Lucent, Rockwell to make 56Kps chipsets interoperable

Electronic News, Nov 25, 1996

Fremont, Calif.--Lucent Technologies and Rockwell Semiconductor Systems have committed to making their 56-kilobit-per-second modem chipsets interoperable, basing the agreement on a series of Lucent-held patents relating to key components of the high-speed modem technology.

Meanwhile, Cirrus Logic appears to be venturing into the emerging 56Kps modem market with word here that it plans to license U.S. Robotics' high-speed x2 technology.

Bob Rango, GM of Modem and Multimedia for Lucent's Microelectronics group, said is took only a few weeks for Rockwell and Lucent to determine that their respective K56Plus and V.flex2 technologies will require little modification to ensure interoperability, a fact which should help accelerate time-to-market and standards development. Mr. Rango said Lucent, which holds three patents on the 56Kps technology--including one covering core technology known as synchronization to a remote codec--will welcome other companies interested in interoperability.

"We are not excluding other companies,"he said. "What we have plans to do is to keep the market from fragmenting, and benefit the end-user."

In another development, Cirrus last week signed a letter of intent and said it plans to incorporate U.S. Robotics' technology into its FastPath telephony platform as Internet service providers begin deploying the higher data rates.

George Alexy, Cirrus' senior VP of marketing, said x2 would be a valuable addition to the company's future modem products which will support digital simultaneous voice and data (DSVD) and videoconferencing applications, as well as 33.6Kps rates.

Mr. Alexy said FastPath's robust core, which integrates a programmable DSP and ARM RISC processor, will allow the company to offer an x2 software upgrade even before the technology is standardized by the International Telecommunications Union (ITU). At present, U.S. Robotics, Rockwell and Lucent all are developing or licensing 56Kps chipsets, and it is presumed the best features of the various technologies will be assimilated into an ITU standard. Lucent claims to hold three patents on the technology, with as many as 10 more pending, while Rockwell last week hosted the first industry meeting aimed at drafting a pulse code modulation (PCM) standard for submission to the ITU.

From Cirrus' perspective, software upgradability would allow end-users to purchase a slower, 33.6Kps modem in the near future which may then be converted to 56Kps when ISPs make the new technology available sometime in 1H97.

"As far as what we know at this time, as long as the modem board has enough memory on it, it's just a matter of more software," said Mr. Alexy. "We don't see the need for any hardware changes."