Broadcom claims 'breakthrough integration' with new chip

Stuart Corner
Wednesday, 28 September 2011 12:26

Your IT - Entertainment

Is there no end to the amount of functionality chipmakers can pack into a single device? Not only does the latest offering from Broadcom support ADSL+ and VDSL2 on the upstream side, it has the latest technologies for squeezing more out of copper: vectoring and bonding and on the downstream side it supports 802.11n WiFi, DECT for cordless telephony support and home automation, VoIP and ethernet switching.

With vectoring multiple copper pairs are managed together so as to eliminate cross talk interference and boost bandwidth on individual pairs - which can be used to serve different customers. It was only this week that Alcatel-Lucent announced the first commercial vectoring product. Bonding is more established: here two or more copper pairs are combined to boost the bandwidth of a single connection.

Broadcom claims that the device, the BCM63168 is "the first all-in-one IAD [integrated access device] SoC [system on a chip] to integrate multi-mode ADSL2+/VDSL2, supporting channel bonding and G.vector with 802.11n, DECT, VoIP and ethernet switching into a single chip'¦[enabling] carriers to meet the growing demand for triple play services with significant cost, size and power savings."