"Right now our capacity is all taken up, and we don't have enough," Jiang Shangzhou of SMIC tells Reuters. Ulrich Schumacher at Grace Semi has been operating at 100 percent capacityLantiq_logo since September. Mark Lapedus in EE Times writes "Not long ago, chip makers could not buy an order amid the terrible downturn. Now, amid the upturn, there are widespread reports of component shortages in the supply chain." Memory chip prices are actually going up, with Samsung doing particularly well.
My checks across the industry suggest things are not nearly that intense. Don't panic. Everyone has to carefully plan, but it's rare that an order that ordinarily would be filled in 30 days is delayed. Demand for DSL chips is good but not enough to seriously strain supply. Chip demand is ultimately driven by sales of the product that include chips; the world economy simply hasn't expanded that much. It's far more likely the industry situation was caused by companies in previous quarters conserving cash by keeping inventories low and now catching up. John Pitzer of Credit Suisse is strongly optimistic about semiconductor stocks, but also notes "there is double ordering in the current environment." Digitimes reports wafer prices are up, but we're talking perhaps a dime a chip, not huge price increases that need to be hedged. broadcom_logo
Several times I've watched forecasts of chip shortages become self-fulfilling prophecies. Companies double and triple order "just to be safe." The splash of orders creates a real bottleneck and then chaos when things catch up. I call it the "Johnny Carson" problem. The TV host made a joke about toilet paper shortages on the east coast of the U.S. The next day, everybody bought all they could and there (temporarily) was a real shortage.
DSL net new subscribers are down, but most of the chip demand comes from customers switching to a new carrier and getting a new modem. Wherever competition is strong, modem chip sales are likely doing well. In addition, several very large networks, starting with AT&T and BT, are upgrading from ADSL to VDSL Written by Dave Burstein
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Mar 30, 2010
Finally: AT&T femtos
femtooysterRandall Stephenson will put 10M AT&T femtocells across the U.S., I reported in 2008. He told Wall Street that a half-billion dollar investment in femtos would save him the equivalent of $3B in spectrum. They've now officially launched, but at a high price ($100-150) to limit early demand. Cisco is selling femtos to AT&T for about $50 (very large quantities). They save bandwidth (think reducing iPhone problems) and make customers happy, so T's logical strategy is to include a femto in most bundles. 2Wire, part owned by AT&T, discussed a gateway with a femto included three years ago.
Checking with parts suppliers I'm finding that including a femto will only add $20-30 to the cost in the near future, and be a natural to include with every U-Verse order. T has invested in their chip supplier, picoChip, rapidly introducing integrated chips that bring down the cost. Randall has a powerful incentive to move quickly after they resolve the last few bugs; wall street is downgrading for reputation issues due to iPhone problems,
4-10 devices can connect via each femto. Think several phones, the meter for the smartgrid service, electric appliances to switch on or off for automatic energy savings, and others not yet dreamed of. No one is doing it yet,
but the range of 50-250 feet (typical) is enough to allow others nearby to log on and each call only requires 16-32K, only a minor imposition. AT&T will have a cloud across the country. So will Vodafone SFR in France and Softbank in Japan. Ivan Seidenberg gave me an encouraging smile when I asked whether Verizon will do similar, but no official comment. Stephen Lawson of IDG expects Verizon to wait on femtos until LTE in 2011 or 2012.
Femtos are incumbents' not-so-secret weapon to knock out wireless only carriers like O2, Sprint, and T-Mobile U.S.. Incumbents selling wired broadband can easily include a femto in the package, one more reason most people expect Verizon and AT&T to become even more dominant.
Kittur Nagesh of Cisco is enthusiastic about what's coming next. "Our femto is more than just for phones. Our customers will be able to connect smart electric meters, baby cams, health alert systems, and up to ten devices. The home security system can send you an sms if it detects anything."
Femtos still have technical problems, Bill Ray at The Register finds. �The joy of having coverage where there was none is hard to knock. Except when it's not working, of course. Our own Sure Signal box has been playing up for the last day or two, and Vodafone's forums are now awash with users complaining of intermittent connection failure.� It's still a new technology.
Separately, Ubiquisys put out a press release claiming a breakthrough by reducing the price to under $100, well above the $50 price I've previously reported AT&T was offered. The price to AT&T is a special bid for quantity millions, and I'm told is little more than the current price of the parts in more common quantities. Cisco and Cisco's suppliers made the choice to �forward price,� winning the crucial customer and hoping to make money over time. Alcatel did that with DSLAMs in the 1990's, winning the Bell orders by undercutting other bids by 50% and selling below cost. It worked out well, as the high Bell volumes quickly brought down the cost and produced a profit. 15 years later, Alcatel remains #1 worldwide in DSLAMs.Written by Dave Burstein
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Checking with parts suppliers I'm finding that including a femto will only add $20-30 to the cost in the near future, and be a natural to include with every U-Verse order. T has invested in their chip supplier, picoChip, rapidly introducing integrated chips that bring down the cost. Randall has a powerful incentive to move quickly after they resolve the last few bugs; wall street is downgrading for reputation issues due to iPhone problems,
4-10 devices can connect via each femto. Think several phones, the meter for the smartgrid service, electric appliances to switch on or off for automatic energy savings, and others not yet dreamed of. No one is doing it yet,
but the range of 50-250 feet (typical) is enough to allow others nearby to log on and each call only requires 16-32K, only a minor imposition. AT&T will have a cloud across the country. So will Vodafone SFR in France and Softbank in Japan. Ivan Seidenberg gave me an encouraging smile when I asked whether Verizon will do similar, but no official comment. Stephen Lawson of IDG expects Verizon to wait on femtos until LTE in 2011 or 2012.
Femtos are incumbents' not-so-secret weapon to knock out wireless only carriers like O2, Sprint, and T-Mobile U.S.. Incumbents selling wired broadband can easily include a femto in the package, one more reason most people expect Verizon and AT&T to become even more dominant.
Kittur Nagesh of Cisco is enthusiastic about what's coming next. "Our femto is more than just for phones. Our customers will be able to connect smart electric meters, baby cams, health alert systems, and up to ten devices. The home security system can send you an sms if it detects anything."
Femtos still have technical problems, Bill Ray at The Register finds. �The joy of having coverage where there was none is hard to knock. Except when it's not working, of course. Our own Sure Signal box has been playing up for the last day or two, and Vodafone's forums are now awash with users complaining of intermittent connection failure.� It's still a new technology.
Separately, Ubiquisys put out a press release claiming a breakthrough by reducing the price to under $100, well above the $50 price I've previously reported AT&T was offered. The price to AT&T is a special bid for quantity millions, and I'm told is little more than the current price of the parts in more common quantities. Cisco and Cisco's suppliers made the choice to �forward price,� winning the crucial customer and hoping to make money over time. Alcatel did that with DSLAMs in the 1990's, winning the Bell orders by undercutting other bids by 50% and selling below cost. It worked out well, as the high Bell volumes quickly brought down the cost and produced a profit. 15 years later, Alcatel remains #1 worldwide in DSLAMs.Written by Dave Burstein
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Mar 29, 2010
2009: China up 22M to 104M and domination
Point_Topic_2009China added three times as many broadband subscriptions in 2009 than the U.S. and the 18M subscriber gap is almost as many as the total broadband customers in France or Britain. The ever-invaluable Point-Topic figures show Mexico and India surprise third and fourth. Argentina, Russia and especially Brazil are doing better than many realize, and Vietnam added almost as many subscribers as Italy or Britain.
China, India, and Russia all grew by over 20%. The U.S., Germany, France, Spain, Sweden, Belgium, and Italy all grew 7-10%; Britain and Canada were a little lower.
Japan, with 80% fiber availability, has the best built Internet in the world but only grew 3%. The 65% household penetration is comparable to Germany or Spain. Effective prices have gone up substantially in the last few years as the government has allowed NTT fiber to dominate after some of the most vigorous DSL competition in the world early in the decade. Japan has long had the most advanced mobile data devices; I suspect what's going on is that many Japanese are content with mobile.
Taiwan's 1% growth rate probably has a similar cause.
Many thanks to Point-Topic for allowing me access to their comprehensive data and their extremely easy to use tools. Compared to other market researchers, their prices are very reasonable. Written by Dave Burstein
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China, India, and Russia all grew by over 20%. The U.S., Germany, France, Spain, Sweden, Belgium, and Italy all grew 7-10%; Britain and Canada were a little lower.
Japan, with 80% fiber availability, has the best built Internet in the world but only grew 3%. The 65% household penetration is comparable to Germany or Spain. Effective prices have gone up substantially in the last few years as the government has allowed NTT fiber to dominate after some of the most vigorous DSL competition in the world early in the decade. Japan has long had the most advanced mobile data devices; I suspect what's going on is that many Japanese are content with mobile.
Taiwan's 1% growth rate probably has a similar cause.
Many thanks to Point-Topic for allowing me access to their comprehensive data and their extremely easy to use tools. Compared to other market researchers, their prices are very reasonable. Written by Dave Burstein
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Mar 28, 2010
DSL 2013: Double and Triple Speeds Possible, Limited Deployment
Claude_Shannon_sets_limitsJohn Cioffi amazed the FCC hearing with talk of 200 megabit bonded VDSL with DSM3, which one carrier believes will make fiber unnecessary. Infineon and ECI in Paris both demonstrated working DSM3, although field units are a few years away. Infineon and ECI in Paris. VDSL bonding is working according to carrier engineers testing it in the field. Over modest distances like 1,000 feet two pair can deliver 200 megabits without breaking Shannon's Law.
But rather few homes are likely to be offered more than today's 10-20 meg in the U.S. Few in Europe will be offered double speed bonding. DSM3 will come from the labs to practicality over the next few years and likely be standard on new DSLAMs. Few carriers will replace existing DSLAMs any time soon and it will probably be a decade before most homes are upgraded. Working technology doesn't mean anything if the carriers don't deploy it.
10-15% with marginal IPTV speeds are likely to be offered bonded service. AT&T almost certainly will use bonding offer TV to homes that can't get 25 megabits without it. That's typical of homes 3,000-5,000 feet from a U-Verse DSLAM. There may be as many as 10M homes that need bonding to receive U-Verse, three or four times as many as the first U-Verse planners expected. DT and others offering HD TV will probably do similar although for fewer homes.
Virtually no carriers today have plans to offer bonding except to bring distant homes to 20-30 meg for HD TV. The current RFPs, which are for the equipment for the next 2-5 years, almost never are planned for widespread bonding. With massive firings of network staff continuing, they are reluctant to make changes in their system. One regulator thinks it's a good idea to offer a second line to the lowest speed homes, but doesn't expect that to be required.
For the TV homes using bonding, about half of the bandwidth will be dedicated to TV. So even for those home, the effective download speed will be 10-15 megabits and upload will be 1-3 megabits. Except for fiber to the basement huge in Japan and now beginning in New York and other American cities - the hybrid DSL/FTTN offering will be closer to 1 up, 10 down the 100 megabits routine with fiber home.
DSM3 noise cancellation, the other major improvement likely, is 1-3 years from the field. Because it requires replacing the line card or the entire DSLAM, it will mostly go to new builds. The 40-50 million homes passed by U-Verse and similar cannot be inexpensively upgraded. There's no reason to think many will be replaced in less than 5, or perhaps 10 years. So DSM is crucial for new equipment and particular situations, but it will be a decade before it has much of an impact in existing deployments.
