Case Study: Altair Semiconductor achieves low‑power, high‑performance LTE and WiMAX SoC goals with Synopsys DesignWare AFE IP

Altair Meets Power and Performance SoC Goals for LTE and WiMAX applications with DesignWare Data Converter IP

Altair Semiconductor, a leading developer of ultra‑low‑power, small‑footprint 4G LTE chipsets, needed a baseband analog front-end (AFE) IP that delivered both low power consumption and high performance for LTE and WiMAX applications. The company also required silicon‑proven broadband data converters and wanted to minimize the risk of integrating high‑performance analog IP into a complex SoC.

Altair adopted Synopsys’ DesignWare AFE IP — a complete solution including ADCs, DACs and a programmable PLL delivered in two advanced process nodes — which met their power, performance and size requirements. The silicon‑proven IP was easily integrated, reduced integration risk, kept the project on schedule, and was supported by responsive Synopsys engineering, enabling successful deployment in Altair’s LTE and WiMAX chipsets.

Altair Semiconductor

Eli Zyss

Vice President of VLSI