Contributors: Bob Wheeler, Jag Bolaria, Joseph Byrne In This Issue
The first seminar in the Linley Tech 2006 series, on January 25, will cover CPU cores and other intellectual property. Get the technical information you need, straight from the experts. Admission is free to qualified attendees, courtesy of our sponsors Freescale, SafeNet, Tensilica, and ARC. For more details, access our web site. The Linley Group Launches New CE Newsletter Welcome to the first issue of Linley on CE, our new email newsletter covering semiconductors for consumer electronics. This newsletter will complement our Linley Wire newsletter by covering chips for cellular handsets, broadband gateways, wireless LAN, UWB, home NAS, and other SOHO applications. Cellular handsets, for example, far outsell PCs, and more important, they have become a platform containing a variety of standard chips from multiple vendors. Innovation and convergence are driving the addition of cameras, music, video, WLAN, GPS, and more into handsets. In the home, digital media and broadband are driving complex new architectures to receive and distribute voice, video, and data throughout the home. Chip vendors are rapidly producing new products to support these changing needs. I decided to launch this new publication because The Linley Group continues to expand its coverage areas, and we can no longer fit everything into a single newsletter. Consumer electronics is a fast-growing area that is attracting many new semiconductor products and vendors, and we have received many requests to bring our unique brand of technology-oriented analysis to these products. Once or twice a month, we will bring you our analysis of the newest chip announcements in the CE market. Best of all, this newsletter is free! Although all Linley Wire subscribers will receive a trial subscription to Linley on CE, anyone who wants to continue receiving the new newsletter must sign up for it on our web site. Also, please forward the newsletter to anyone you know that may be interested in receiving our analysis at no cost. I welcome your feedback on our new newsletter. Please e-mail any suggestions to linleyg@linleygroup.com. I hope you find this newsletter helpful and interesting. Thanks for your support. —Linley Ikanos Bolsters Gateway Offerings With Fusiv By acquiring Analog Device's Fusiv products and design team last week, Ikanos boosted its ability to compete for future VDSL2 gateways. The leader in VDSL, Ikanos has quickly repositioned its technology for the new VDSL2 standard, deploying DSLAM chip sets with industry-leading integration for both 12MHz and 30MHz profiles. The company also offers a VDSL2 chip set for modems, but it must be coupled with an external processor for gateway designs. Fusiv is a high-performance architecture developed by Analog Devices (ADI) for SOHO gateways. It combines a single MIPS CPU with multiple packet engines to generate enough throughput for packet routing, quality of service, and other gateway functions at speeds of up to 100Mbps. It also includes a voice engine and a security engine to further boost performance. Current Fusiv products support various ADSL standards, but ADI has no VDSL or VDSL2 capability. Although the company had planned to license a VDSL2 core from IP vendor Aware, it instead chose to get out of the DSL controller business. For gateways, Fusiv fits Ikanos like a glove. At a purchase price of $30 million, or about 1x current revenue, the Fusiv line comes relatively cheaply. If Ikanos can simply combine its proven VDSL2 datapump with the existing Fusiv architecture, it will have a powerful VDSL2 gateway chip. Competitors such as Broadcom, Conexant, and TI do not have a proven architecture that can process packets at VDSL2 speeds. Acquiring Fusiv gives Ikanos an early advantage over these large competitors in broadband gateways. To remain competitive, Ikanos must now seek WLAN technology. —Linley Complete coverage of Ikanos' products appears in our recent report A Guide to Next-Generation Broadband Interface Chips.
At CES, Marvell has announced a line of microprocessors called Orion, targeting digital-home applications. The processors are based on the company's ARM-compatible Feroceon core and will integrate other functions. In response to demand for integrating storage in home gateways and to serve the NAS and DVR markets, most variants in the line will incorporate a serial ATA disk interface. Other integrated functions include a USB2.0 interface, Gigabit Ethernet (GbE) ports, and encryption. We also expect Marvell to include analog telephone interfaces (for VoIP) and a wireless LAN MAC/baseband in some versions. Marvell is sampling Orion, and we expect the chips to enter full production by June. The company also offers reference designs that include software. Orion is similar to PMC-Sierra's MSP2200 in that both use ARM CPUs and integrate an encryption engine and Ethernet, USB, and storage interfaces. Orion, however, offers far more throughput, with a faster CPU, GbE rather than 10/100, USB2.0 rather than USB1.1, and SATA rather than ATA (IDE). Despite Orion's greater performance, Marvell signals that it is pricing the product to capture share in its target markets. The company expects the chip to ship in storage-enabled home gateways priced at $149. Orion also competes with Broadcom's BCM4780 and Infineon's ADM8668. Storage is the foundation of the digital home. Beyond saving personal media such as pictures, videos, music, and television programs, storage can be used to provide new services. One such service is pseudo-video-on-demand, in which the provider pushes encrypted content to customers in anticipation of the consumer buying the key to unlock it. Another possible service is the insertion of targeted advertising in TV programming. Integrated devices such as Orion and its competitors will enable the systems that enable these new services, facilitating the distribution of content within the home. —Joe Additional coverage of Marvell's processors appears in our report A Guide to Communications Processors.
At CES, Staccato Communications announced sampling of the industry's first single-chip Wireless USB (WUSB) chips. The UWB startup also announced an $18 million funding round, bringing total funding to $48 million. Building on Staccato's single-chip WiMedia PHY design, the new WUSB chips add a MAC suitable for both host-side and device-side applications. The chips support WiMedia-standard data rates up to 480Mbps. The new design offers a choice of High-Speed USB 2.0 or SDIO 1.1 interfaces. To simplify customer designs, Staccato uses a 12mm by 14.5mm system-in-package (SiP) that integrates the all-CMOS MAC/PHY die along with a crystal, bandpass filter, and T/R switch, leaving an antenna as the only major external component required to complete the design. The company claims this high level of integration enables a BOM cost of less than $10 in volume. Staccato is offering three versions of its single-chip design, each optimized for specific applications: the SC3501P supports host wire adapters, bridging a High-Speed USB host to Wireless USB; the SC3502P supports device wire adapters, bridging Wireless USB to High-Speed USB devices; the SC3503P supports embedded device applications through an SDIO 1.1 interface. The chips are sampling now, with reference designs due later in 1Q06. In December, WiMedia pioneers Staccato, Alereon, and Wisair announced that they had achieved PHY-level interoperability. Also in December, newcomer WiQuest announced a complete two-chip WUSB host/device solution. While informal interoperability tests have already begun, the WiMedia Alliance announced its first official interoperability-testing event would occur on January 23rd. With momentum quickly building behind the Wireless USB application of WiMedia UWB, Staccato is well positioned to capture first-generation designs with its aggressive product implementation. —Bob Complete
coverage of UWB and Wireless USB appears in our report A
Guide to Next-Generation Wireless.
The device also implements a different memory hierarchy than the IP3000. Memory is still partitioned between on-chip and off-chip storage. To simplify programming, however, off-chip memory in the 5000 is cached and has addresses contiguous with on-chip memory. Ubicom promotes the 5000 as a communications and media processor for SOHO applications. For multimedia, the CPU includes DSP instructions to accelerate voice processing. More generally, the company expects the chip to be used in home gateways and related systems for networking multimedia traffic. Ubicom provides complementary software for these applications. The unique capabilities that Ubicom's processors deliver have helped the company land design wins in premium home routers, and the 5000 is likely to continue this trend. The challenge for the company is to increase shipments despite competitors that offer complete chip sets. —Joe Additional coverage of Ubicom's products appears in our report A Guide to Communications Processors.
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