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Technology Stocks : Terayon - S CDMA player (TERN) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?


To: Bobo who wrote (72)3/11/1999 3:05:00 PM
From: Geof Hollingsworth  Respond to of 1658
 
All good questions to which I have only speculation as answers. I don't think the 1.1 features will matter much in the market one way or the other, so how long it takes them to implement them won't matter either. They had it scheduled for this year when they presented during the road show for the secondary. I don't think the support of the additional modulation schemes will add materially to the cost-would only be the case if the gate-count penalty to include them was significant, which I was told will not be the case. Your final point is the key one-Broadcom is on 4th generation silicon which it is making in volume and can leverage the other parts they are also producing to get advanced processes and volume purchasing from their foundry suppliers. I don't see cost as ever being an advantage which Terayon will enjoy in comparison to Broadcom at the chip level.



To: Bobo who wrote (72)3/12/1999 10:48:00 AM
From: George T. Santamaria  Read Replies (1) | Respond to of 1658
 
It has to be appreciated that Signal-to-Noise Ratio is a key issue in this business. If BRCM has a solution that neatly fits on silicon but cannot function in the current cable plant environment, then we have a moot point.

Let me explain further. Existing Motorola modems rely on old-fashioned QPSK for the uplink modulation. If you look at SFA's web site, theyy take a well defined position on this issue and advocate it for it's robustness. Lower data rate but far more robust. Likewise for S-CDMA as it purports to take the issue a step further by claiming to function in an all-coax network. Whether it does or not, it's a huge advantage to have an uplink scheme that functions at a low S/N ratio.

On the other hand, BRCM's chip set uses 64 QAM type modulation techniques. I think that with cable plant upgrades being the major limitation on broadband expansion, the point regarding BRCM's cost advantage at the chip level is moot.