Alcatel Alsthom SA has licensed its Asynchronous Digital Subscriber Line chip technology to Advanced Micro Devices Inc, and the agreement is the first license awarded by the newly formed semiconductor and intellectual property division Alcatel Microelectronics. AMD will take the same Alcatel dynamite 3.0 chipset that modem manufacturer Hayes Corp agreed in July last year to develop into PC ADSL Network Interface Controller cards. AMD already manufactures a variety of communications products, which make up 40% of the companies $2.4bn revenues. Its current portfolio includes Ethernet controllers, physical interface chips and telecommunications chips. AMD is going to bring to market an ADSL chipset in the second half of the year, for use in ADSL modems and central office switches. AMD has also agreed to follow Alcatel’s path by building full ADSL Discrete Multi Tone systems, which can be software modified to come into line with the final standard decided by the Universal ADSL Working Group backed by Microsoft Corp, Compaq Computer Corp, and Intel Corp. Alcatel plans to license the technology to other companies, to boost the availability of its chipset. The major ADSL competitor for Alcatel, AMD and Hayes is likely to be the digital signal processing king Texas Instruments Inc which has also made a big entry into the ADSL market with the $395m cash acquisition of ADSL pioneer Amati Communications Corp in November (CI No 3,260). TI is due to start shipping its own chipset in the second quarter as well.
