Broadcom announces industry's first single-chip 64/256-QAM cable TV receiver; new digital transmission IC increases cable-TV channel capacity to 500.

LOS ANGELES--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Nov. 8, 1994--Broadcom Corp. Tuesday announced the industry's first single-chip realization of a 64/256-QAM (Quadrature Amplitude Modulation) digital-transmission receiver for cable-TV applications.

In 256-QAM mode, the BCM3100 QAMLink Receiver achieves digital transmission speeds of 40 megabits per second (Mbps). This results in a high-performance, low-cost solution that increases the coaxial cable channel capacity by a factor of 10 to 25 times.

"This represents a significant milestone towards the conversion of the cable-TV network to digital transmission with QAMLink as the de facto interoperable transmission standard," said Henry Nicholas, president and chief executive officer of Broadcom. "Our QAMLink receiver enables cable companies to add new services such as access to digital movies, home-shopping services, distance learning and information services."

Using proprietary advanced digital signal processing algorithms, circuit designs and layout techniques, Broadcom integrated QAM demodulation, Nyquist filtering, carrier and timing synchronization and adaptive equalization into a single low-cost chip. Operating in 64-QAM mode, the BCM3100 enables a standard 6-MHz analog channel to carry 30 Mbps of digital data.

With 64-QAM, cable operators can send approximately 20 movies using MPEG I compression and 10 movies using MPEG II compression over a single 6-MHz NTSC channel. In a standard analog cable system which supports from 50 to 100 channels, the BCM3100 can increase the transmission capacity to more than 500 digital channels.

The QAMLink receiver achieves reliable error-free transmission by using adaptive decision-feedback equalization to combat the effects of channel distortions commonly found in cable TV systems. While conceptually straightforward, an adaptive equalizer requires significant digital signal processing power (about 1 billion operations per second -- GOPS) to blindly adapt to the channel distortions in real time.

"We have achieved transmission bit-error-rate (BER) performance within 1 dB of theory over worse-case channels that have multipath delays greater than 1 microsecond and amplitudes within 2 dB of the main signal," said Dr. Henry Samueli, vice president of R&D at Broadcom.

Customers for the BCM3100 include traditional cable equipment manufacturers, large telecommunication manufacturers and computer manufacturers that produce head-end cable equipment, set-top cable-TV boxes and PC cable modems.

"Scientific-Atlanta has made a commitment for 500,000 units, and Hewlett-Packard has made a similar commitment for another 100,000," Nicholas said.

The QAMLink architecture, initially developed with Scientific- Atlanta, was first announced as a three-chip solution at the NCTA Cable `94 show in May. The BCM3100 integrates these three chips into a low-cost CMOS integrated circuit. The single-chip receiver is packaged in an 80 pin PQFP and is priced at $50 each in OEM quantities of 1,000 units.

Broadcom, founded in 1991, is a rapidly growing company whose charter is to develop silicon solutions for the broadband digital communications market. Broadcom's customer base includes leading equipment manufacturers in the cable TV, direct broadcast satellite, local area network and digital microwave radio markets.

CONTACT: Broadcom Corp.

              Tim Lindenfelser, 310/443-4490
                or
              Cathy Batchelor, 619/259-6523