Broadcom Bolsters Voice Plans
By BILL MENEZES July 26, 1999
Broadcom Corp. announced that it is acquiring HotHaus Technologies Inc., viewing the Canadian company's packet-network software as a key to its own plans for the voice-over-Internet protocol (VoIP) market.
Broadcom, the leading maker of standards-based chips for cable modems, said the $280 million stock deal brings a proven software solution that will enable it to produce VoIP-network gateways for cable-modem and other networks at significantly lower costs than current equipment by using fixed digital-signal processors, instead of programmable DSPs.
"Although programmable DSPs are adequate to do the job, they are not necessarily cost-effective or power-effective for driving consumer applications," Broadcom vice president of marketing Tim Lindenfelser said. "Our goal with this acquisition is to find that optimal combination of hardware and software for delivery of voice over a broadband-packet network."
Five-year-old HotHaus, based in Vancouver, British Columbia, already works with such Broadcom cable-modem customers as AT&T Broadband & Internet Services, Nortel Networks and Com21 Inc.
Its "HausWare xChange" software essentially packetizes circuit-switched data for voice, fax or data calls over IP, frame-relay and asynchronous-transfer-mode networks.
The solution envisioned by Broadcom would have HotHaus' software embedded in its own "system-on-a-chip," incorporated into a customer-premise gateway linked to a broadband network. The gateway might be a cable or digital-subscriber-line modem, a set-top box, or even a network-interface unit sitting outside of a house.
Inside the home, the device links personal computers, IP telephones, digital set-top boxes and other appliances at speeds of up to 10 megabits per second over existing phone lines using the chip technology developed by Epigram Inc., which Broadcom recently bought.
Multipurpose programmable DSPs such as those produced by Texas Instruments Inc. are integral parts of network or enterprise-oriented VoIP hardware. But Broadcom believes that as the market focus for the technology increasingly turns to the consumer side, solutions that require multiple processors will be too expensive to support mass deployment.
Embedding the HotHaus software on a fixed DSP such as those made by Broadcom would help to reduce the total bill of materials for a gateway to the point where it might sell for $300 at retail. A programmable DSP-powered version could be three times that much, Broadcom claimed.
"Our reference designs have HotHaus running on TI DSPs," Lindenfelser said, "but longer term, this market is going to be dominated by embedded DSPs, not programmable DSPs."
He added that cost would increasingly be a crucial element for operators such as AT&T Broadband that shift the packet-switched component of their voice networks closer to the end-user. This will require customer-premise gateways that are cheap enough to support mass deployment.
AT&T Broadband could begin migrating from circuit-switched to packet-switched networks by late next year, and Broadcom has already submitted VoIP reference designs using HotHaus' software, Lindenfelser said.
"The idea is for them to have the overall solution, which is both hardware and software," said Jay Srivasta, a silicon analyst for Dataquest Inc. "It almost seemed like a natural acquisition by which Broadcom is making sure their competitors don't have the ability to use HotHaus software on their silicon."
HotHaus director of marketing Garry Shearer said his company spotted the benefits of hardwiring its software onto fixed DSPs during its cable-modem work with Com21.
"We realized that general-purpose DSPs were not going to be cost-effective, and they created artificial boundaries between hardware and software that limited the performance of VoIP," Shearer added.
A shift away from programmable DSPs may represent a competitive stab at TI, the world's dominant chip maker and recent buyer of Broadcom rival Libit Signal Processing Ltd.
TI believes programmable DSPs will remain a crucial element in consumer broadband access, especially in the dynamic environment of IP-data streams.
"I think we can be pretty cost-competitive with a programmable-DSP solution, where the flexibility far outweighs the cost savings you'd achieve," TI manager of DSP strategic marketing Leon Adams said. "Our perspective is that the programmable DSP is an excellent fit for voice processing. That's why it's been such a popular device in that area."
TI reported last week that its second-quarter DSP revenue overall jumped 23 percent from a year earlier, powered partly by demand from the digital wireless-phone industry.
The company has also been moving aggressively to expand its IP-telephony portfolio, acquiring VoIP software developer Telogy Networks Inc. weeks before snapping up Libit.
"Our plan is to incorporate programmable DSPs based over both our current DSL capabilities and the cable capabilities we acquired with Libit," Adams said.
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