Elbowing TI in DSPs: new single-chip modem is replacing TI's in 3Com's 56K modem

Electronic News, Dec 8, 1997 by Gale Morrison

NORWOOD, MASS.--Pointing to groundwork laid three years ago and since, Analog Devices president/CEO Jerald G. Fishman told the financial community last week that the company has redeemed itself. The company planned all this fall to do that and he backed up his words with simultaneous new DSP technology announcements with significant upside potential. Then Mr. Fishman shared with analysts details of a new, close tie with Intel to be specified for power management ICs.

First, Analog is shipping a single chip modem to grab 56Kps (X2) DSP supply share at 3Com from Texas Instruments. At week's end, the 56K world really jumped when participants made progress on reaching an apparent compromise on what the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) 56K standard would be. 3Com cancelled interviews regarding the ADI relationship in order to respond to that development, and Lucent and Rockwell, of the K56flex camp, lauded it (See story, below).

Nevertheless, ADI is very confident that the single-chip modem--which is reprogrammable because of its DSP nature--will win designs and engineering share of mind. The industry is acknowledging as the year closes out that only the companies with their elbows deep in analog design and manufacturing can back up all the "System-On-A-Chip" rhetoric.

David French, VP/GM of Analog Devices, detailed the single chip modem from Taiwan, where he was visiting the company's foundry for the part, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Corp. (TSMC) and other customers, it was said. ADI uses TSMC heavily, and Mr. Fishman said the company is also employing foundry Chartered Semiconductor Manufacturing, with whom the company has been working more.

Taking DSP Business From TI

Mr. French could not discuss any detail about 3Com's plans for the device. In November, the company did not know whether or not the networking leader under pressure (See story, page 48) would allow the relationship to be divulged. The day after ADI's announcement, Texas Instruments issued statements saying that it and 3Com still remained "close, strategic partners" and quoted the same Jerry Devlin, 3Com VP/GM, who spoke on behalf of ADI the day before.

Mr. French said the single chip modem is a "DSP core (up to 66 MIPS, 2181-compatible), some amount of SRAM and to some extent ROM, which goes up to 4M," and certain custom logic. He said the device would reduce 3Com's current four- to six-layer modem boards to having two layers, meaning a 75 percent reduction in board area. Mr. Fishman proudly discussed the program with 3Com that he said "began over three years ago with US Robotics (which merged with 3Com last spring)."

The CEO said that the 3Com part is "the most important and exciting event in our DSP business. 3Com is going to include the device in its current and future 56K modem products." He said that the device integrates the DSP data pump and monitor, a speaker digital-to-analog (D-to-A) converter, a handest codec, and SRAM (for protocol software).

"We've been working on this program with US Robotics for the better part of three years. As everybody knows, there's an entrenched DSP supplier (Texas Instruments). It was not a simple matter for us to get share of mind there," Mr. Fishman told analysts from banks across the country. "We're now working with many groups at 3Com for many different applications."

"We understand that USR (3Com) is selling about a million modems a month," he said, which of course would mean that Texas Instruments was selling 3Com and the other X20EMs at least that many DSPs a month. "We think that there will be a reasonably orderly transition of some of this business to Analog.

"It would be very speculative to try to predict right now.... But the switch would be by each OEM, one at a time. We see a fairly orderly transition of a reasonable share of (Texas Instruments') business," he said.

The analysts threw out two percentages. Would he be happy with 25 percent of TI's 56K DSP business in 12 months' time? Mr. Fishman said he would be disappointed if it wasn't at that figure. How about 50 percent? "I won't be happy until I have all (the 3Com business), but I'm not expecting that," he said playfully.

A 3Com spokesman said he had no information about 3Com's intentions for the ADI silicon, which an ADI spokesman said has been with 3Com for months. "No products are announced yet," the 3Com spokesman said. When the word of the compromise and possibility of an ITU 56K standard coming in January broke last week, that "took precedence" and 3Com's modem managers were unavailable.

Texas Instruments' Keith Barber said that TI offers modem OEMs a customizable, programmable product (as the ADI single chip is), and "that allows (the OEM) to do what they want with it." He said that "we allow the user to mix and match whatever they want."

Mr. Barber replaced Juan Garza in speaking on the subject of TI DSPs for modems. Mr. Garza left TI for an unnamed, Sacramento-area company about a week ago, Mr. Barber said.

ADI's Mr. French said: "We believe that this is not available from TI and that they are not able to come up with this kind of integration, at least that is what the marketplace tells us." Whether Lucent and Rockwell and the rest of the K56flex camp would have a similar offering could not be determined, as those companies were tied up on the standard compromise as well.