I probably underestimated the cost of bonding when I said it was $200 right now but likely to go down towards $50 fairly quickly based on the increased cost of the modem and extra DSLAM port. Stagg Newman reminds me that it requires a technician to the home in most cases. If they are installing IPTV, they need that truck roll anyway. But for an upgrade, especially from a U-Verse field terminal, that also requires a technician.
Takeaway: DSL, except from the basement, should be considered as 5-15 meg of data down, 1-3 meg up. Networks take a decade to rebuild, so there's no magic coming from the technology. Written by Dave Burstein
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But rather few homes are likely to be offered more than today's 10-20 meg in the U.S. Few in Europe will be offered double speed bonding. DSM3 will come from the labs to practicality over the next few years and likely be standard on new DSLAMs. Few carriers will replace existing DSLAMs any time soon and it will probably be a decade before most homes are upgraded. Working technology doesn't mean anything if the carriers don't deploy it.
10-15% with marginal IPTV speeds are likely to be offered bonded service. AT&T almost certainly will use bonding offer TV to homes that can't get 25 megabits without it. That's typical of homes 3,000-5,000 feet from a U-Verse DSLAM. There may be as many as 10M homes that need bonding to receive U-Verse, three or four times as many as the first U-Verse planners expected. DT and others offering HD TV will probably do similar although for fewer homes.
Virtually no carriers today have plans to offer bonding except to bring distant homes to 20-30 meg for HD TV. The current RFPs, which are for the equipment for the next 2-5 years, almost never are planned for widespread bonding. With massive firings of network staff continuing, they are reluctant to make changes in their system. One regulator thinks it's a good idea to offer a second line to the lowest speed homes, but doesn't expect that to be required.
For the TV homes using bonding, about half of the bandwidth will be dedicated to TV. So even for those home, the effective download speed will be 10-15 megabits and upload will be 1-3 megabits. Except for fiber to the basement huge in Japan and now beginning in New York and other American cities - the hybrid DSL/FTTN offering will be closer to 1 up, 10 down the 100 megabits routine with fiber home.
DSM3 noise cancellation, the other major improvement likely, is 1-3 years from the field. Because it requires replacing the line card or the entire DSLAM, it will mostly go to new builds. The 40-50 million homes passed by U-Verse and similar cannot be inexpensively upgraded. There's no reason to think many will be replaced in less than 5, or perhaps 10 years. So DSM is crucial for new equipment and particular situations, but it will be a decade before it has much of an impact in existing deployments.
I probably underestimated the cost of bonding when I said it was $200 right now but likely to go down towards $50 fairly quickly based on the increased cost of the modem and extra DSLAM port. Stagg Newman reminds me that it requires a technician to the home in most cases. If they are installing IPTV, they need that truck roll anyway. But for an upgrade, especially from a U-Verse field terminal, that also requires a technician.
Takeaway: DSL, except from the basement, should be considered as 5-15 meg of data down, 1-3 meg up. Networks take a decade to rebuild, so there's no magic coming from the technology. Written by Dave Burstein
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Retailer acknowledges shipping fake Intel chips
SAN FRANCISCO—An online retailer acknowledged Monday (March 8) that it unwittingly shipped counterfeit ICs to some customers who ordered Intel Corp.'s Core i7-920 microprocessors.
The retailer, Newegg.com, said it terminated its relationship with the supplier that provided the devices, identified as wholesaler Ipex Infotech Inc. Newegg said the supplier originally said it had mistakenly sent Newegg "demo units," but that the company later discovered that the chips were counterfeit. Newegg said it is conducting a full investigation into the incident.
The incidents of counterfeit Core i7 920s were reported Monday by several publications, including the Wall Street Journal and PC Magazine. A number of people who ordered the chips instead received crude knock offs, described as a piece of plastic that resembled a chip, according to the Wall Street Journal report.
The counterfeiting of electronic components has been on the rise in recent years despite increased efforts at corporate and governmental levels to fight the crime, according to a report released last month by the U.S. Bureau of Industry and Security. The report described the counterfeiting of ICs as a threat to the health of the industry supply chain and recommended several steps for fighting counterfeiting.
Newegg (Whittier, Calif.) said it top priority is to proactively reach out to all customers who were affected to ensure their absolute satisfaction. The company said it has already sent out a number of replacement units.
Dylan McGrath(03/08/2010 8:32 PM EST)
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The retailer, Newegg.com, said it terminated its relationship with the supplier that provided the devices, identified as wholesaler Ipex Infotech Inc. Newegg said the supplier originally said it had mistakenly sent Newegg "demo units," but that the company later discovered that the chips were counterfeit. Newegg said it is conducting a full investigation into the incident.
The incidents of counterfeit Core i7 920s were reported Monday by several publications, including the Wall Street Journal and PC Magazine. A number of people who ordered the chips instead received crude knock offs, described as a piece of plastic that resembled a chip, according to the Wall Street Journal report.
The counterfeiting of electronic components has been on the rise in recent years despite increased efforts at corporate and governmental levels to fight the crime, according to a report released last month by the U.S. Bureau of Industry and Security. The report described the counterfeiting of ICs as a threat to the health of the industry supply chain and recommended several steps for fighting counterfeiting.
Newegg (Whittier, Calif.) said it top priority is to proactively reach out to all customers who were affected to ensure their absolute satisfaction. The company said it has already sent out a number of replacement units.
Dylan McGrath(03/08/2010 8:32 PM EST)
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Mar 26, 2010
Engineer's suicide throws light on iPhone mania
SAN JOSE, Calif. — A 25-year old engineer working for a company that assembles Apple iPhones reportedly took his life last week after losing a prototype of a future Apple handset. Sun Danyong of Hon Hai Precision Co. Ltd. in Shenzhen, China, jumped from his twelfth floor apartment building after reporting the incident and being questioned by company security officials, reports said.
The Daily Tech reported the story on Tuesday. Since then many other news outlets have followed suit including a report in today's Wall Street Journal.
Hon Hai has suspended the security official who questioned Sun, and China officials are investigating the incident according to reports. Hon Hai is a branch of Taiwan's Foxconn Technology Group. Both Foxconn and Apple officials expressed regret over the suicide.
The incident throws a spotlight on the tensions between the heavy cloak of secrecy Apple Inc. maintains around its unannounced products and the intense drive from competitors and the media to get early access to the specifications of those products.
"The real fear in losing a prototype is massive amount of counterfeiting and reverse engineering that goes on in China," said Allan Yogasingam, a technology analyst at Semiconductor Insights (Ottawa), a sister division of EE Times.
Yogasingam obtained handsets that attempted to mimic the Apple iPhone as much as two months before the original iPhone was released. He wrote an analysis and gave presentations on several of the designs within weeks of the iPhone launch.
"Some of these clones were designed simply based upon images of the iPhone these companies found on the Internet," Yogasingam said. "If they were to get their hands on a prototype of the iPhone, they could make an almost identical handset with cheaper parts that could severely damage Apple's sales," he added.
Apple is well known for keeping a tight lock on its partners regarding components used in its products, even after product teardowns have made those details a matter of public record. For example, the former chief executive of Infineon refused to comment on the use of his company's baseband chips in the original iPhone, even months after the handset had shipped and its contents had been publically reported by teardown services.
News about what chips Apple uses is highly coveted. Prior to some Apple iPhone launches, media companies have flown journalists to countries that would be the first to open retail outlets so they would have a few hours lead in tearing down handsets and posting details to their Web sites.
The Hon Hai engineer's suicide would not be the first in a situation involving an individual in China seen to fail his company. Executives involved in scandals that found lead paint used on toys made in China also took their lives. Rick Merritt(07/23/2009 3:09 PM EDT)
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The Daily Tech reported the story on Tuesday. Since then many other news outlets have followed suit including a report in today's Wall Street Journal.
Hon Hai has suspended the security official who questioned Sun, and China officials are investigating the incident according to reports. Hon Hai is a branch of Taiwan's Foxconn Technology Group. Both Foxconn and Apple officials expressed regret over the suicide.
The incident throws a spotlight on the tensions between the heavy cloak of secrecy Apple Inc. maintains around its unannounced products and the intense drive from competitors and the media to get early access to the specifications of those products.
"The real fear in losing a prototype is massive amount of counterfeiting and reverse engineering that goes on in China," said Allan Yogasingam, a technology analyst at Semiconductor Insights (Ottawa), a sister division of EE Times.
Yogasingam obtained handsets that attempted to mimic the Apple iPhone as much as two months before the original iPhone was released. He wrote an analysis and gave presentations on several of the designs within weeks of the iPhone launch.
"Some of these clones were designed simply based upon images of the iPhone these companies found on the Internet," Yogasingam said. "If they were to get their hands on a prototype of the iPhone, they could make an almost identical handset with cheaper parts that could severely damage Apple's sales," he added.
Apple is well known for keeping a tight lock on its partners regarding components used in its products, even after product teardowns have made those details a matter of public record. For example, the former chief executive of Infineon refused to comment on the use of his company's baseband chips in the original iPhone, even months after the handset had shipped and its contents had been publically reported by teardown services.
News about what chips Apple uses is highly coveted. Prior to some Apple iPhone launches, media companies have flown journalists to countries that would be the first to open retail outlets so they would have a few hours lead in tearing down handsets and posting details to their Web sites.
The Hon Hai engineer's suicide would not be the first in a situation involving an individual in China seen to fail his company. Executives involved in scandals that found lead paint used on toys made in China also took their lives. Rick Merritt(07/23/2009 3:09 PM EDT)
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Mar 23, 2010
One-stop shop provides easy-to-use USB 3.0 IP
When looking to support its customers' adoption of the new emerging USB (Universal Serial Bus) standard, the Synopsys DesignWare SuperSpeed USB 3.0 IP (intellectual-property) engineering team wanted to ensure interoperability and ease of use by providing a single-vendor approach—from instantiation of the on-chip IP through certification and test.
The approach optimizes both area and performance. For example, it requires only one external reference-clock input and one external calibration resistor, which the high-speed and SuperSpeed operational modes share. In addition, the IP is compatible with a range of technology nodes—from the most advanced processes to older ones more suitable for low-volume or cost-sensitive applications.
Gervais Fong, product-marketing manager, cites some challenges and motivations for the team's approach. He notes that high-speed USB 2.0 runs at 480 Mbps, whereas SuperSpeed USB 3.0 runs at 5 Gbps. “The USB 3.0 specification includes the requirement to support all four USB speeds—low speed, full speed, high speed, and now the new SuperSpeed,” he says. “We find from an IP perspective that providing a complete solution to customers instead of giving them individual blocks makes it easier for them to integrate and provides faster time to market at lower cost. At the system level, we provide a complete USB solution consisting of the PHY [physical layer], the controller, the verification IP, and the reference drivers. We try to be the one-stop shop to make it easy for the design engineers to quickly and successfully implement USB 3.0 in their ASIC designs.”
Robert Lefferts, R&D director at the company, says that Synopsys also focuses on applying the resources and extra time and effort necessary to take the IP through certification and compliance testing. Combining certain functions expedites this process. “If we broke apart the SuperSpeed functionality from the standard USB 2 functionality, we couldn't follow through,” he says. “Attaching all the functionality together into one solution was a fairly big undertaking, but it helped get a complete solution that we can verify. One of the first things we looked at was crosstalk through the connector. How much margin would we need to take into account to handle that additional crosstalk of combining the 480-Mbps and 5-Gbps functions?” If the team had just broken the problem in half, he says, the customer would have had to worry about the answer to that question later.
