>If that is right, then the Spice chip is more a loop technology than a backbone technology.
>What's the point?? VTSS largely works on the SONET backbone, and NOT taking the data droped off by SONET, and getting it to the curb.
robert.
thanks for taking the time to respond. for what it's worth, i did a bit more digging and it seems silicon spice's vin dham has somewhat of a checkered past: while he was a 16-year veteran of intel, he "resigned" after the infamous FPU bug, joined AMD, and left a couple of years later after the K6 yield crashes.
here's another piece on their 'vaporware.'
thanks again,
-chris.
-----
EETimes
April 13, 1998, Issue: 1002
Section: Business
Microprocessor veteran Dham takes helm at telecom-IC startup
Craig Matsumoto
Mountain View, Calif. - Vinod Dham, a key figure in the microprocessor wars of the past few years, has resurfaced as chief executive officer of telecom-minded semiconductor startup Silicon Spice Inc.
Dham officially stepped into his position at Silicon Spice earlier this month, after more than three months of what he called active involvement with the company.
The move puts Dham back into a startup after a two-year stint with Advanced Micro Devices Inc.
A seminal figure in processor circles, Dham led the team that engineered Intel Corp.'s Pentium and Pentium Pro chips. He left Intel for Nexgen, a scrappy startup that was creating its own PC microprocessor.
Shortly thereafter, AMD snatched up Nexgen. Dham oversaw development of the K6, which was derived largely from Nexgen's technology.
Dham, who clearly relished Nexgen's startup atmosphere, left AMD in November. In considering his next job, he decided to abandon microprocessors, convinced that communications would hold a better chance for great innovations. He also wanted another crack at working for a startup.
"My heart really was to go back and run a company on my own," Dham said. "For me personally, it's very intellectually challenging to be here. You don't get a chance like that when you're inside Intel or AMD or Cyrix. The job descriptions get sliced so thin that at the end of the day, you wonder what your contribution was."
Founded by Robert Ryan, who was founder and chairman of Ascend Communications Inc., Silicon Spice has completed two rounds of private financing, totaling more than $10 million, from sources including venture-capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caulfield & Byers.
The company is being coy about its products, which use a new signal-processing architecture to deliver higher network bandwidth to the home. It's a crowded market, but Silicon Spice has a technological lead over existing telecom-chip makers, Dham said.
Silicon Spice is working toward first silicon now. It has lined up a foundry partner and has shared its concept with a few potential customers, Dham said.
"The breakthroughs or discoveries are behind us at this point," said Gary Banta, vice president of marketing.
Officials declined to comment further but did say that Silicon Spice is not taking on the overcrowded digital-subscriber-line industry.
Copyright (c) 1998 CMP Media Inc. |
