ADI Contracts Production of ADSL Chipsets to TSMC
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February 14, 2001 (TAIPEI) -- Analog Devices Inc. of the United States announced that it will contract Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., Ltd. to produce its Eagle family of chipsets.
The Eagle family reportedly is the industry's smallest client chipset, and the first two-chip solution for asymmetric digital subscriber line (ADSL) customer premise equipment (CPE).
ADI, with revenue of US$2.58 billion for 2000, is one of world's leading manufacturers of integrated-circuit chips used in analog and digital signal processing applications.
As well as the ADSL chips, ADI has also consigned TSMC, currently the world's largest specialised IC contract manufacturer, to produce digital signal processors (DSPs) for it.
ADI has recently teamed up with Intel Corp. to develop mixture chip of central processing unit and DSP. ADI is the world's second-largest DSP producer after Texas Instruments (TI).
ADI's executives point out that the company has five fabrication plants, or fabs, throughout the world and currently around 60 percent of its products are made at its own factories. However, they note that the company will weigh outsourcing percentage. Last year, the company contracted TSMC to produce as many as 10 million ADSL chips for it.
ADI believes that the market for broadband communications devices is on the rise although the market for computer chips is weakening. Company executives estimate that the company's shipments of Eagle chipsets are set to top 40 million chips a year soon. TSMC will start volume production of the chipsets in July this year, using the 0.25-micron processing technology.
Normally, ADSL equipment manufacturers need to purchase a line driver and receive filters in addition to a two-chip set of data pump and analog front end (AFE). The digital device in the Eagle chipset integrates industry standard bus interfaces with an ADSL DMT (discrete multitone) data pump. The second device is a mixed signal chip that integrates the analog front end and line driver with digital receive filters. The Eagle chipset, according to ADI, is the first true two-chip solution for ADSL CPE applications, delivering the lowest power consumption in the industry.
The company says that the integration technology allows Eagle to reduce 55 percent devices on it and slash costs in ADSL modem production by 30 percent. ADI's Taiwan branch points out that five local system manufacturers have decided to adopt the smart chipset.
ADI is the world's second-largest ADSL chipset maker, after France's Alcatel SA.
(Commercial Times, Taiwan) |
