, January 9, 2012 /PRNewswire/ --

Altair Semiconductor (http://www.altair-semi.com), a leading developer of ultra-low power, small footprint and high performance 4G LTE chipsets, today announced the general availability of an Embedded Linux Software Development Kit (SDK),  named Open-Platform™, for its commercial FourGee-3100/6200 chipset.

Open Platform™ is an SDK that runs on the FourGee™-3100 LTE SoC's embedded applications CPU, and enables designers to implement a wide variety of applications and functions on the chip, eliminating the need for an external host processor. Altair's Open Platform™ offers a number of key differentiators, including:

• Lower cost, size and power by eliminating the need for an external host processor
• Ideal for applications such as Indoor/Outdoor CPEs, Hostless USB Dongles, portable LTE/WiFi routers and M2M (Machine to Machine) modules
• Built on an open source Linux OS
• Runs on the industry leading FourGee™-3100 LTE processor as a software upgrade

"Altair is the first company to embed an application processor running Linux inside of an LTE modem chip, giving our customers the unique ability to use our chipset for any purpose they need without having the cost, size and power burden of an external host processor," said Eran Eshed, Co-Founder and VP of Marketing and Business Development at Altair. "Our current Open Platform™ customers gain a $5-7 Bill of Materials (BOM) advantage relative to alternative solutions, which is a very significant difference when it comes to products such as dongles and pocket routers."

Altair's Open Platform™ architecture features a dedicated MIPS processor with an MMU, dedicated I/D caches, on-chip SRAM, low latency access to external DDR, DMA resources, Ethernet MAC controller, an AES security engine and USB 2.0, SDIO and memory-mapped parallel host interfaces.

The FourGee-3100/6200 chipset from Altair supports both FDD and TDD variants using single software, and covers any LTE frequency band in the range between 700-2700MHz. The chipset implements a high performance MIMO receiver and is based on a proprietary O²P™ Software Defined Radio (SDR) processor, offering performance which significantly exceeds traditional communications DSP cores, yet consumes a fraction of the power. The combined chipset offers terminal manufacturers a true global solution.

About Altair Semiconductor

Altair Semiconductor is the world's leading developer of ultra-low power, small footprint and high performance 4G semiconductors. Altair's chipsets can be found in approximately 30 end-user devices - ranging from USB dongles to smartphones - built by its more than 15 customers across North America, Europe, China, India and Taiwan - making it one of the only TDD/FDD LTE chipset manufacturers in the world with commercially available products. Altair's comprehensive product portfolio includes baseband processors, multi-band RF transceivers for both FDD and TDD bands, and a range of reference hardware and product level protocol stack software. Based on a novel, proprietary Software Defined Radio (SDR) processor, codenamed "O2P™", Altair's products are the smallest and most highly power optimized in the industry, offering an unmatched combination of flexibility and performance. For more information, visit the company's website at http://www.altair-semi.com. Follow Altair on Twitter: @AltairSemi

Media Contact:

Ruder Finn Israel for Altair Semiconductor
Matthew Krieger
+972-544-676-950
[email protected]

SOURCE Altair Semiconductor