J: I was looking at the CMP WWW site early today and almost posted this article... until I noticed it was for June 24, 1996 I think MOT was closer to a final production solution back in 1996!!!
Moto preps ADSL modem
By Loring Wirbel
Austin, Texas - Motorola Inc.'s MOS Digital-Analog IC Division will reveal more details of its upcoming single-chip Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line (ADSL) modem at the Supercomm show in Dallas this week. Motorola will show an 8-Mbit/second modem from Amati Communications Inc. that uses the same algorithms found in the MC145650 modem called "Copper Gold," which will not begin sampling until the first quarter of 1997.
Motorola has worked with Amati for three years to optimize a spin-off of the 56000 DSP family for single-chip ADSL transceiver functions. The chip will integrate all modulation functions, as well as A/D and D/A conversion and echo cancellation. ADSL is a digital technology using copper twisted-pair wiring to provide high-speed Internet access to phone customers. Data rates can be adjusted from 32 kbits/s to 8 Mbits/s downstream, and 64 kbits/s to 1 Mbits/s bidirectional.
Adjustment
Debbie Sallee, business development manager for ADSL at Motorola, said that a new rate-adaptive mode in the upcoming chip will allow the modem to automatically adjust to line quality in 32-kbit/s channel increments. The new flexible form of rate-adaptive ADSL, called RADSL, has been promoted by AT&T Paradyne (Largo, Fla.), which offers RADSL in its own form of ADSL, based on carrierless amplitude-modulation/phase-modulation (CAP) encoding.
Motorola's single-chip device uses the discrete multitone encoding developed by Amati, which has been adopted as an ANSI standard. Sallee said that, while Paradyne can offer RADSL for its CAP method, the adaptive capacity does not have the 32-kbit granularity of DMT encoding. Sallee said that this granularity will prove an important feature for many telcos.
Motorola will begin supplying single-chip devices to Amati and L.M. Ericsson, as well as other early customers, by early 1997. Sallee said there is no intent for the MOS Digital-Analog IC Division to be involved in the development of any ADSL subsystems, though another Motorola division might choose to become involved in ADSL from a systems perspective in the future. |
