Altair Semiconductor Announces Immediate Commercial Availability of LTE Baseband Chip for 4G Wireless Devices

FourGee™-3100 LTE baseband chip complements Altair’s LTE RF transceiver to create comprehensive LTE chip solution

Hod Hasharon, Israel, October 1, 2009 – Altair Semiconductor, a 4G chip company developing the world’s most advanced mobile semiconductors for handheld devices, today announced the immediate commercial availability of its LTE baseband chip, the FourGee™-3100. This announcement makes Altair one of the very first semiconductor companies to offer an LTE baseband chip available to market.

The FourGee™-3100 is a fully optimized LTE CAT-3 baseband processor that operates with devices from mobile handsets, data cards, USB dongles and CPEs to various handheld consumer electronics devices. The FourGee™-3100 is bundled with a complete LTE L1 and protocol stack.

With Altair’s LTE RF transceiver, the FourGee™-6150, also currently commercially available, Altair provides 4G mobile device makers with a complete baseband and RF LTE chipset right out of the box.  Altair’s LTE baseband is architected using the company’s proprietary and market-proven O2P™ software-defined 4G processor, which offers extremely high performance at unmatched power consumption levels.

“The availability of the FourGee™-3100, which we are announcing today, is a major milestone for the LTE ecosystem and for Altair in particular,” said Oded Melamed, Co-Founder and CEO of Altair Semiconductor. “Starting from today, device OEM and ODMs are able to build commercial grade LTE terminals without having to compromise on performance, power consumption or size of the LTE chipset.”

Altair’s FourGee™3100 Feature Highlights Include:

• Suitable for integration in devices such as mobile handsets, data cards/dongles, consumer electronic devices and other embedded devices
• Support of LTE category 3 (CAT-3) throughputs (100Mbps/50Mbps DL/UL respectively)
• Two 20MHz MIMO receive chains and one transmit chain
• Ultra-low power consumption in operational and standby modes
• High-speed, programmable interface to industry standard HSPA/EVDO baseband and applications processors, enabling a true multi-mode LTE+3G solution
• Based on Altair’s proprietary, cutting edge signal processing engine, O2P™
• Seamless interfaces with Altair’s multi-band LTE RFIC lineup
• Complemented with a robust, comprehensive and interoperated L1 and protocol stack which includes PHY, MAC, RLC, PDCP, RRC and NAS layers
• Supports other 4G/OFDM technology variants, including WiMAX and XGP

“Our very early investment in LTE is now starting to pay off,” said Eran Eshed, Co-Founder and VP of Marketing and Business Development of Altair. “Making LTE roadmap announcements has become somewhat trendy recently - I am glad to be able to announce immediate LTE product availability today.”

The FourGee™-3100 is part of Altair’s comprehensive portfolio for LTE, which also includes:

• FourGee™-6150 – a MIMO RF transceiver that supports LTE-TDD
• FourGee™-6200 – a multi-band LTE-FDD MIMO transceiver that covers all global bands
• FourGee™ LTE USB ExpressCard UE (User Equipment) - intended for Altair customers and partners for the purposes of testing, IOT and field trials, available to order in November

Visit www.altair-semi.com for more information. 

About Altair Semiconductor

Altair Semiconductor is the world's leading developer of ultra-low power, small footprint and high performance 4G semiconductors. The company's products provide device manufacturers integrating any 4G technology into their products with a highly power-optimized, robust and cost-effective solution. 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 4G Optimized OFDM Processor (O2P™), Altair’s products are the smallest and most highly power optimized in the industry, offering an unmatched combination of flexibility and performance. Altair is privately held and has raised a total of $48M in three rounds of financing from investors, including Bessemer Venture Partners, BRM Capital, ETV Capital, Giza Venture Capital, Jerusalem Venture Partners, and Pacific Technology Fund.