Subramaniam Aravindhan, R&D manager at the company, comments on the USB 3.0 controller: “If you have separate 2.0 and 3.0 controllers, you need to have two subsystems—two bus interfaces—and that increases integration and verification costs. One major concern is software drivers. If you have a 2.0 programming model that is different from the 3.0 [model], you need to write different software drivers, and you need to validate the two drivers. Having a combined software model for 2.0 and 3.0 created a large initial effort for us, but, from the long-term point of view, it's a clean, complete, single solution.”
Lefferts cites one challenge of combining functions into one device. “One of the logistical problems for us was that the project involved design teams at seven locations.” Synopsys had to orchestrate those teams, which were in the United States, Canada, India, and Armenia, to deliver the final product.
Working out the logistics had a beneficial result, explains Lefferts. Two years ago, IP teams didn't tend to overlap. For example, USB 2.0 and high-speed SERDES (serializer/deserializer) teams were relatively isolated. “As a result of trying to go after a full solution for USB 3.0, all those barriers are down,” he says. “If customers have an issue, it doesn't matter whether it's on the high-speed 480-Mbps or SuperSpeed 5-Gbps side. There are people they can call now that understand both.”
Lefferts also addresses test issues. “The other feature we've implemented in the USB 3.0 solution came out of some of the work we've done on some of our other standards-based IP,” he says. “A lot of our customers for PCIe [Peripheral Component Interconnect Express] started out working with PCI at much lower frequencies. They had never worked with anything over a gigabit per second, and, when they went to PCIe Generation 1 at 2.5 Gbps, there was obviously a learning curve from a signal-integrity perspective. So we build our IP with diagnostic and debug capabilities to help them isolate problems. In this case, we are working with customers that were working at 480 Mbps and now are working at 5 Gbps. They might not even own a real-time scope that's even capable of looking at the signal. What we've done on our SERDES in general is to provide functions to be able to help separate where the problems are—whether it's a signal integrity-issue or it's a functional issue. We try to make our IP not only easy to use and integrate but also easy to debug so you can isolate and work on problems very quickly.”
Lefferts points out that manufacturers tend to implement other high-speed serial-I/O standards in advanced process technologies, whereas they may deploy USB 3.0, which provides a high-speed interface to some of the lowest-cost electronics devices available, on older process nodes. Consequently, the team had to address many technology nodes in a short period of time. Synopsys now has customers who have first silicon back and who will be taping out for volume production this year. By Rick Nelson, Editor-in-Chief -- EDN,
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The approach optimizes both area and performance. For example, it requires only one external reference-clock input and one external calibration resistor, which the high-speed and SuperSpeed operational modes share. In addition, the IP is compatible with a range of technology nodes—from the most advanced processes to older ones more suitable for low-volume or cost-sensitive applications.
Gervais Fong, product-marketing manager, cites some challenges and motivations for the team's approach. He notes that high-speed USB 2.0 runs at 480 Mbps, whereas SuperSpeed USB 3.0 runs at 5 Gbps. “The USB 3.0 specification includes the requirement to support all four USB speeds—low speed, full speed, high speed, and now the new SuperSpeed,” he says. “We find from an IP perspective that providing a complete solution to customers instead of giving them individual blocks makes it easier for them to integrate and provides faster time to market at lower cost. At the system level, we provide a complete USB solution consisting of the PHY [physical layer], the controller, the verification IP, and the reference drivers. We try to be the one-stop shop to make it easy for the design engineers to quickly and successfully implement USB 3.0 in their ASIC designs.”
Robert Lefferts, R&D director at the company, says that Synopsys also focuses on applying the resources and extra time and effort necessary to take the IP through certification and compliance testing. Combining certain functions expedites this process. “If we broke apart the SuperSpeed functionality from the standard USB 2 functionality, we couldn't follow through,” he says. “Attaching all the functionality together into one solution was a fairly big undertaking, but it helped get a complete solution that we can verify. One of the first things we looked at was crosstalk through the connector. How much margin would we need to take into account to handle that additional crosstalk of combining the 480-Mbps and 5-Gbps functions?” If the team had just broken the problem in half, he says, the customer would have had to worry about the answer to that question later.
Subramaniam Aravindhan, R&D manager at the company, comments on the USB 3.0 controller: “If you have separate 2.0 and 3.0 controllers, you need to have two subsystems—two bus interfaces—and that increases integration and verification costs. One major concern is software drivers. If you have a 2.0 programming model that is different from the 3.0 [model], you need to write different software drivers, and you need to validate the two drivers. Having a combined software model for 2.0 and 3.0 created a large initial effort for us, but, from the long-term point of view, it's a clean, complete, single solution.”
Lefferts cites one challenge of combining functions into one device. “One of the logistical problems for us was that the project involved design teams at seven locations.” Synopsys had to orchestrate those teams, which were in the United States, Canada, India, and Armenia, to deliver the final product.
Working out the logistics had a beneficial result, explains Lefferts. Two years ago, IP teams didn't tend to overlap. For example, USB 2.0 and high-speed SERDES (serializer/deserializer) teams were relatively isolated. “As a result of trying to go after a full solution for USB 3.0, all those barriers are down,” he says. “If customers have an issue, it doesn't matter whether it's on the high-speed 480-Mbps or SuperSpeed 5-Gbps side. There are people they can call now that understand both.”
Lefferts also addresses test issues. “The other feature we've implemented in the USB 3.0 solution came out of some of the work we've done on some of our other standards-based IP,” he says. “A lot of our customers for PCIe [Peripheral Component Interconnect Express] started out working with PCI at much lower frequencies. They had never worked with anything over a gigabit per second, and, when they went to PCIe Generation 1 at 2.5 Gbps, there was obviously a learning curve from a signal-integrity perspective. So we build our IP with diagnostic and debug capabilities to help them isolate problems. In this case, we are working with customers that were working at 480 Mbps and now are working at 5 Gbps. They might not even own a real-time scope that's even capable of looking at the signal. What we've done on our SERDES in general is to provide functions to be able to help separate where the problems are—whether it's a signal integrity-issue or it's a functional issue. We try to make our IP not only easy to use and integrate but also easy to debug so you can isolate and work on problems very quickly.”
Lefferts points out that manufacturers tend to implement other high-speed serial-I/O standards in advanced process technologies, whereas they may deploy USB 3.0, which provides a high-speed interface to some of the lowest-cost electronics devices available, on older process nodes. Consequently, the team had to address many technology nodes in a short period of time. Synopsys now has customers who have first silicon back and who will be taping out for volume production this year. By Rick Nelson, Editor-in-Chief -- EDN,
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Mar 21, 2010
Vitesse zeros in on carrier-Ethernet switch needs
The explosion of interest in CE (carrier Ethernet) seems to be at the front of everyone’s mind these days. In case you haven’t been following the networking market lately, the basic story is this: Just as wireless service providers and conventional telephone-service providers decided to evolve from their legacy switched networks and synchronous rings into Internet-compatible packet networks, they faced a coincidence of three massive trends: the explosion of data traffic in cellular networks, the allure of delivering high-definition television through IP (Internet Protocol) packets to homes, and the rumor of a huge shift toward cloud computing.
The result for both wireless backhaul networks and the wired infrastructure behind all those DSL (digital-subscriber-line) and cable connections was the same. The providers want a packet-based network with enormous bandwidth—such as enterprise Ethernet—but with all the features these providers had from their legacy networks. These services include awareness of the service needs of each flow through the switch, multicast capability, carrier-class reliability and management functions, and support for precise timing. Carriers also want to provide guaranteed QOS (quality of service) for media types such as voice and high-definition video. The answer to all these desires, the industry claims, is CE.
The next question is how to implement CE in a way that can be both fast and cheap. Service providers are blowing right past 40-Gbit switches and asking for 100-Gbit capability, but they are severely financially constrained. The obvious solution is to start with a fast enterprise switch and enhance it to provide the additional services. This approach runs into problems, however.
If your enterprise switch relies on NPUs (network-processing units), you can simply add to the NPU software, but you will almost certainly run out of processing power long before you get all the new features in, even at low wire speeds. If your switch uses an ASSP (application-specific standard product) or an ASIC, it won’t be flexible. Either way, you will have to add another ASIC or, more likely, an FPGA or two to the design, running up the BOM (bill-of-materials) cost, power, and design time.
And, as Morteza Ghodrat, director of CE technology at Vitesse Semiconductor, is quick to point out, adding more packet-processing sites to the design means adding more DRAMs and CAMs (content-addressable memories). Either you put duplicate memory chips around each chip, or you attempt some sort of shared-memory pool with the obvious complications.
To address these problems, Vitesse recently announced three MAC (media-access-controller) and switch chips. Ghodrat argues that all CE services interrelate both architecturally and in efficiency; thus, a single architecture rather than multiple chips should handle them. The new ASSPs, the VSC7460 Jaguar CE switch, the VSC7462 LynX CE switch, and the VSC7364 CE-MaX-24 MAC/switch, bring the full range of CE functions to high-speed Ethernet switches.
Accordingly, each chip has a service-aware classifier that can manage as many as 4000 services, each with its own QOS treatment, DE (discard-eligible) marking, color, policing, OAM (operations/administration/management), performance monitoring, and timing support through IEEE 1588 Version 2. The chips provide advanced QOS and MEF (Metro Ethernet Forum) policing based on a shared 32-Mbit buffer. They also have statistics counters; Ethernet OAM for all 4000 services; and support for 802.1ag, 802.3, Y.1731, and MEF-16 performance assurances.
The chips differ in CPU and I/O complements. The Jaguar has two 10-Gbps XAUI (10-Gbps attachment-unit-interface) and two 10-Gbps VAUI (5-Gbps-attachment-unit-interface) ports on one side and 24 multifunction SGMII (serial-gigabit-media-independent-interface)/SERDES (serializer/deserializer)/100BaseFX ports on the other. The LynX has just half as many of each. Both devices include a 400-MHz MIPS24KEc processor core.
The CE-MaX chip, which operates with an ASIC or an FPGA, uses two XAUI ports and a host interface to attach to the other chip and provides the full 24 SGMIIs plus two more XAUI ports downstream. The CE-MaX has no on-chip CPU. All three chips will be available in 27×27-mm HSBGA packages, and all are scheduled to become available for sampling in the second quarter. by Ron Wilson, Executive Editor -- EDN,
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original Article here
The result for both wireless backhaul networks and the wired infrastructure behind all those DSL (digital-subscriber-line) and cable connections was the same. The providers want a packet-based network with enormous bandwidth—such as enterprise Ethernet—but with all the features these providers had from their legacy networks. These services include awareness of the service needs of each flow through the switch, multicast capability, carrier-class reliability and management functions, and support for precise timing. Carriers also want to provide guaranteed QOS (quality of service) for media types such as voice and high-definition video. The answer to all these desires, the industry claims, is CE.
The next question is how to implement CE in a way that can be both fast and cheap. Service providers are blowing right past 40-Gbit switches and asking for 100-Gbit capability, but they are severely financially constrained. The obvious solution is to start with a fast enterprise switch and enhance it to provide the additional services. This approach runs into problems, however.
If your enterprise switch relies on NPUs (network-processing units), you can simply add to the NPU software, but you will almost certainly run out of processing power long before you get all the new features in, even at low wire speeds. If your switch uses an ASSP (application-specific standard product) or an ASIC, it won’t be flexible. Either way, you will have to add another ASIC or, more likely, an FPGA or two to the design, running up the BOM (bill-of-materials) cost, power, and design time.
