AMCC Licenses Elliptic 3GPP/LTE Cellular Basestation Security Solution for use in its Latest Power Architecture Processor

Update: Synopsys Expands Security Solutions with Acquisition of Elliptic Technologies (June 29, 2015)

April 30, 2009 – Ottawa, Canada -- Elliptic is pleased to announce that AppliedMicro has licensed its high performance SNOW 3G security engine in support of AppliedMicro customers implementing 3GPP LTE (Long Term Evolution) base stations.

LTE, the new industry standard, represents the latest improvement in cell phone technology offering customers significantly improved downlink and uplink speeds as well as substantially reduced network delay for time sensitive voice and video traffic. Network trials for LTE are planned for later this year, so the inclusion of this important security feature in AppliedMicro’s latest Power Architecture processor will enable its customers to support this new initiative.

AppliedMicro chose Elliptic’s high performance Security Protocol Accelerator (SPAcc) for use in its Power Architecture. This family of processors is targeted at designers implementing new mobile base stations for the 3GPP LTE standard. The high speed links available to subscribers will require the base station to process over 1 Gbps of network traffic. The engine supports a high bandwidth SNOW 3G cryptographic core required by the new standard as well as direct memory access (DMA) capability. This DMA feature allows the security engine to act as a co-processor to the PowerPC processor and it can take full control of the system bus and independently process LTE traffic requiring encryption and authentication. This completely offloads the PowerPC from the security processing, allowing it to handle the other packet processing and management tasks required in the base station.

“Elliptic’s SNOW 3G security core provided the right features and leading technology in the adequate time frame for our processor development.” said Michael Raam, Vice President Engineering at AppliedMicro. “We are pleased with the great support and professionalism of the Elliptic team.”

“The remarkable growth in popularity of smart phones and netbooks is driving the demand for substantially higher mobile data rates with robust security, which in turn represents the target market for 3GPP/LTE networks,” stated Al Hawtin, VP Marketing and Business Development for Elliptic Technologies. “The initial engagement with the talented team at AppliedMicro went extremely well, and we look forward to future projects supporting high performance security requirements in new generations of the Power Architecture processor family.”

About AppliedMicro  

AppliedMicro is a global leader in energy efficient sustainable solutions for datacenters, telecom, enterprise and consumer applications. AppliedMicro's corporate headquarters are located in Sunnyvale, California. Sales and engineering offices are located throughout the world. For further information regarding AppliedMicro, visit the company’s Web site at http://www.amcc.com