| Ikanos Cuts Modem Power, Promises Vectoring |
| Friday, 04 March 2011 00:13 |
 By going to 65 nanometer chips and improving algorithms, Ikanos' new chips for home gateways reduce power required significantly compared to their previous generation. European carriers are required to adhere to a "Code of Conduct" that reduces power usage. Ikanos's new generation also minimizes power when particular functions on the chip are not being called. Samples are in customer hands today and volume available very soon. Vectoring, which in certain circumstances can double effective speed on shorter loops, is the hottest topic in DSL. The new Ikanos chips were designed to be fully G.Vector compliant, but I am limiting my reporting anyone's claims of vectoring performance until independently confirmed in the field. Except in certain new builds - think Deutsche Telekom, Bell Canada and British Telecom - vectoring will take years to reach large volumes. However, I've been recommending anyone buying equipment from around now make sure the hardware will support vectoring when the time comes. It will be surprisingly cheap and already is in carriers' long range contingency plans. In particular, AT&T knows they will be facing 50 and 100 megabit DOCSIS with a system designed for 16 megabits and less. So far, U-Verse is holding its own surprisingly well. If cable starts pulling away, T's plan is DSL bonding + vectoring, bringing many lines to 50 meg and better.
One of Ikanos' competitors made claims that did not prove out in field testing by one of their customers, so I'm being particularly cautious. Not merely do we not have field results, we don't have any results from interoperability labs or a proper test set. Most demonstrations and I believe early product deliveries will be in new gear that is carefully hooked up in the field. That makes sense for new the thousands of remote terminals coming at
What Ikanos brings to the table is software and processing designed to work with existing DSLAMs and larger deployments. John Quigley of Ikanos believes this "node-scale" vectoring will be the right choice for telcos. "If you need more than the 24 or 48 ports of a linecard, only full node-scale will give you the performance you need." They discuss the advantages of their approach in an extensive, free presentation http://bit.ly/gzYpm3. The key target customer is AT&T, which is drasically cutting new U-Verse deployment but needs as much speed as practical to compete with 50 and 100 megabit DOCSIS 3.0.
It's been a tough restructuring year for Ikanos, but Quigley is confident things are looking strong going forward. The cash position is good and new products on the way.
Here's their announcement:
Ikanos Unveils First Communications Processors with Built-in G.Vector Support for 100 Mbps Performance Over Copper New Fusiv Family of Products Combines ITU compliant Noise Cancellation, Bonding, Ultra-Low Power, and Wire-Speed Packet Processing Paving the Way for a New Generation of Advanced Services Gateways Fremont, Calif., March 15, 2011--Ikanos Communications, Inc . (NASDAQ: IKAN), a leading provider of advanced broadband semiconductor and software products for the digital home, today introduced its next-generation family of communications processors – the Fusiv® Vx185 and Vx183 . These new chipsets advance broadband communications by combining support for the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) G.Vector standard, bonding for increased rate and reach, ultra-low power, and gigabit line rate performance into a package for advanced services gateways and integrated access devices.G.Vector Compliance: By employing industry-standard G.Vector (ITU-T G.993.5), Ikanos’ Fusiv products are designed to enable telecommunications service providers to deploy 100 megabit-per-second (Mbps) service over traditional copper lines at 1/10th the cost of fiber. These new devices add to Ikanos’ NodeScale Vectoring architecture, which spans the central office, remote cabinets in fiber to the node (FTTN) networks, and now the customer premises. Bonding: The Fusiv Vx185 integrates cost-effective support for bonding (ITU-T G.998.1 and G.998.2) by natively interfacing directly to two integrated analog front-end devices. This built-in support is designed to allow service providers to extend the reach of their advanced broadband services by coupling two pair of copper wires together. Bonding can also be used to increase the data rate over shorter distances. Together, bonding and vectoring can be combined to push aggregate data rates up to 300Mbps. Green / Ultra-Low Power: With the Vx185/183, Ikanos introduces key advancements in dynamic power management. These advancements are designed to enable Ikanos’ communications processors to operate far below the power requirements of European Code of Conduct and Home Gateway Initiative. Gigabit Line Rate Performance: The new Fusiv family of devices leverages Ikanos’ innovative accelerator processor architecture for reliable Quality of Service (QoS) and optimal packet processing performance. This 4th generation of accelerator processor implementation comes with advancements in packet handling which raises the performance bar for this class of service gateway. The new accelerator processor implementation enables bi-directional Gigabit routing performance while consuming less than 5% of the host application processor. The new Fusiv family of devices also includes the following advanced features:
o Support for all VDSL2 profiles and band plans for Asia, Europe, and North America – 8a, 8b, 8c, 8d, 12a, 17a and 30a o Support for ADSL2+, ADSL2, and ADSL standards
o Exceeds Broadband Forum performance requirements (TR-67, TR-100, and WT- 114)
Ikanos also provides a unified suite of software that includes operating system independent drivers for Ethernet, xDSL and integrated peripherals. This unified software package combines the support for all Fusiv communications processors, enabling equipment manufacturers to leverage their software resource investment across multiple product lines. The Linux-based software includes a networking stack, voice processing, and network management functions, making it possible for system vendors to quickly develop advanced service gateways and integrated access devices. QUOTES: “Ikanos is focused on delivering next-generation products that provide very high performance coupled with extreme energy efficiency. That’s what we built into our latest Fusiv Vx183 and Vx185 – gigahertz of processing horsepower and dynamic power management for operation that beats European Code of Conduct requirements. Add to that support for vectoring and bonding, and we have an innovative product that delivers the power-performance and differentiating value required by service providers around the world.” John Quigley, president and CEO, of Ikanos “G.Vector support is crucial for the broadband communications industry. It pushes VDSL performance to the 100 Mbps threshold and beyond at a time when service providers are looking for a cost-effective way to upgrade their existing copper networks in order to compete with DOCSIS 3.0 and FTTH technologies. With G.Vector-compliant technologies like Ikanos’ NodeScale Vectoring and devices like the Fusiv Vx185 and Vx183, copper networks will remain competitive broadband platforms for many years to come.” Lee Ratliff, Senior Analyst for Broadband and Digital Home, at iSuppli About Ikanos Communications, Inc. © 2011 Ikanos Communications, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Ikanos Communications, Ikanos, the Ikanos logo, the “Bandwidth Without Boundaries” tagline, Fusiv, Fx, FxS, iQV, Ikanos Velocity and Ikanos NodeScale Vectoring are among the trademarks or registered trademarks of Ikanos Communications. All other trademarks mentioned herein are properties of their respective holders. |
| Last Updated on Tuesday, 15 March 2011 00:16 |