And, as Morteza Ghodrat, director of CE technology at Vitesse Semiconductor, is quick to point out, adding more packet-processing sites to the design means adding more DRAMs and CAMs (content-addressable memories). Either you put duplicate memory chips around each chip, or you attempt some sort of shared-memory pool with the obvious complications.
To address these problems, Vitesse recently announced three MAC (media-access-controller) and switch chips. Ghodrat argues that all CE services interrelate both architecturally and in efficiency; thus, a single architecture rather than multiple chips should handle them. The new ASSPs, the VSC7460 Jaguar CE switch, the VSC7462 LynX CE switch, and the VSC7364 CE-MaX-24 MAC/switch, bring the full range of CE functions to high-speed Ethernet switches.
Accordingly, each chip has a service-aware classifier that can manage as many as 4000 services, each with its own QOS treatment, DE (discard-eligible) marking, color, policing, OAM (operations/administration/management), performance monitoring, and timing support through IEEE 1588 Version 2. The chips provide advanced QOS and MEF (Metro Ethernet Forum) policing based on a shared 32-Mbit buffer. They also have statistics counters; Ethernet OAM for all 4000 services; and support for 802.1ag, 802.3, Y.1731, and MEF-16 performance assurances.
The chips differ in CPU and I/O complements. The Jaguar has two 10-Gbps XAUI (10-Gbps attachment-unit-interface) and two 10-Gbps VAUI (5-Gbps-attachment-unit-interface) ports on one side and 24 multifunction SGMII (serial-gigabit-media-independent-interface)/SERDES (serializer/deserializer)/100BaseFX ports on the other. The LynX has just half as many of each. Both devices include a 400-MHz MIPS24KEc processor core.
The CE-MaX chip, which operates with an ASIC or an FPGA, uses two XAUI ports and a host interface to attach to the other chip and provides the full 24 SGMIIs plus two more XAUI ports downstream. The CE-MaX has no on-chip CPU. All three chips will be available in 27×27-mm HSBGA packages, and all are scheduled to become available for sampling in the second quarter. by Ron Wilson, Executive Editor -- EDN,
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Mar 18, 2010
Ericsson touts technology for 500Mbit/s over copper
LONDON — Ericsson is claiming a major breakthrough in broadband communications after the Swedish comms equipment group demonstrated VDSL2-based technology it says can achieve data rates of 500Mbit/s over multiple copper lines, five times faster than is theoretically possible with existing VDSL2.
This is also about 30 or 40 times faster than the actual data rate achieved by most users in Europe using copper based technologies such as the existing prevalent ADSL2.
Ericsson says the new technology is suitable for fibre extensions, combining fibre and last-mile copper for backhauling. It opens up new possibilities for the delivery of HDTV and video-on-demand over IPTV networks.
The new crosstalk cancellation or "vectorized" VDSL2 technique improves performance by reducing the noise coming from other copper pairs in the same bundle. This increases both capacity and reach, meaning that more customers would be served.
The company says products based on the technology could be made available by the end of this year, co-inciding with industry efforts to standardize the technology. Standards for VDSL2 and line bonding are already available.
Initial applications would be multi-dwelling units or other areas where there is both a proliferation of copper lines and a short reach for the DSL line. The resulting bandwidth, however, could support IPTV and many other video applications, in addition to broadband Internet access and telephone service.
Ericsson's lab demonstartion of the 0.5Gbit/s technology was only over a relatively short distance of 500m and was achieved by bundling six lines (twisted pairs) into one.
Of course it will be difficult to achieve these data rates in the real world because, for instance, few existing homes have six lines. However, Hkan Eriksson, CTO at Ericsson, said the demonstration "confirms Ericsson's leadership in broadband access technology and our commitment to the continued research and development of DSL technology to improve operators' business with new access solutions."
The company added the vectorised VDSL 2 technology also makes it possible to use existing copper networks as a backhaul for radio base stations, accelerating future rollout of HSPA and LTE-based wireless broadband.
The new technology works by reducing noise originating from the other copper pairs in the same cable bundle. This increases capacity and reach, boosting the number of customers that can be connected.
Vectoring technology also decouples the lines in a cable (from an interference point of view), substantially improving power management, which can reduce power consumption. By John Walko
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This is also about 30 or 40 times faster than the actual data rate achieved by most users in Europe using copper based technologies such as the existing prevalent ADSL2.
Ericsson says the new technology is suitable for fibre extensions, combining fibre and last-mile copper for backhauling. It opens up new possibilities for the delivery of HDTV and video-on-demand over IPTV networks.
The new crosstalk cancellation or "vectorized" VDSL2 technique improves performance by reducing the noise coming from other copper pairs in the same bundle. This increases both capacity and reach, meaning that more customers would be served.
The company says products based on the technology could be made available by the end of this year, co-inciding with industry efforts to standardize the technology. Standards for VDSL2 and line bonding are already available.
Initial applications would be multi-dwelling units or other areas where there is both a proliferation of copper lines and a short reach for the DSL line. The resulting bandwidth, however, could support IPTV and many other video applications, in addition to broadband Internet access and telephone service.
Ericsson's lab demonstartion of the 0.5Gbit/s technology was only over a relatively short distance of 500m and was achieved by bundling six lines (twisted pairs) into one.
Of course it will be difficult to achieve these data rates in the real world because, for instance, few existing homes have six lines. However, Hkan Eriksson, CTO at Ericsson, said the demonstration "confirms Ericsson's leadership in broadband access technology and our commitment to the continued research and development of DSL technology to improve operators' business with new access solutions."
The company added the vectorised VDSL 2 technology also makes it possible to use existing copper networks as a backhaul for radio base stations, accelerating future rollout of HSPA and LTE-based wireless broadband.
The new technology works by reducing noise originating from the other copper pairs in the same cable bundle. This increases capacity and reach, boosting the number of customers that can be connected.
Vectoring technology also decouples the lines in a cable (from an interference point of view), substantially improving power management, which can reduce power consumption. By John Walko
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Mar 2, 2010
Fiber Cheaper Than DSL?
Glen Campbell of Merrill Lynch believes “FTTP now appears to be cost-competitive with FTTN in an aerial overbuild.” Bell Aliant's cost in the towns of Fredericton and Saint JohCorning_Fiber_bluen will be C$850/US$725 per home passed. This is very similar to Verizon's current costs of about $670/home.
That compares to costs of “less than $300” for FTTN/DSL from remote terminals, which AT&T misleadingly calls “fiber to the node.” However, fiber maintenance costs are considerably lower, narrowing the cost difference over time. Chris Rice, then CTO of SBC/AT&T, famously said “I'm never going to put active electronics in the field again” because of the high cost of repairs. Verizon and British Telecom's estimates of the maintenance savings were originally 70-90%, but much of is due to replacing 20 and 50 year old equipment with new. Probably the better figure is about a 30% saving – when fiber is done right.
The fiber itself is cheaper than copper, and the fiber gear is getting cheaper very rapidly. A large carrier should be paying <$100/home for the central unit and another $100-200 for the home unit with battery and weather protection. Small carriers typically pay $100-200 more per home, especially in the U.S. The huge GPON orders from China Telecom and Unicom probably went for a price of $90-150/home total. Manufacturers were ready to do almost anything to get the orders, which will probably total 15-25M lines the next few years. They had to come close to the price of GEPON to persuade China Telecom to switch. CT is continuing GEPON as well, which will keep the suppliers competing hard.
The main difference in cost today is the labor climbing the poles and stringing fiber. Copper is already in place to most homes, and FTTN boxes are positioned to take maximum advantage. Verizon figures their cost per mile of fiber at $8,000 to $10,000, $400/home for 25 homes per mile. Small carriers usually assume a fiber cost of about $20,000/mile. So the cost per home to run fiber for most small carriers will be $1,000-$3,000.
Fortunately, most rural homes in the U.S. are alongside the same road, so in most areas the fiber/home required is at the lower end of that estimate.
Understanding fiber costs is crucial for RUS and NTIA to prevent over-subsidizing. The length of fiber required is the main difference between the $670/home Verizon pays and the cost of rural deployments. It's therefore absolutely essential to know how much new fiber is required in order to know whether the costs of a subsidized build are reasonable. I assume that will be collected by BIP and BTOP and made public as part of the President's promise of transparency. And of course it's a much more attractive offering in the long run. Written by Dave Burstein
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That compares to costs of “less than $300” for FTTN/DSL from remote terminals, which AT&T misleadingly calls “fiber to the node.” However, fiber maintenance costs are considerably lower, narrowing the cost difference over time. Chris Rice, then CTO of SBC/AT&T, famously said “I'm never going to put active electronics in the field again” because of the high cost of repairs. Verizon and British Telecom's estimates of the maintenance savings were originally 70-90%, but much of is due to replacing 20 and 50 year old equipment with new. Probably the better figure is about a 30% saving – when fiber is done right.
The fiber itself is cheaper than copper, and the fiber gear is getting cheaper very rapidly. A large carrier should be paying <$100/home for the central unit and another $100-200 for the home unit with battery and weather protection. Small carriers typically pay $100-200 more per home, especially in the U.S. The huge GPON orders from China Telecom and Unicom probably went for a price of $90-150/home total. Manufacturers were ready to do almost anything to get the orders, which will probably total 15-25M lines the next few years. They had to come close to the price of GEPON to persuade China Telecom to switch. CT is continuing GEPON as well, which will keep the suppliers competing hard.
The main difference in cost today is the labor climbing the poles and stringing fiber. Copper is already in place to most homes, and FTTN boxes are positioned to take maximum advantage. Verizon figures their cost per mile of fiber at $8,000 to $10,000, $400/home for 25 homes per mile. Small carriers usually assume a fiber cost of about $20,000/mile. So the cost per home to run fiber for most small carriers will be $1,000-$3,000.
Fortunately, most rural homes in the U.S. are alongside the same road, so in most areas the fiber/home required is at the lower end of that estimate.
Understanding fiber costs is crucial for RUS and NTIA to prevent over-subsidizing. The length of fiber required is the main difference between the $670/home Verizon pays and the cost of rural deployments. It's therefore absolutely essential to know how much new fiber is required in order to know whether the costs of a subsidized build are reasonable. I assume that will be collected by BIP and BTOP and made public as part of the President's promise of transparency. And of course it's a much more attractive offering in the long run. Written by Dave Burstein
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Premier ministre Demands Broadband Price Cut
Fillon_a_true_geek20 euro ($28) is the right price for broadband + phone, Le Premier ministre Francois Fillon has decided, and has asked the Minister of Industry to make it so That's unlimited landline calls nationwide + DSL "up to 22 meg", which would cost twice as much or more in the U.S. "I hope that within six months, all operators who wish to can offer a special social to allow low-income households access the Internet at attractive conditions. This offer social should be around 20 euros"(LePoint, Google translation)
"The Internet has become an essential tool in the same way as electricity.Access to an affordable price is an imperative of social justice. I hope that by six months, all operators who wish to can offer a special social to allow low-income households access the Internet at attractive conditions," AFP, GT .
"I asked the Minister of Industry to undertake the necessary consultations to initiate a code change positions and electronic communications to enable to offer all operators the opportunity to establish such an offer social." FT and SFR surely will not be unpatriotic and refuse to drop their prices - if they want part of the 2 billion euros Fillon has offered for the nationwide fiber build or any of the other favors they need from government. It's pretty hard to say the price down to is impossible, because Free/Alice and Numericable already have an offering for 20 euro. Here's the details - note the speed of DSL, separately and appropriately reported as actual IP speed as well as ATM sync. From
Written by Dave Burstein
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"The Internet has become an essential tool in the same way as electricity.Access to an affordable price is an imperative of social justice. I hope that by six months, all operators who wish to can offer a special social to allow low-income households access the Internet at attractive conditions," AFP, GT .
