Broadcom Unveils Set-Top Chip with Channel Bonding

Alan Breznick, Cable/Video Practice Leader, Light Reading

January 5, 2006

1 Min Read
Broadcom Unveils Set-Top Chip with Channel Bonding

Seeking to seize the advantage in the silicon market, Broadcom Corp. unveiled a chip for advanced digital cable set-top boxes that incorporates channel-bonding technology at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas earlier today. Broadcom officials said the new BCM 3255 chip, designed to meet the standard of the cable industry's still emerging DOCSIS 3.0 spec, can bond up to three channels at one time. They said the chip can support channel speeds of up to 120 Mbps downstream rates with multiple HD AVC streams, downloadable conditional access system (DCAS) security features, up to 1600 DMIPs of processing power and a complete home networking package. Broadcom crafted the new set-top box chip to work with its equally new BCM 7400 dual HD advanced video coding (AVC)/VC/MPEG-2 decoder chip. They said the set-top box chip can be configured to operate with either current video channels or in a channel-bonding mode. Available today in sample quantities, it's priced at $32 each in 10,000-unit volumes.

About the Author(s)

Alan Breznick

Cable/Video Practice Leader, Light Reading

Alan Breznick is a business editor and research analyst who has tracked the cable, broadband and video markets like an over-bred bloodhound for more than 20 years.

As a senior analyst at Light Reading's research arm, Heavy Reading, for six years, Alan authored numerous reports, columns, white papers and case studies, moderated dozens of webinars, and organized and hosted more than 15 -- count 'em --regional conferences on cable, broadband and IPTV technology topics. And all this while maintaining a summer job as an ostrich wrangler.

Before that, he was the founding editor of Light Reading Cable, transforming a monthly newsletter into a daily website. Prior to joining Light Reading, Alan was a broadband analyst for Kinetic Strategies and a contributing analyst for One Touch Intelligence.

He is based in the Toronto area, though is New York born and bred. Just ask, and he will take you on a power-walking tour of Manhattan, pointing out the tourist hotspots and the places that make up his personal timeline: The bench where he smoked his first pipe; the alley where he won his first fist fight. That kind of thing.

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