Kelly - Steven - Steve - All : More to the VDSL story.
It would seem some are surprised at hearing about Amati's VDSL development, and yet others are shouting, REPEAT. Techie stated it correctly " Back at Supercom96 they announced a 'letter of intent' with NEC. Now they are saying they inked it."
NEC was very interested to work with Amati, as NEC has a large investment in Video an ATM Technology, and needed the missing piece VDSL to get it to the customer.. For those who have not seen it before, I will rerun the second half of my SuperComm Report, where I covered the Amati Press Conference on the "Intent with NEC"
xDSL Report SuperComm 96 part II
by Jim Wilkinson
Space Coast, Florida
The Amati Press Conference, What The Press Did Not Say
Amati Press Confrence - held June 25th - 3pm - SuperComm 96 - Dallas Convention Center
The Amati Press conference was definitely exciting, from an investors point of view. I must include my opinion on the Dallas Convention Centers lack of attention to noise. The placement of the Press conference Cubicle Approx. 18 feet wide and 45 long, was located at the bottom of an escalator in a large open hall, The International Reception Area was located just 20 feet away. The Hall sound permeated the open-topped Press Conference area making it difficult to hear. The Dallas Convention Center gave no thought to the importance of the Press, and the importance of the news coming from these companies. The Cubicle area looked as if it were an afterthought. I used an 8mm CC to record the entire PR. No offense to Tac, but as long as Dr. Cioffi was present, it would have been better to let him open up and explain VDSL technology..
Tac Berry opened with an explanation of Amati and her technology. Hard to hear, mike held at chest level. I was in the third row of 6 or 7 rows. Tac Berry turned over the Show to Jim Steenburgen for the NEC announcement. In the following, any comments from (JW), are preceded with and terminated with " * ". The questions were hard to hear, I have paraphrased them..
The rest is directly from Jim Steenburgen, .
* Discussing NEC and chip manufacturing .5 micron technology available, .35 micron 2.5 years away, and working towards .25 micron. (JW< Each step down using less power.. (they have too if they want to put it in a Laptop.) )*
NEC 1st quarter 97 Production, 2Q mass quantities. Drivers toward this goal: There are several large numbers of field trial deployments that people are trying to implement in these time frames, so the good news is here, NEC has a very large investment in video equipment and servers and the missing key here is VDSL, last mile 5280ft. Their big driver do it quickly, speedily, efficiently, and we're working hard to meet these time frames and we think we can.....
* Question asked on why Amati did not go with Motorola for the VDSL chip*
Motorola was so tied up with ADSL and cable modems it became a resource limitation to them.
To be honest, NEC was very much driven to work with someone in the VDSL area. Just because of the investment they've made in the Video & ATM technology., and they need a last mile solution, in the U.S. that mile solution needs to be VDSL not ADSL.
I would not expect either to have an effect on the other, although there are some thing's that we've actually seen where we may take advantage of the two relationships and using some of the technology to help the other. So there's actually some things like that, that could happen.
* Question: Would NEC be able to immediately offer chip sets?*
There really only is a time lag, only in the fact that we will be developing for them the circuits that go around the chips, and by the time we transfer that, there is somewhat of a lag. giving us a reasonable lead-time. Also we have some other technologies that won't necessarily be included in the basic package if you will --with the modem..........
We have been working on this for over a year, probably about a year 1/2, and in terms of doing VDSL technology, that coupled with the fact of working with NEC and their directly with their FAB people we believe we can implement this very quickly.
* Question: You're pursuing VDSL, before a standard is even set? *
There will be a long battle, but we're going to keep on doing what we're doing and if we have to change some things in the end, we'll do that. But we believe we'll have a chip out before the standard is set, we'll go do that.
I hope this helps to further explain the NEC/AMATI relationship, for those who are new to the thread.
JW@KSC |