"I asked the Minister of Industry to undertake the necessary consultations to initiate a code change positions and electronic communications to enable to offer all operators the opportunity to establish such an offer social." FT and SFR surely will not be unpatriotic and refuse to drop their prices - if they want part of the 2 billion euros Fillon has offered for the nationwide fiber build or any of the other favors they need from government. It's pretty hard to say the price down to is impossible, because Free/Alice and Numericable already have an offering for 20 euro. Here's the details - note the speed of DSL, separately and appropriately reported as actual IP speed as well as ATM sync. From
Written by Dave Burstein
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Vodafone, O2, Bouygues: Emerging DSL Giants
Giant_Ainu_StatueJust as we were giving up on new DSL competitors, the European wireless companies have been ramping up. Vodafone has added 1.1M fixed broadband lines in 12 months, reaching over 5M customers and investing to go after more. That includes 3.3M in Germany and 1.1M in Italy. Voda has plenty of room to grow; they have 34M mobile lines in Germany, 22M in Italy, 18M in Britain, and 16M in Spain. Voda in Germany is offering seven months free for new customers, with a price of 29,95 € for “up to 16 megabit” service + telephone.
O2/Telefonica has 22M mobile customers in Britain but only 527K DSL lines. So they are offering “up to 8 meg DSL” plus unlimited landline calls to 20 countries for £20, about $32. Their German branch is offering four months free. Bouygues Telecom, the #3 French wireless company, decided they had to offer a bundle with DSL and built a network. With a quadplay at 44 euro, including wireless, they won 100,000 customers last quarter.
Except for Italy, these deployments are all in countries with relatively strong competition policies. The pattern has been to sign on to the incumbents' resale to offer immediate coverage in most of the nation while building an unbundled network. There's no reason to think mobile carriers in countries without strong CLEC results are likely to enter the market. For example, there's no sign any of the U.S. or Canadian mobile companies are expanding fixed offerings.
Written by Dave Burstein
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O2/Telefonica has 22M mobile customers in Britain but only 527K DSL lines. So they are offering “up to 8 meg DSL” plus unlimited landline calls to 20 countries for £20, about $32. Their German branch is offering four months free. Bouygues Telecom, the #3 French wireless company, decided they had to offer a bundle with DSL and built a network. With a quadplay at 44 euro, including wireless, they won 100,000 customers last quarter.
Except for Italy, these deployments are all in countries with relatively strong competition policies. The pattern has been to sign on to the incumbents' resale to offer immediate coverage in most of the nation while building an unbundled network. There's no reason to think mobile carriers in countries without strong CLEC results are likely to enter the market. For example, there's no sign any of the U.S. or Canadian mobile companies are expanding fixed offerings.
Written by Dave Burstein
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Bravo, BT: 99% DSL coverage in Wales
Edmund Hilary trained for Everest at Snowdonia in Wales. Mountains dominate most of the country. The people were so fearsome Offa built a 120 mile dyke to prevent incurstions, and they resisted English conquest for a millenia. The average income is well below the British norm, making them somewhat less likely to buy broadband. Despite that, BT has offers DSL to 99% of the homes , one of the highest rates in the world. While some speeds are low, this remains a major achievement.
Years ago, Tom Starr and the DSL Forum published “DSL Everywhere”, detailing many different techniques. BT has emphasized long reach, on which they have done important research. Repeaters and remote terminals – some the size of a paperback book – also contribute. I've worked with Vermont Tel who reached just about everyone in their part of rural Vermont back then, and reported the 176,000 rural customers of Madison River also are 99% covered. http://bit.ly/cBfU20
The last 1-3% is often expensive, depending on the district, but 96-99% is generally profitable. It's the shame of the Bells they are 82% of the U.S. problem. http://bit.ly/c9gReR
Trevor Forsythe in Northern Ireland writes to me they have 99% landline coverage there as well. DETI working with BT starting in 2004 made that possible. For the remaining 1%, DETI workin with Avanti has a satellite offering. Satellite for the last 1% is becoming the international norm.
Written by Dave Burstein
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Years ago, Tom Starr and the DSL Forum published “DSL Everywhere”, detailing many different techniques. BT has emphasized long reach, on which they have done important research. Repeaters and remote terminals – some the size of a paperback book – also contribute. I've worked with Vermont Tel who reached just about everyone in their part of rural Vermont back then, and reported the 176,000 rural customers of Madison River also are 99% covered. http://bit.ly/cBfU20
The last 1-3% is often expensive, depending on the district, but 96-99% is generally profitable. It's the shame of the Bells they are 82% of the U.S. problem. http://bit.ly/c9gReR
Trevor Forsythe in Northern Ireland writes to me they have 99% landline coverage there as well. DETI working with BT starting in 2004 made that possible. For the remaining 1%, DETI workin with Avanti has a satellite offering. Satellite for the last 1% is becoming the international norm.
Written by Dave Burstein
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Simple, cheap way to deliver broadband to half of those without
Simple, cheap way to deliver broadband to half of those without
Written by Dave Burstein
Alabama_poverty35M or so homes - about 100M people - don't take broadband in the U.S. You could subsidize 15-30M of them for 1/5th of the money spent each year on USF/ICC. Each family enrolled would pay say $7/month. The companies would make a normal profit, say 40% EBITDA. It requires no political tricks, and the economics are derived from top Wall Street analysts. It would be a very good thing, far more important than anything I've heard from the broadband plan. It is probably politically impossible. The FCC is hard to change. Here's the numbers for 3 to 10 megabit service for most of the poor in America. The difference in bandwidth cost between "back of the bus" speeds and real service is well under $1 (large carrier). They are well sourced and researched in depth, but forgive me for errors. I've been working most of 72 hours on details of the planm but this was too important not to publish.
$8: The marginal cost/month of broadband in 85+% of U.S., essentially all large carriers. The $8 figure comes from leading Wall Street analyst Craig Moffett, presumably direct from internal numbers at the big cablecos. My own research confirms it, although I speak of a range of $5-12 across the developed world. I have factchecked it with AT&T as well as a senior cabler and a large RLEC, as well as off the record with many CTO types, etc. I come to that figure by adding up the cost of bandwidth, customer support, modems, and the other main inputs required to add a customer to an existing network.
$15 A reasonable price for the government to pay when buying millions of lines for lifeline service. That provides teh companies with a reasonable profit, perhaps 40% EBITDA. It's ridiculous to pay retain for millions of lines. We know $15 is reasonable because both Verizon and AT&T charged $15 price for basic broadband until recently and always said they. were profitable. Many European broadband prices are at that level when bought as a bundle. The cost and profit figures are on target for all the larger carriers.
$7 Customer pays (a bargain)
$8 Subsidy/month to get to the $15 total.
< $100 Subsidy per family per year
10,000 families served per million of subsidt. 10,000,000 per $B.
20-30B homes for $3B/year. That's a lot of money to you or me, but less than 20% of the current USF/ICC total. Verizon or AT&T annual cash flow, etc. It's practical to identify $billions in waste in USF/ICC that can cover it over time.
Important note: 5-10% of the U.S. is rural or otherwise has higher costs, which is why elsewhere I point to reducing high rural backhaul costs etc. as critical.
Why isn't it in the plan already?
"That's not how lifeline works" I hear from someone powerful.We pay much more to the carriers, even when we know the price is very high because competition is weak. "That's not the rules." No one has absolute power to change those rules, not even the Chairman of the FCC or the Presdiant, but my correspondent is senior enough to put a plan like this on the table and possibly get it approved. Chairman Genachowski says getting everyone connected is Obama's highest priority. He can change the rules to make this practical.
"Carriers today are getting enormous margins on broadband" several on wall street have written. Moffett presented an 80% margin figure at the broadband workshops and one respected analyst tells me 90% in a private email. There prices provide a profit typical of U.S. business and most telecoms, but they will fight like hell to charge even more.
"Most wireline carriers will go bust in a few years if we don't increase their subsidies." Folks including Julius Genachowski (I hear second hand) are worried about this and it's often whispered on wall street. AT&T and Verizon will keep landlines going no matter what because landline backhaul is crucial to their mobile network. Income from the networks is far more than enough to pay the ongoing expenses. But Qwest and many others borrowed enormous sums to prop up dividends and buy their own shares and competitors. Iowa Tel, for example, in 2009 had profits of $0.72 but paid a dividend of $1.62. Frontier had earnings of $0.57 but paid a dividend of $1. Frontier hasn't covered their dividend since at least 2005. They've made up the difference by starving their networks while borrowing heavily. All these companies have lawyers in D.C. demanding higher subsidies, and no regulator wants to deal with a bankrupt carrier.
My take is that helping the poor comes before bailing out speculators in junk bonds, but I often tilt at windmills.
"It's too late in the process to change things." I wrote some of this months ago, although I didn't realize just how favorable the numbers would prove out. http://fastnetnews.com/stim/179-s/2188-save-half-on-broadband-subsidies-dont-pay-retail-for-a-million-lines. Free Press made it a prominant part of their proposals lately. That's wasn't enough to rise over the din of the carrier's demanding higher, not lower subsidies.
This is one of the clearest opportunities to really make a difference I've seen in policy. I've sent this recommendation to everyone at the FCC who reads my email. I hope they find the courage.
For the record: I've been urging this on everyone in power I can contact, many of whom are DSL Prime readers. Almost everyone at the FCC reads their own email except the Commissioners, so you too can petition them. In the spirit of the ex parte rules, when I make recommendations at the FCC I write them up like this publicly as soon as practical. If you review past issues of DSL Prime, you'll see I've presented at two FCC workshops and often spoken with senior officials.
Written by Dave Burstein
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Written by Dave Burstein
Alabama_poverty35M or so homes - about 100M people - don't take broadband in the U.S. You could subsidize 15-30M of them for 1/5th of the money spent each year on USF/ICC. Each family enrolled would pay say $7/month. The companies would make a normal profit, say 40% EBITDA. It requires no political tricks, and the economics are derived from top Wall Street analysts. It would be a very good thing, far more important than anything I've heard from the broadband plan. It is probably politically impossible. The FCC is hard to change. Here's the numbers for 3 to 10 megabit service for most of the poor in America. The difference in bandwidth cost between "back of the bus" speeds and real service is well under $1 (large carrier). They are well sourced and researched in depth, but forgive me for errors. I've been working most of 72 hours on details of the planm but this was too important not to publish.
$8: The marginal cost/month of broadband in 85+% of U.S., essentially all large carriers. The $8 figure comes from leading Wall Street analyst Craig Moffett, presumably direct from internal numbers at the big cablecos. My own research confirms it, although I speak of a range of $5-12 across the developed world. I have factchecked it with AT&T as well as a senior cabler and a large RLEC, as well as off the record with many CTO types, etc. I come to that figure by adding up the cost of bandwidth, customer support, modems, and the other main inputs required to add a customer to an existing network.
$15 A reasonable price for the government to pay when buying millions of lines for lifeline service. That provides teh companies with a reasonable profit, perhaps 40% EBITDA. It's ridiculous to pay retain for millions of lines. We know $15 is reasonable because both Verizon and AT&T charged $15 price for basic broadband until recently and always said they. were profitable. Many European broadband prices are at that level when bought as a bundle. The cost and profit figures are on target for all the larger carriers.
