Mike Gulett of Ikanos told me they make the best DSL chips when I visited. A few hours later, Imran Hajimusa of Lantiq (formerly part of Infineon) said something very similar. I'm sure I would have heard the same if I had stopped by Broadcom as well. Not being an engineer with a test lab, I'm not qualified to judge. Any chipmaker who's survived the tough DSL market obviously has an outstanding product as far as I'm concerned. Both had some impressive features to demonstrate.
Ikanos showed me how their rate-adjustment on the fly minimizes the dropouts and retrains that are the bane of IPTV carriers. Tom, Gavin, and the rest did a remarkable job back around 1993 defining the DSL standards and it's amazing how little problem we have with interference. Back in 2000, some competent engineers believed DSL would crash when the networks became loaded, but that clearly hasn't happened.
But the occasional interference problem is annoying for IPTV, especially if the dropout happens at a crucial moment in a football game.
Alcatel tells 40% of Europeans turn off their modems when not in use, a good way to save energy but causing spikes in the network. Ikanos had a strong demonstration with TV running in their lab and interferers added. With rate-adjustment, they never dropped the signal.
Lantiq has a nice demo of 4 simultaneous HD TV programs playing wirelessly over 802.11n, a technology they bought from Metalink. It's 3 x 3 MIMO, with great results in the lab. Playing TV around a home wirelessly would find tremendous demand, and Imran believes they have production ready chips that will make that practical. Lantiq is also enthusiastic about G.hn, finally a standard, which is designed to inexpensively carry data over twisted pair, coax, powerline, and probably everything except barbed wire.
Two days later, Lantiq got a strong endorsement from Deutsche Telekom, which made a small investment in the company. AT&T & BT made billions with investments in suppliers they believed in, including AMDOCS and Tech Mahindra. Carrier venture investments like this are coming back into fashion, with Swisscom's investment in Quantenna a recent example.
Both companies are working on DSM Level 3 vectoring, with Infineon showing a strong demonstration with FPGAs in Paris last fall. Ikanos believes their approach, while not yet demonstrated, will be much more effective and has promised me details down the line.
Broadcom is doing private demos of vectoring and I believe some testing, although the rumored results have been disappointing. With both company founders facing jail time in a $2B accounting fraud, I can appreciate why the company didn't speak much publicly. Now that their lawyer has found a way to get them off despite overwhelming evidence, maybe they will finally start providing the information expected of a public company. I've had two stories based on Broadcom customers praising the product I could never write because I needed some information from the company to flesh out the story. At the moment, I have another strong affirmation of the quality of their chips but I'm not even bothering to ask them for information.
Mike Gulett of Ikanos told me they make the best DSL chips when I visited. A few hours later, Imran Hajimusa of Lantiq (formerly part of Infineon) said something very similar. I'm sure I would have heard the same if I had stopped by Broadcom as well. Not being an engineer with a test lab, I'm not qualified to judge. Any chipmaker who's survived the tough DSL market obviously has an outstanding product as far as I'm concerned. Both had some impressive features to demonstrate.
Ikanos showed me how their rate-adjustment on the fly minimizes the dropouts and retrains that are the bane of IPTV carriers. Tom, Gavin, and the rest did a remarkable job back around 1993 defining the DSL standards and it's amazing how little problem we have with interference. Back in 2000, some competent engineers believed DSL would crash when the networks became loaded, but that clearly hasn't happened.
But the occasional interference problem is annoying for IPTV, especially if the dropout happens at a crucial moment in a football game. Alcatel tells 40% of Europeans turn off their modems when not in use, a good way to save energy but causing spikes in the network. Ikanos had a strong demonstration with TV running in their lab and interferers added. With rate-adjustment, they never dropped the signal.
Lantiq has a nice demo of 4 simultaneous HD TV programs playing wirelessly over 802.11n, a technology they bought from Metalink. It's 3 x 3 MIMO, with great results in the lab. Playing TV around a home wirelessly would find tremendous demand, and Imran believes they have production ready chips that will make that practical. Lantiq is also enthusiastic about G.hn, finally a standard, which is designed to inexpensively carry data over twisted pair, coax, powerline, and probably everything except barbed wire.
Two days later, Lantiq got a strong endorsement from Deutsche Telekom, which made a small investment in the company. AT&T & BT made billions with investments in suppliers they believed in, including AMDOCS and Tech Mahindra. Carrier venture investments like this are coming back into fashion, with Swisscom's investment in Quantenna a recent example.
Both companies are working on DSM Level 3 vectoring, with Infineon showing a strong demonstration with FPGAs in Paris last fall. Ikanos believes their approach, while not yet demonstrated, will be much more effective and has promised me details down the line.
Broadcom is doing private demos of vectoring and I believe some testing, although the rumored results have been disappointing. With both company founders facing jail time in a $2B accounting fraud, I can appreciate why the company didn't speak much publicly. Now that their lawyer has found a way to get them off despite overwhelming evidence, maybe they will finally start providing the information expected of a public company. I've had two stories based on Broadcom customers praising the product I could never write because I needed some information from the company to flesh out the story. At the moment, I have another strong affirmation of the quality of their chips but I'm not even bothering to ask them for information.
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