Company Announces 1 Gbps G.fast Chipset Family and New xDSL Reference Platform for High Performance Carrier Gateways
SAN DIEGO
Qualcomm Incorporated (NASDAQ: QCOM) today announced that its subsidiary, Qualcomm Atheros, Inc., expanded its offerings for smart gateways. With the recent close of the acquisition of Ikanos Communications, Inc. and now the unveiling of two new products for smart home gateways, the company strengthens its offerings to original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) focused on development of carrier gateways. Today, Qualcomm Atheros is announcing the availability of a high-performance G.fast chipset family, offering end-to-end broadband performance of 1 Gbps (1 gigabit per second) over a 100-meter loop, and a complete gateway platform for use in developing next-generation xDSL (from ADSL up to G.fast) gateways for the connected home. The two offerings represent a comprehensive, end-to-end product suite for gigabit broadband from Qualcomm Atheros, and advances the company’s operator fixed-broadband solutions.
“The combination of Qualcomm Atheros’ broad home networking portfolio and Ikanos’ advanced wired modem technology offers a complete solution for a wide range of home gateway products to better serve the carrier segment,” said Irvind Ghai, vice president of product management, Qualcomm Atheros. “The new G.fast chipset offers the industry’s highest performance FTTx broadband access while the reference platform delivers a ‘one-stop-shop’ for smart gateway OEMs.”
Industry’s Highest Performance G.fast Technology
Consisting of the Vx686 customer premises equipment (CPE) chipset and the Qualcomm Velocity™-5U single-port distribution point unit (DPU) chipset, the new Qualcomm Atheros G.fast end-to-end solution is designed to facilitate rapid carrier field deployments and subscriber enablement. The single-port DPU design facilitates carrier fiber deployments, while the modular CPE design enables both bridge and gateway configurations in a cost-optimized fashion. The new G.fast chipset family offers 1 Gbps throughput over a copper loop of up to 100 meters, as well as rate-reach performance profile above all published specifications of competitive G.fast solutions. In addition to support for the G.fast standard, the new chipset family is also capable of supporting the emerging VDSL 35b profile standard, further extending the rate-reach coverage for carriers.
The advanced features of the underlying architecture enable the industry’s lowest analog-power profile, allowing service providers to optimize their CPE and DPU designs. This addresses a key carrier concern regarding DPU thermal constraints and power consumption, allowing carriers to employ reverse-power-feed methodology for powering the DPU. On the CPE side, the low power requirements of the Vx686 G.fast chipset allows for USB-powered bridge design. With integrated support for carrier migration from VDSL to G.fast, along with features that ensure the ability to fall back to VDSL, carriers can ensure a smooth transition of their subscriber base to gigabit broadband.
In addition to the high performance end-to-end hardware components of Qualcomm Atheros’ new G.fast chipset, the company offers a comprehensive software suite, called Qualcomm insight-BXM™, to ensure subscribers have a high-quality user experience. The Qualcomm inSIGHT-BXM CPE self-install and DPU provisioning capabilities are designed to reduce field dispatches and customer support calls. In addition, Qualcomm inSIGHT-BXM provides integral diagnostics, line throughput qualification, and noise mitigation techniques that provide unprecedented carrier visibility, which in turn translate to lower operating costs. The chipset and the Qualcomm inSIGHT-BXM software suite are designed to work with the latest network management protocols optimized to operate within an SDN/NFV framework.
Comprehensive Gateway Reference Platform
Completing the end-to-end fixed-broadband suite, Qualcomm Atheros’ new Vx585 reference platform is built around its series of xDSL gateway processors and incorporates a comprehensive connectivity suite, including Qualcomm® VIVE™ 802.11ac with Qualcomm® MU | EFX MU-MIMO technology, Ethernet switches and PHYs, and powerline technology. The platform was designed to deliver a complete “one-stop shop” experience for OEMs facilitating carrier gateway deployments. Key features include:
- Universal xDSL gateway design supporting ADSL to G.fast, as well as the emerging VDSL 35b profile extensions, while providing best-in-class vectoring and bonding (in the multi-mode gateway architecture).
- Dual-PCIe connectivity, enabling a wide range of Wi-Fi® configurations, including support for Qualcomm Atheros’ latest 160 MHz Wi-Fi modules.
- Industry-leading Fusiv™ acceleration processors for minimizing CPU usage, while supporting Gigabit Wi-Fi and Ethernet.
- Integrated Qualcomm® StreamBoost™ technology and Qualcomm inSIGHT-BXM applications to ensure unparalleled WAN-to-LAN quality-of-service visibility to carriers and to provide high consumer quality-of-experience.
- Upgradeability to support a dual-WAN, xDSL-LTE configuration for maximizing rate-reach performance
“Sagemcom has built a reputation for offering the industry’s highest-quality gateways,” said Ahmed Selmani, deputy chief executive officer, Sagemcom Broadband. “The combined Qualcomm and Sagemcom solutions enable us to deliver new experiences to consumers while helping service providers roll out their ultra-broadband offerings designed with multi-mode access and superior wireless distribution to the home network.”
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