cabledatacomnews.com
I hadn't seen this perspective before:
BROADCOM ACQUIRES DIGITAL FURNACE
Start-up's Propane Technology Boosts DOCSIS Network
Capacity for IP Telephony and Business Data Services
MARCH 01, 2000
In an effort to strengthen its already dominant position in the DOCSIS silicon market, Broadcom Corp. agreed to acquire start-up Digital Furnace Inc. for $136 million in stock.
The move was particularly aimed at halting the momentum of Terayon Communication Systems Inc., which is aggressively lobbying the North American cable industry to add its proprietary synchronous code division multiple access (S-CDMA) technology to the existing DOCSIS cable modem standard. Investors have cheered the idea, driving Terayon shares up more than $100 in February to a high of $276, yielding a $6 billion market cap, before retreating slightly.
Advanced physical layer (PHY) technologies, such as S-CDMA, increase RF noise immunity and boost upstream transmission capacity, which are beneficial when offering advanced cable IP applications, such as business-class data services and packet telephony.
While Broadcom has developed its own advanced PHY that is likely to be added to the DOCSIS standard, called frequency-agile time division multiple access (FA-TDMA), Terayon and S-CDMA continue to be a thorn in the company's side. By combining Digital Furnace's proprietary technology, called Propane, with its FA-TDMA, Broadcom hopes to offer a superior solution, stopping S-CDMA in its tracks.
Through the use of enhanced media access control (MAC) and TCP/IP transmission algorithms, Digital Furnace says its technology can increase DOCSIS 1.1 network capacity as much as 300 percent for targeted data and IP telephony applications. Additionally, the company expects to reduce transmission latency, which is critical for voice services.
"We use a combination of tactics which span several different layers in the OSI (open system interconnect) model and are proprietary add-ons to the DOCSIS 1.1 specification," said Daniel Howard, vice president and chief technical officer, Digital Furnace. "We get the capacity increase by more efficiently transporting the information, as opposed to using data compression." |