$7 Customer pays (a bargain)
$8 Subsidy/month to get to the $15 total.
< $100 Subsidy per family per year
10,000 families served per million of subsidt. 10,000,000 per $B.
20-30B homes for $3B/year. That's a lot of money to you or me, but less than 20% of the current USF/ICC total. Verizon or AT&T annual cash flow, etc. It's practical to identify $billions in waste in USF/ICC that can cover it over time.
Important note: 5-10% of the U.S. is rural or otherwise has higher costs, which is why elsewhere I point to reducing high rural backhaul costs etc. as critical.
Why isn't it in the plan already?
"That's not how lifeline works" I hear from someone powerful.We pay much more to the carriers, even when we know the price is very high because competition is weak. "That's not the rules." No one has absolute power to change those rules, not even the Chairman of the FCC or the Presdiant, but my correspondent is senior enough to put a plan like this on the table and possibly get it approved. Chairman Genachowski says getting everyone connected is Obama's highest priority. He can change the rules to make this practical.
"Carriers today are getting enormous margins on broadband" several on wall street have written. Moffett presented an 80% margin figure at the broadband workshops and one respected analyst tells me 90% in a private email. There prices provide a profit typical of U.S. business and most telecoms, but they will fight like hell to charge even more.
"Most wireline carriers will go bust in a few years if we don't increase their subsidies." Folks including Julius Genachowski (I hear second hand) are worried about this and it's often whispered on wall street. AT&T and Verizon will keep landlines going no matter what because landline backhaul is crucial to their mobile network. Income from the networks is far more than enough to pay the ongoing expenses. But Qwest and many others borrowed enormous sums to prop up dividends and buy their own shares and competitors. Iowa Tel, for example, in 2009 had profits of $0.72 but paid a dividend of $1.62. Frontier had earnings of $0.57 but paid a dividend of $1. Frontier hasn't covered their dividend since at least 2005. They've made up the difference by starving their networks while borrowing heavily. All these companies have lawyers in D.C. demanding higher subsidies, and no regulator wants to deal with a bankrupt carrier.
My take is that helping the poor comes before bailing out speculators in junk bonds, but I often tilt at windmills.
"It's too late in the process to change things." I wrote some of this months ago, although I didn't realize just how favorable the numbers would prove out. http://fastnetnews.com/stim/179-s/2188-save-half-on-broadband-subsidies-dont-pay-retail-for-a-million-lines. Free Press made it a prominant part of their proposals lately. That's wasn't enough to rise over the din of the carrier's demanding higher, not lower subsidies.
This is one of the clearest opportunities to really make a difference I've seen in policy. I've sent this recommendation to everyone at the FCC who reads my email. I hope they find the courage.
For the record: I've been urging this on everyone in power I can contact, many of whom are DSL Prime readers. Almost everyone at the FCC reads their own email except the Commissioners, so you too can petition them. In the spirit of the ex parte rules, when I make recommendations at the FCC I write them up like this publicly as soon as practical. If you review past issues of DSL Prime, you'll see I've presented at two FCC workshops and often spoken with senior officials.
Written by Dave Burstein
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Update: Intel-TSMC Atom partnership on hold
SAN FRANCISCO—Intel Corp. Thursday (Feb. 25)acknowledged that it has no immediate plans to bring to market any Atom chips manufactured by Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. Ltd. (TSMC), confirming a report that the groundbreaking partnership announced by the two companies last year has hit a lull.
Earlier Thursday the New York Times reported that the partnership between Intel and TSMC had been placed on hiatus due to lack of customer demand. The report quoted Robert Crooke, general manager of Intel's Atom and SOC development group, saying that the No. 1 chip vendor has not given up on the partnership.
Intel spokesperson Bill Kircos said no TSMC-manufactured Atoms are on the immediate horizon, though he added that the companies have achieved several hardware and software milestones and said they would continue to work together.
"It's been difficult to find the sweet spot of product, engineering, IP and customer demand to go into production," the Kircos said.
Intel (Santa Clara, Calif.) said last March it would port unspecified Atom processor cores to TMSC's technology platform, including processes, IP, libraries and design flows. The deal—the first in which Intel would transfer a processor technology outside to a silicon foundry—was widely seen as Intel's attempt to beef up its presence in the embedded space, where the architecture of ARM Holdings plc dominates.
The delay in moving Atom products into production at TSMC appears signal slower-than-expected progress on execution of Intel's strategy to grow revenue outside of the PC market by pushing its x86 architecture deeper into to the embedded market and elsewhere.
Intel has been trying for years to grow revenue outside of the PC space, where its microprocessors dominate.
Last year the company made a series of moves seen as gearing up for a broader push into new markets—including the TSMC deal, the acquisition of embedded software specialist Wind River Systems Inc. and the $1.25 billion settlement of longstanding legal issues with microprocessor rival Advanced Micro Devices Inc. Placing its partnership with TSMC on hiatus would appear to cast doubt on Intel's strategy to grow revenue by driving its x86 architecture beyond the PC to the embedded market and elsewhere.
Jim McGregor, chief technology strategist at market research firm In-Stat, said placing the TSMC partnership on hold does not mean Intel's x86 will fail to make further inroads into the embedded and consumer markets. But he said Intel's quest will require patience.
"It takes time. It takes a lot of time," McGregor said. "They have to build a relationship and build the product. You can't just flip a switch."
Edition Dylan McGrath
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Earlier Thursday the New York Times reported that the partnership between Intel and TSMC had been placed on hiatus due to lack of customer demand. The report quoted Robert Crooke, general manager of Intel's Atom and SOC development group, saying that the No. 1 chip vendor has not given up on the partnership.
Intel spokesperson Bill Kircos said no TSMC-manufactured Atoms are on the immediate horizon, though he added that the companies have achieved several hardware and software milestones and said they would continue to work together.
"It's been difficult to find the sweet spot of product, engineering, IP and customer demand to go into production," the Kircos said.
Intel (Santa Clara, Calif.) said last March it would port unspecified Atom processor cores to TMSC's technology platform, including processes, IP, libraries and design flows. The deal—the first in which Intel would transfer a processor technology outside to a silicon foundry—was widely seen as Intel's attempt to beef up its presence in the embedded space, where the architecture of ARM Holdings plc dominates.
The delay in moving Atom products into production at TSMC appears signal slower-than-expected progress on execution of Intel's strategy to grow revenue outside of the PC market by pushing its x86 architecture deeper into to the embedded market and elsewhere.
Intel has been trying for years to grow revenue outside of the PC space, where its microprocessors dominate.
Last year the company made a series of moves seen as gearing up for a broader push into new markets—including the TSMC deal, the acquisition of embedded software specialist Wind River Systems Inc. and the $1.25 billion settlement of longstanding legal issues with microprocessor rival Advanced Micro Devices Inc. Placing its partnership with TSMC on hiatus would appear to cast doubt on Intel's strategy to grow revenue by driving its x86 architecture beyond the PC to the embedded market and elsewhere.
Jim McGregor, chief technology strategist at market research firm In-Stat, said placing the TSMC partnership on hold does not mean Intel's x86 will fail to make further inroads into the embedded and consumer markets. But he said Intel's quest will require patience.
"It takes time. It takes a lot of time," McGregor said. "They have to build a relationship and build the product. You can't just flip a switch."
Edition Dylan McGrath
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Low-cost, more efficient solar cells mostly plastic
PORTLAND, Ore. — By growing arrays of silicon wires in a polymer substrate, researchers have demonstrated what they say are flexible solar cells that absorb up to 96 percent of incident light.
Photomicrograph of a silicon wire array embedded within a transparent, flexible polymer film. Credit: Caltech/Michael Kelzenberg
California Institute of Technology (Caltech) researchers said the wires are made up of 98 percent plastic, potentially lowering the cost of photovoltaics by using just 1/50th the amount of semiconductor material used today. In tests, the experimental solar cells demonstrated over 90 percent quantum efficiency.
"By developing light-trapping techniques for relatively sparse wire arrays, not only did we achieve suitable absorption, but we also demonstrated effective optical concentration," claimed Harry Atwater, director of Caltech's Resnick Institute.
The silicon wires measure just 1 micron in diameter, but can be as long as 100 microns and can be embedded in a transparent polymer. Light is converted into electricity only inside the wires, but light not immediately absorbed bounces around inside the matrix until it enters another wire. The result, researchers said, is both high concentration and high efficiency in the material.
Solar cells based on the technique could potentially be very inexpensive to manufacture since only 2 percent of the materials are expensive semiconductors while the remainder is made from inexpensive plastic.
The new material is about the same overall thickness as a conventional solar cells--about 100 microns--but contain as much silicon as a solar cell measuring just 2 microns in thickness.
Atwater said he is now working to increase the operating voltage and size of the solar cells so that they can eventually be manufactured in flexible sheets using inexpensive roll-to-roll fabrication equipment.
Funding for the Caltech research was provided by BP, the U.S. Energy Department, the National Science Foundation and the Kavli Nanoscience Institute at Caltech.
Edition R. Colin Johnson
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Photomicrograph of a silicon wire array embedded within a transparent, flexible polymer film. Credit: Caltech/Michael Kelzenberg
California Institute of Technology (Caltech) researchers said the wires are made up of 98 percent plastic, potentially lowering the cost of photovoltaics by using just 1/50th the amount of semiconductor material used today. In tests, the experimental solar cells demonstrated over 90 percent quantum efficiency.
"By developing light-trapping techniques for relatively sparse wire arrays, not only did we achieve suitable absorption, but we also demonstrated effective optical concentration," claimed Harry Atwater, director of Caltech's Resnick Institute.
The silicon wires measure just 1 micron in diameter, but can be as long as 100 microns and can be embedded in a transparent polymer. Light is converted into electricity only inside the wires, but light not immediately absorbed bounces around inside the matrix until it enters another wire. The result, researchers said, is both high concentration and high efficiency in the material.
Solar cells based on the technique could potentially be very inexpensive to manufacture since only 2 percent of the materials are expensive semiconductors while the remainder is made from inexpensive plastic.
The new material is about the same overall thickness as a conventional solar cells--about 100 microns--but contain as much silicon as a solar cell measuring just 2 microns in thickness.
Atwater said he is now working to increase the operating voltage and size of the solar cells so that they can eventually be manufactured in flexible sheets using inexpensive roll-to-roll fabrication equipment.
Funding for the Caltech research was provided by BP, the U.S. Energy Department, the National Science Foundation and the Kavli Nanoscience Institute at Caltech.
Edition R. Colin Johnson
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India Semiconductor Association names best and brightest
Bangalore, India: The India Semiconductor Association (along with U.K. Trade and Investment) has conferred the TechnoVisionary award for 2010 on Kumar N Sivarajan, co-founder and chief technology officer, Tejas Networks.
In the area of optical networking over the last nine years, Sivarajan has contributed vastly to the design, architecture and development of a slew of next-gen SDH SONET and Carrier Ethernet products that allow telecom carriers to integrate voice, data and intelligent network management on a single network. Kumar was instrumental in Tejas being one of the first companies in the world to have developed and deployed standards compliant Carrier Ethernet-over-SDH SONET. Sivarajan is responsible for setting the technology and product direction for Tejas Networks.
Prior to Tejas, he was an associate professor in the Electrical Communication Engineering Department, at the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore. Before this, he has also worked with the IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Center, Yorktown Heights, New York.
