Altair Semiconductor Launches 'Open Platform' Embedded Linux Software Development Kit

Embedded devices are getting smarter and more efficient with evolving technologies and systems. At the same time, it is becoming equally important for the product manufacturers to develop highly programmable and customizable embedded devices in order to fulfill a wide range of needs of the consumers.

Altair Semiconductor, a provider of ultra-low power, small footprint and high performance 4G semiconductors, has launched a new Embedded Linux Software Development Kit for its commercial FourGee-3100/6200 chipset. Known as Open Platform, the new solution is powered by the embedded applications CPU of the FourGee-3100 LTE (News - Alert) System on a Chip, and allows software developers to create a range of applications and functions on the chip without having to implement an external host processor at all.

Customers of Altair Semiconductor (News - Alert) from North America, Europe, China, India and Taiwan have been deploying its chipsets in development of around 30 end-user devices, such as USB dongles and smartphones. The company offers baseband processors, multi-band RF transceivers for both FDD and TDD bands, and various other reference hardware and product level protocol stack software solutions as well. It leverages a proprietary Software Defined Radio processor that is codenamed O2P to develop highly power optimized products with very small form factor.

With the help of Altair Semiconductor’s Open Platform, application developers will be able to enjoy a number of innovative benefits, such as lower cost, size and power; suitability for applications such as Indoor/Outdoor CPEs, Hostless USB Dongles, portable LTE/WiFi (News - Alert) routers Machine to Machine modules and an open source Linux OS.

“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,” commented Eran Eshed, co-founder and vice president, Marketing and Business Development at Altair Semiconductors. “Our current Open Platform customers gain a $5-7 Bill of Materials advantage relative to alternative solutions, which is a very significant difference when it comes to products such as dongles and pocket routers.”

The new Open Platform by Altair Semiconductor is equipped with dedicated MIPS processor with an MMU, dedicated I/D caches, on-chip SRAM, low latency access to external DDR and DMA resources. Additionally, it features Ethernet MAC controller, an AES security engine and USB 2.0, SDIO and memory-mapped parallel host interfaces to streamline the overall process of applications development.

In December 2011, Altair Semiconductor and AsiaTelco Technologies Co., a supplier of wireless terminal products, announced that Altair’s chipset has been integrated in AsiaTelco’s TD-LTE Mobile Hotspot product, the ALM-F190.

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