SFA and Broadcom in settop box deal.............
semibiznews.com
Broadcom, Scientific-Atlanta team
in IC development for set-top box
IRVINE, Calif.-- Broadcom Corp. and Scientific-Atlanta Inc. said they are
collaborating in the development of next-generation ICs for advanced digital
set-top boxes for cable television services.
Under the partnership, Irvine-based Broadcom has agreed to supply a
certain percentage of the new ICs to Scientific-Atlanta, which will use the
chips in an advanced digital set-top box slated to become available to
consumers in the year 2000. The arrangement calls for a minimum of
500,000 ICs to be delivered to Scientific-Atlanta during 1999.
"Through the cooperative efforts of Scientific-Atlanta and Broadcom, we are
working to integrate all of the communications signal processing functions for
the Explorer 2000 digital set-top boxes into a single VLSI device," said
Henry Nicholas, president and CEO of Broadcom.
Earlier this year, Scientific-Atlanta announced that a number of multi-channel
service operators In the United States plan to introduce two-way, real-time
services using the company's Digital Interactive Network and Explorer 2000
interactive digital set-top terminals. Currently, Broadcom is shipping a
64/256-QAM demodulator IC for the Explorer 2000 set-top box.
The new IC will integrate a number of functions, including the 64/256-QAM
downstream receiver, QPSK control channel receiver, QPSK/16 upstream
transmitter and the analog front-end, such as 10-bit A/D and D/A
converters.
Scientific-Atlanta' said its advanced Explorer 2000 set-top box supports
high-throughput, two-way communications and it has enough processing
power, memory and graphics to enable a variety of two-way, interactive
applications for consumers. Once fully developed, the set-top box will
provide Internet access, video-on-demand services, electronic commerce
and other Internet provider based applications.
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