Sivarajan is co-author of the textbook `Optical Networks: A Practical Perspective' published in 1998. He is a Fellow of the Indian National Academy of Engineering, an Associate of the Indian Academy of Sciences, and a recipient of the Swarnajayanti Fellowship from the Department of Science and Technology, and the 2004 Global Indus Technovator Award from the India Business Club at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is also a recipient of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc. Fortescue Fellowship and Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc. Baker Prize Paper Award.
Sivarajan holds a Bachelor's Degree in Technology in Electrical Engineering from IIT, Madras and a Ph. D. from the California Institute of Technology.
This year's awards, 'Technovation 2010 - Celebrating Excellence in Electronics' had been constituted with an aim to recognize role models and excellence in not just the semiconductor but also the greater electronics ecosystem " covering the whole electronics value chain. Technovation Awards 2010 acknowledges, recognises and honours India's best individual contributors and companies and provides them with a platform to showcase their achievements and product successes.
Here are the other awards for individuals and in product categories.
TechnoMentors - Academia: Shanti Pavan
A professor of electrical engineering at the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras, Pavan did his M.S. and Ph.D from Columbia University, New York. He is a well-known authority in his subject and has mentored several students in the field of analog/mixed signal design.
He has been teaching and conducting research in the analog area since 2002, before which he worked on microwave IC design at Big Bear Networks, California. He graduated with a D.Sc from Columbia University in 1999, where he was affiliated with the Columbia Integrated Systems Laboratory. During his doctorate, a big chunk of the thesis work was done at Texas Instruments. Pavan obtained his B. Tech. degree in electronics and communications engineering from IIT, Madras. His research interests are in continuous-time integrated analog filters, MOS transistor modeling, analog-to-digital conversion, optoelectronics and RF design.
TechnoMentor - Industry: Shreeram Vasanthi
She is the director, technical and marketing, at Websol Energy and an alumnus of the Indian Institutes of Technology, Bombay and Delhi. She has 15 years of experience in photovoltaic industry, been a role model for many within her organization. Through her mentoring and leadership, she led her organization to significantly improve the efficiency of the solar cells produced by her company.
Start-up to Watch - Winner: Saankhya Labs
Saankhya is a fabless semiconductor startup based in Bangalore. It has developed the world's first multi-standard TV demodulation technology targeted for Digital TV and PC TV tuner applications. Saankhya's unique product enables for the first time a truly universal TV demodulator, capable of demodulating all digital and analog TV signals on a single chip.
Start-up to Watch - Honorable Mention: Cosmic Circuits
Cosmic is a leading provider of differentiated analog and mixed-signal silicon IP for integration on to System-on-Chips. With a single-minded focus on analog, and a large team of expert analog designers, Cosmic Circuits offers quality analog Hard-IP solutions for integration into nanometer silicon process nodes.
ISA Best Electronic Product - Consumer: Verismo Networks
Verismo Networks was named the winner for its Internet TV device - a high-definition set-top box bringing internet video over any IP network to your television. The set-top connects to the Internet using a broadband connection and is able to stream content from various content sources such as linear TV channels, free websites like youtube, and premium on-demand Hollywood movies. A multi-format, multi-protocol player along with a video search engine enables access to a very broad range of content found on the Internet.
ISA Best Electronics Product - Consumer - Honorable Mention: Tachyion Technologies
Tachyion's Quillpad is an artificial intelligence based solution for intuitive (completely phonetic) Indian language input. It can be used on PCs as well as mobile phones. On a mobile phone, Quillpad can be used for SMS communication in Indian languages. Bundled in LG phones, it will also soon be available for download by MTNL and Idea Cellular customers. It is also available for end users to directly download from the site.
ISA Best Electronics Product - Energy - Winner: Gautam Polymers
Solid Multilantern is a solar LED lantern that maps itself to the way a rural user requires a light. It can be used in many forms - as a diffused general surround light, focused study / task light, handheld torch, handheld downward lantern, roof mounted light and can be used to charge mobile phones.
ISA Best Electronics Product - Energy - Honorable Mention: Kotak Urja
The "Egg Lamp" is a uniquely conceived and designed multi-utility solar lamp that will soon be introduced in the market. It provides uninterrupted light through either CFL or LED lamp for 6 hours every day, with a standby back up of an additional 10 hours. This is a multi-utility lamp, helping to meet the rural energy requirements for light (surrounding, reading, ceiling) and portable torch. The Egg lamp can be used for charging mobile phones and has a unique feature of an FM radio with built-in antenna and speakers.
ISA Best Electronics Product - Healthcare - Winner: Leowin Solutions
"Mozziquit" is an apparatus for attracting, trapping, and killing mosquitoes by mimicking the human body in attracting mosquitoes and eradicating them. This device kills mosquitoes without any need to use harmful chemicals like some existing products in the market do.
ISA Best Electronics Product - Healthcare - Honorable Mention: Infotech Enterprises
Infotech USB-ECG claims to be the world's first USB-powered 3 lead compact ECG monitor, resembles a pen-drive and offers cheap and effective cardiac diagnostics. This works with the power supplied by the USB port and its main features are 3-lead ECG Monitoring and Heart Rate Measurement. The ECG data can also be transmitted to an expert in the cardiology room using ZigBee in a case of emergency. This is affordable, compact, easy-to-use and portable.
ISA Best Electronics Product - Security - Winner: Kritikal Solutions
KritiKal's vision-based automatic license plate recognition system is a non-intrusive, automated image processing-based solution. It identifies and authenticates vehicles by capturing ∧ recognizing a vehicle's number plate, transmits real-time stamp of entry/exit of the vehicle to the database. This solution is highly applicable for Access Control (parking lot management, restricting vehicle accessing sensitive/high security establishments / zones), security and surveillance (policing), and traffic management.
ISA Best Electronics Product - Telecom: Tejas Networks
ELAN aids triple play services by supporting protected service rings that optimize bandwidth and by natively supporting multicast applications like IPTV. To support time-critical services such as VoIP and circuit emulation, operators can use the Tejas platform to create point-to-point CBR (Constant Bit Rate) Services over Traffic Engineered Ethernet trunks, using Tejas' PBB-TE implementations. Moreover, the same Tejas equipment can simultaneously provide various services, giving the operator considerable flexibility to offer differentiated services in a "pay-as-you-grow" fashion.
ISA Best Electronic Products - Others: Bharat Electronics
BE supplies 32-channel Silicon Strip Detectors to CERN Geneva, which are used to detect sub-atomic particles generated when high energy particle beams collide. These detectors have unique features such as very low leakage currents and very high breakdown voltages in spite of their large area. The technology has a huge potential in the field of radiation detection, nuclear instrumentation, medical and other commercial applications.
Mangalore Robotronics Technologies
The remote-controlled system for power tillers was developed for making farming easier. This system is an electronic and mechanical gadget which goes as an attachment for power tillers. Unlike now, when the user of a power tiller has to walk along with the machine, the remote controlled system is an attachable kit which is installed on a power tiller or a walking tractor, and can thus be operated using a hand-held wireless electronic device.
Integra Micro Systems
iMFAST, Integra's mobile financial application secure terminal is a device designed for rural banking. It is a banking platform capable of providing mobile banking as against branch banking and a bank can link this device to its core banking system and extend all banking facilities to the poor and illiterate population in rural India without spending on opening remote branches and installation of ATMs. Biometric authentication and online secure confirmation of the transactions is done using RFID, the device facilitates absolutely safe transactions.
Edition K.C. Krishnadas TechOnline India
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In the area of optical networking over the last nine years, Sivarajan has contributed vastly to the design, architecture and development of a slew of next-gen SDH SONET and Carrier Ethernet products that allow telecom carriers to integrate voice, data and intelligent network management on a single network. Kumar was instrumental in Tejas being one of the first companies in the world to have developed and deployed standards compliant Carrier Ethernet-over-SDH SONET. Sivarajan is responsible for setting the technology and product direction for Tejas Networks.
Prior to Tejas, he was an associate professor in the Electrical Communication Engineering Department, at the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore. Before this, he has also worked with the IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Center, Yorktown Heights, New York.
Sivarajan is co-author of the textbook `Optical Networks: A Practical Perspective' published in 1998. He is a Fellow of the Indian National Academy of Engineering, an Associate of the Indian Academy of Sciences, and a recipient of the Swarnajayanti Fellowship from the Department of Science and Technology, and the 2004 Global Indus Technovator Award from the India Business Club at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is also a recipient of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc. Fortescue Fellowship and Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc. Baker Prize Paper Award.
Sivarajan holds a Bachelor's Degree in Technology in Electrical Engineering from IIT, Madras and a Ph. D. from the California Institute of Technology.
This year's awards, 'Technovation 2010 - Celebrating Excellence in Electronics' had been constituted with an aim to recognize role models and excellence in not just the semiconductor but also the greater electronics ecosystem " covering the whole electronics value chain. Technovation Awards 2010 acknowledges, recognises and honours India's best individual contributors and companies and provides them with a platform to showcase their achievements and product successes.
Here are the other awards for individuals and in product categories.
TechnoMentors - Academia: Shanti Pavan
A professor of electrical engineering at the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras, Pavan did his M.S. and Ph.D from Columbia University, New York. He is a well-known authority in his subject and has mentored several students in the field of analog/mixed signal design.
He has been teaching and conducting research in the analog area since 2002, before which he worked on microwave IC design at Big Bear Networks, California. He graduated with a D.Sc from Columbia University in 1999, where he was affiliated with the Columbia Integrated Systems Laboratory. During his doctorate, a big chunk of the thesis work was done at Texas Instruments. Pavan obtained his B. Tech. degree in electronics and communications engineering from IIT, Madras. His research interests are in continuous-time integrated analog filters, MOS transistor modeling, analog-to-digital conversion, optoelectronics and RF design.
TechnoMentor - Industry: Shreeram Vasanthi
She is the director, technical and marketing, at Websol Energy and an alumnus of the Indian Institutes of Technology, Bombay and Delhi. She has 15 years of experience in photovoltaic industry, been a role model for many within her organization. Through her mentoring and leadership, she led her organization to significantly improve the efficiency of the solar cells produced by her company.
Start-up to Watch - Winner: Saankhya Labs
Saankhya is a fabless semiconductor startup based in Bangalore. It has developed the world's first multi-standard TV demodulation technology targeted for Digital TV and PC TV tuner applications. Saankhya's unique product enables for the first time a truly universal TV demodulator, capable of demodulating all digital and analog TV signals on a single chip.
Start-up to Watch - Honorable Mention: Cosmic Circuits
Cosmic is a leading provider of differentiated analog and mixed-signal silicon IP for integration on to System-on-Chips. With a single-minded focus on analog, and a large team of expert analog designers, Cosmic Circuits offers quality analog Hard-IP solutions for integration into nanometer silicon process nodes.
ISA Best Electronic Product - Consumer: Verismo Networks
Verismo Networks was named the winner for its Internet TV device - a high-definition set-top box bringing internet video over any IP network to your television. The set-top connects to the Internet using a broadband connection and is able to stream content from various content sources such as linear TV channels, free websites like youtube, and premium on-demand Hollywood movies. A multi-format, multi-protocol player along with a video search engine enables access to a very broad range of content found on the Internet.
