Infineon, Broadcom develop ADSL2+ CPE chips

Infineon will make its first foray into the DSL customer premise equipment (CPE) chip market with the release of an integrated ADSL2/2+ chipset on the same day that current DSL chip provider Broadcom unveiled its first ADSL2+ CPE solution.

ADSL2 and ADSL2+ has been a hot topic in the chipset sector. Companies like Conexant, STMicroelectronics, Texas Instruments, LSI Logic and Analog Devices have all launched ADSL2+ solutions.

Despite growing competition, Infineon opted to complement its central office solutions with a CPE device, said Alessandro Norscia, Infineon's director of marketing for broadband CPE products.

Like others, Infineon has taken a module-based approach to developing its Amazon CPE device. The ADSL2/2+ module sports a data pump engine, an ATM segmentation and reassembly (SAR) block, a line driver and analog front-end capabilities. The chip also sports MIPS 4K processor for handling control plane tasks as well as higher-layer processing.

On the interface front, Amazon includes a serial peripheral interface, a PCI 2.2 interface for linking with WLAN solutions, an SDRAM interface and a UART interface. Additionally, the chip offers two 10/100 media access control blocks that are connected through an embedded Layer 2 switch. One Ethernet MAC is accessed through an MII interface while the other is complemented by an on-chip Ethernet PHY for direct connection to a line.

IC approach

Unlike Infineon, Broadcom has opted to take an IC approach to the development of its BCM6348 CPE router chip. It includes a MIPS32 processor code, a SAR block, an ADSL2+ transceiver and an ADSL2+ front-end. On the peripheral front, the chip offers two Fast Ethernet interfaces as well as PCI/Cardbus interface for linking up with WLAN chipsets.

Broadcom's BCM6348 chip is available today at $15 in 10,000-piece quantities. Infineon's Amazon device will enter production in the third quarter and will be priced below $10 in volume.

- Robert Keenan

CommsDesign.com