[Competitive News]
EE Times April 07, 1997, Issue: 948 Section: Design Communications Chips/ADSL -- Globespan develops 0.3-micron chip set By Loring Wirbel
Red Bank, N.J. - Globespan Technologies Inc. has unveiled an asymmetric digital subscriber line (ADSL) two-chip set. "Star" consists of DSP data-pump and analog front-end functions and will sell for $39 in high volumes.
Compared with last year's Starlet 0.5-micron chip set, the new shrink is implemented in 0.3-micron CMOS, allowing power dissipation to move to less than 1 W.
Globespan's posture indicates its intent to move from being a research arm of AT&T Paradyne to a full merchant semiconductor supplier in its own right. Last year, Globespan was spun out of Paradyne when the latter was sold to a Texas investment group. As the source of chips and algorithm rights to the carrierless amplitude/phase modulation version of ADSL, Globespan executives realize they have to show price and performance advantages over the expected onslaught of merchant chips implementing the Discrete Multitone version of ADSL.
Clete Gardenhour, executive director of business development at Globespan, said the company will pursue both subscriber modem and line-card design wins for the new Star chip set.
The only devices necessary outside the chip set are line drivers. Globespan has worked with Elantec Inc. (Milpitas, Calif.) to interface with the analog specialist's line-driver family. A low-power microcontroller is needed to provide management functions for setting up rate-adaptivity algorithms, but Gardenhour said the controller is not in the data path, nor is it involved directly in any of the DSP tasks dedicated to Star.
Globespan has shipped 100,000 units of the half-micron set to customers; production volumes are expected by the end of the second quarter.
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Copyright r 1997 CMP Media Inc.
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