Chip rollouts spur 56K modem rush

Electronic News, March 10, 1997 by Crista Hardie

Mountain View, Calif.--The groundswell under the emerging 56 kilobits-per-second (Kps) modem initiative surged last week in a flood of chip rollouts and technology announcements, among them, Cirrus Logic's telephony platform supporting the controversial U.S. Robotics x2 protocol.

Major ISPs (Internet service providers), including America Online (AOL) and ANS Communications have begun installing x2 protocol modems at their access sites, in advance of an industry standard and federal approval of the 56Kps telecommunications rate. In a separate camp, Rockwell, Motorola and Lucent are jointly proposing their K56 technology as the industry standard.

Cirrus Logic, one of the early supporters of 56Kps technology, said it is in volume production with the CL-MD56XX chipset and claims it has lined up a number of key accounts. The CL-MD56XX chipset is priced at $53 in 1,000-unit quantities. The firmware upgrade code will enable availability of the 56Kps data rate in 2Q97, Cirrus said.

The chipset is based on Cirrus Logic's FastPath V.34 telephony architecture, which is powered by a 32-bit ARM RISC processor and a high-bandwidth DSP. The platform can be software upgraded to support V.80 videoconferencing, full-duplex speakerphone, the Radish VoiceView protocol and telephone answering machine capabilities.

According to George Alexy, senior VP of marketing for Cirrus Logic, software upgradeability "provides an affordable, convenient and low-risk way to access future functional enhancements and standards. As a result, we are seeing momentum build as OEMs and ISPs line up behind Cirrus Logic and US Robotics' x2 technologies to facilitate high-speed Internet access."

In a separate bid for the 56Kps market, SmartLink, a San Ramon, Calif.-based start-up, is targeting its "soft-modem" to chip and PC/laptop manufacturers. Analog Devices, for example, is said to be readying shipment of an audio chip incorporating SmartLink's MODIO chipless modem, which will be generally available later this month.

Founded by two former Intel-Israel executives who helped develop Pentium and MMX technology, SmartLink's approach is to take advantage of the unused processing power of the host CPU--similar to what PCtel, another soft-modem start-up, proposed with its Host Signal Processor (HSP)-based PCT388 modem ASIC (EN, March 3). The difference, according to SmartLink, is that MODIO requires no hardware of its own.

The soft-modem taps the built-in features of the PC's audio components and uses the audio subsystem's analog front end and PC bus interface as the link between the host-based modem and the phone.

Meanwhile, Lucent Microelectronics announced sample availability of modem transformer devices said to make 56Kps possible by keeping distortion levels low.

Lucent is currently shipping volume quantities of a North American version of the transformer.

The company will begin volume production in May of a version of the transformer, model 2811B, for telecommunications markets outside North America. When paired with Lucent's 56Kps modem chips, the chipset will form a complete package, Lucent said. Sold in quantities of 100,000, the 2811B device will be priced in the range of $1.50.

"These transformers are coming to market at a particularly ideal time, given all the excitement about 56K modem technology," said Joe Berry, electrical design engineer for Lucent Microelectronics.