Conexant's Single-Chip Cable Modem

Modems have evolved substantially from our first exposure to those noisy boxes with red lights that hooked up to our serial ports. Getting all the functionality of that old-fashioned peripheral onto a single chip is becoming more and more common and Conexant Systems is amongst the purveyors of such stuff. The company is now shipping its new single-chip cable modem and reference designs and says that its new CX24943 uses as little as half the power of other products while taking up half the board space. The CX24943 cable modem has a dual-processing engine that offers 29,000 packets/second throughput and maintains the full coaxial cable line rate of 38 megabits per second (Mbps) with packets as small as 160 Bytes, while supporting Data Over Cable Service Interface Specification (DOCSIS) and EuroDOCSIS 1.0 and 1.1 standards. The device is packaged in a 17mm x 17mm 228-pin plastic ball grid array (PBGA). Conexant says that the InfoSurge CX24943 device supports Ethernet and USB cable modems, PCI modems, Computer Controlled Cable Modems (CCCMs), multifunction home-networking products, set-top box solutions, Small Office/Home Office (SOHO) equipment, and IP telephony products. The modem contains an embedded dual-processor engine consisting of an ARM9 application processor running at 225 MHz and a second ARM9 Media Access Controller (MAC) processor running at 144 MHz. The chip includes an embedded IEEE 802.3 10/100 MAC with a Media Independent Interface (MII) that provides direct access to home networking products including HomePlug powerline and HomePNA phoneline networking devices. It also has a USB 1.1 transceiver for plug-and-play installations, and a host interface to accommodate IP telephony, as well as IEEE 802.11b and IEEE 802.11a wireless networking standards. Conexant's CX24943 single-chip cable modem is shipping now. The device is priced at $26.50 in quantities of 10,000.