ISA Best Electronics Product - Consumer - Honorable Mention: Tachyion Technologies
Tachyion's Quillpad is an artificial intelligence based solution for intuitive (completely phonetic) Indian language input. It can be used on PCs as well as mobile phones. On a mobile phone, Quillpad can be used for SMS communication in Indian languages. Bundled in LG phones, it will also soon be available for download by MTNL and Idea Cellular customers. It is also available for end users to directly download from the site.
ISA Best Electronics Product - Energy - Winner: Gautam Polymers
Solid Multilantern is a solar LED lantern that maps itself to the way a rural user requires a light. It can be used in many forms - as a diffused general surround light, focused study / task light, handheld torch, handheld downward lantern, roof mounted light and can be used to charge mobile phones.
ISA Best Electronics Product - Energy - Honorable Mention: Kotak Urja
The "Egg Lamp" is a uniquely conceived and designed multi-utility solar lamp that will soon be introduced in the market. It provides uninterrupted light through either CFL or LED lamp for 6 hours every day, with a standby back up of an additional 10 hours. This is a multi-utility lamp, helping to meet the rural energy requirements for light (surrounding, reading, ceiling) and portable torch. The Egg lamp can be used for charging mobile phones and has a unique feature of an FM radio with built-in antenna and speakers.
ISA Best Electronics Product - Healthcare - Winner: Leowin Solutions
"Mozziquit" is an apparatus for attracting, trapping, and killing mosquitoes by mimicking the human body in attracting mosquitoes and eradicating them. This device kills mosquitoes without any need to use harmful chemicals like some existing products in the market do.
ISA Best Electronics Product - Healthcare - Honorable Mention: Infotech Enterprises
Infotech USB-ECG claims to be the world's first USB-powered 3 lead compact ECG monitor, resembles a pen-drive and offers cheap and effective cardiac diagnostics. This works with the power supplied by the USB port and its main features are 3-lead ECG Monitoring and Heart Rate Measurement. The ECG data can also be transmitted to an expert in the cardiology room using ZigBee in a case of emergency. This is affordable, compact, easy-to-use and portable.
ISA Best Electronics Product - Security - Winner: Kritikal Solutions
KritiKal's vision-based automatic license plate recognition system is a non-intrusive, automated image processing-based solution. It identifies and authenticates vehicles by capturing ∧ recognizing a vehicle's number plate, transmits real-time stamp of entry/exit of the vehicle to the database. This solution is highly applicable for Access Control (parking lot management, restricting vehicle accessing sensitive/high security establishments / zones), security and surveillance (policing), and traffic management.
ISA Best Electronics Product - Telecom: Tejas Networks
ELAN aids triple play services by supporting protected service rings that optimize bandwidth and by natively supporting multicast applications like IPTV. To support time-critical services such as VoIP and circuit emulation, operators can use the Tejas platform to create point-to-point CBR (Constant Bit Rate) Services over Traffic Engineered Ethernet trunks, using Tejas' PBB-TE implementations. Moreover, the same Tejas equipment can simultaneously provide various services, giving the operator considerable flexibility to offer differentiated services in a "pay-as-you-grow" fashion.
ISA Best Electronic Products - Others: Bharat Electronics
BE supplies 32-channel Silicon Strip Detectors to CERN Geneva, which are used to detect sub-atomic particles generated when high energy particle beams collide. These detectors have unique features such as very low leakage currents and very high breakdown voltages in spite of their large area. The technology has a huge potential in the field of radiation detection, nuclear instrumentation, medical and other commercial applications.
Mangalore Robotronics Technologies
The remote-controlled system for power tillers was developed for making farming easier. This system is an electronic and mechanical gadget which goes as an attachment for power tillers. Unlike now, when the user of a power tiller has to walk along with the machine, the remote controlled system is an attachable kit which is installed on a power tiller or a walking tractor, and can thus be operated using a hand-held wireless electronic device.
Integra Micro Systems
iMFAST, Integra's mobile financial application secure terminal is a device designed for rural banking. It is a banking platform capable of providing mobile banking as against branch banking and a bank can link this device to its core banking system and extend all banking facilities to the poor and illiterate population in rural India without spending on opening remote branches and installation of ATMs. Biometric authentication and online secure confirmation of the transactions is done using RFID, the device facilitates absolutely safe transactions.
Edition K.C. Krishnadas TechOnline India
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Freescale's new chip aims to lower e-reader price tag
Freescale's next-generation e-reader chip combines two important pieces -- an applications processor and a display controller -- into a single piece of hardware, which the company says will cut the retail price by around $30.
"Cost is really the main driver of the market's growth," said Glen Burchers, director of global consumer marketing for Freescale. He said the chip will also allow for faster, more responsive performance.
Privately held Freescale, whose chips are already used in Amazon.com Inc's Kindle and Sony Corp's Reader, says it controls 90 percent of the market in e-reader applications processors.
The technology world has seen a burst of new players jumping into the e-reader market, providing fresh competition for market leader Amazon.
Strong growth is forecast for the industry. Research group DisplaySearch expects the global e-reader market to more than triple in 2010 to more than 14 million units.
Analysts say the market is still limited by high prices. The lowest price Kindle from Amazon is $260, while Samsung's new E10 is about $700. Freescale says the market will open up even more when prices fall below $200.
And some believe the e-reader market is already imperiled by a coming wave of touchscreen tablet computers, led by Apple's iPad, which offer e-reader-like functionality along with more computing power.
But Burchers said the main demographic for e-readers -- users in their 40s for whom reading is the main leisure activity -- ensure that there will always be a market for a dedicated device.
He said Freescale's new chip will be in e-readers on store shelves by the end of the year.(Reporting by Gabriel Madway; editing by Gunna Dickson)
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"Cost is really the main driver of the market's growth," said Glen Burchers, director of global consumer marketing for Freescale. He said the chip will also allow for faster, more responsive performance.
Privately held Freescale, whose chips are already used in Amazon.com Inc's Kindle and Sony Corp's Reader, says it controls 90 percent of the market in e-reader applications processors.
The technology world has seen a burst of new players jumping into the e-reader market, providing fresh competition for market leader Amazon.
Strong growth is forecast for the industry. Research group DisplaySearch expects the global e-reader market to more than triple in 2010 to more than 14 million units.
Analysts say the market is still limited by high prices. The lowest price Kindle from Amazon is $260, while Samsung's new E10 is about $700. Freescale says the market will open up even more when prices fall below $200.
And some believe the e-reader market is already imperiled by a coming wave of touchscreen tablet computers, led by Apple's iPad, which offer e-reader-like functionality along with more computing power.
But Burchers said the main demographic for e-readers -- users in their 40s for whom reading is the main leisure activity -- ensure that there will always be a market for a dedicated device.
He said Freescale's new chip will be in e-readers on store shelves by the end of the year.(Reporting by Gabriel Madway; editing by Gunna Dickson)
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UPDATE 2-AT&T CEO sees iPad mostly used on Wi-Fi
NEW YORK, March 2 (Reuters) - AT&T Inc (T.N) expects users of Apple Inc's (AAPL.O) iPad to connect to the Internet mostly using short-range Wi-Fi networks rather than AT&T's cellular network, the chief executive of AT&T said on Tuesday.
While AT&T has agreed to provide wireless connections to the iPad tablet computer, Randall Stephenson said he does not expect the device to result in many new service subscriptions for AT&T as consumers will instead use Wi-Fi or prepaid services, where they do not have to sign a service contract.
"My expectation is that there's not going to be a lot of people out there looking for another subscription," he said during a webcast of an investor conference, adding that the device would be a mainly "Wi-Fi driven product."
Many consumers have their own Wi-Fi networks at home or go to coffee shops where they can avail of free Wi-Fi.
When asked about AT&T's exclusive rights to U.S. sales of Apple's iPhone, Stephenson said iPhone would be "an important part" of AT&T's phone line up "for quite some period of time."
But he did not comment on timing related to the exclusivity agreement, which has helped AT&T win customers from rivals such as market leader Verizon Wireless, a venture of Verizon Communications (VZ.N) and Vodafone Group Plc (VOD.L).
Some analysts expect the exclusivity agreement with Apple to end this year, but others expect AT&T to do anything it takes to extend the deal because iPhone is integral to its growth.
AT&T has admitted to network problems in markets such as New York City and San Francisco where there are a large number of bandwidth hungry iPhone users.
Stephenson said the company would show considerable improvements in its network in those metropolitan areas.
"We've got a ways to go, but we think this quarter will really move the needle considerably in both of these markets," he said.
Stephenson expects changes in how the wireless industry prices its mobile data services going forward, with heavy data users being charged more. Smartphone users currently pay a monthly fee of about $30 for unlimited data.
"For the industry, we'll progressively move towards more of what I call variable pricing so the heavy (use) consumers will pay more than the lower consumers," Stephenson said.
He expects the Federal Communications Commission to focus on how to push mobile broadband further when it announces a National Broadband plan later this month.
Stephenson also said he was optimistic about how the telecom regulator would deal with the issue of net neutrality - the idea that carriers should not be able to control which Web services consumers can access.
"I'm actually fairly optimistic net neutrality will land at a reasonable place," Stephenson said.
But he questioned how the FCC would achieve its proposed goal of putting Internet connections of 100 megabits per second to U.S. homes.
"If the objectives are 100 megabits capability to every home in the United States that is going to require a lot of investment. To drive that kind of investment will require a redirecting of the subsidies that exist today," he said.
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While AT&T has agreed to provide wireless connections to the iPad tablet computer, Randall Stephenson said he does not expect the device to result in many new service subscriptions for AT&T as consumers will instead use Wi-Fi or prepaid services, where they do not have to sign a service contract.
"My expectation is that there's not going to be a lot of people out there looking for another subscription," he said during a webcast of an investor conference, adding that the device would be a mainly "Wi-Fi driven product."
Many consumers have their own Wi-Fi networks at home or go to coffee shops where they can avail of free Wi-Fi.
When asked about AT&T's exclusive rights to U.S. sales of Apple's iPhone, Stephenson said iPhone would be "an important part" of AT&T's phone line up "for quite some period of time."
But he did not comment on timing related to the exclusivity agreement, which has helped AT&T win customers from rivals such as market leader Verizon Wireless, a venture of Verizon Communications (VZ.N) and Vodafone Group Plc (VOD.L).
Some analysts expect the exclusivity agreement with Apple to end this year, but others expect AT&T to do anything it takes to extend the deal because iPhone is integral to its growth.
AT&T has admitted to network problems in markets such as New York City and San Francisco where there are a large number of bandwidth hungry iPhone users.
Stephenson said the company would show considerable improvements in its network in those metropolitan areas.
"We've got a ways to go, but we think this quarter will really move the needle considerably in both of these markets," he said.
Stephenson expects changes in how the wireless industry prices its mobile data services going forward, with heavy data users being charged more. Smartphone users currently pay a monthly fee of about $30 for unlimited data.
"For the industry, we'll progressively move towards more of what I call variable pricing so the heavy (use) consumers will pay more than the lower consumers," Stephenson said.
He expects the Federal Communications Commission to focus on how to push mobile broadband further when it announces a National Broadband plan later this month.
Stephenson also said he was optimistic about how the telecom regulator would deal with the issue of net neutrality - the idea that carriers should not be able to control which Web services consumers can access.
"I'm actually fairly optimistic net neutrality will land at a reasonable place," Stephenson said.
But he questioned how the FCC would achieve its proposed goal of putting Internet connections of 100 megabits per second to U.S. homes.
"If the objectives are 100 megabits capability to every home in the United States that is going to require a lot of investment. To drive that kind of investment will require a redirecting of the subsidies that exist today," he said.
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