Infineon Announces World's First DSL CPE Solution Supporting Concurrent Erasure Decoding and Retransmission for High Quality IPTV

Also Extends Interoperability Performance

NEUBIBERG, Germany and Hong Kong — Today at the Broadband World Forum Asia, Infineon Technologies AG (FSE/NYSE: IFX) announced enhancements to its portfolio of ADSL2+ and VDSL2 solutions for customer premise equipment (CPE) that optimize support for such applications as IPTV (Internet Protocol Television) and provide the best possible quality of service (QoS) across a wide range of deployment conditions. The Infineon IPTV over DSL feature package includes innovative features such as predictive error decoding (Erasure Decoding) and Gamma Layer Retransmission for xDSL CPE solutions.

“Building on 15 years of experience in ADSL deployment with more than 100 network operators globally, Infineon is extending the demonstrated worldwide interoperability footprint of its AR7 residential gateway chipset solution to Infineon’s existing and future generation single-chip ADSL2+ and VDSL2 devices,” said Christian Wolff, Senior Vice President of the Communication Solutions business group and General Manager of the Wireline Access business unit at Infineon. “With enhanced features to optimize IPTV performance and full integration of the AR7 firmware and system implementation expertise into the field proven Amazon-SE- and Danube chipset as well as in future products, Infineon customers have access to unmatched technology for implementation of DSL CPEs.”

The IPTV feature package in the Infineon DSL architecture includes the industry’s first integration of Erasure Decoding and Gamma Layer Retransmission concurrently supported on a single chip. Erasure Decoding improves impulse noise immunity with no changes to the carrier DSLAM, and can achieve up to two times better error protection than a non-erasure decoding capable CPE in real world deployment scenarios. The Gamma Layer Retransmission mechanism utilizes an intelligent traffic shaping and discrimination algorithm, in conjunction with central office (CO) equipment.

It allows the optimization of real time services, such as IPTV, VoIP or Internet gaming with settings for minimum delay and maximum error protection to guarantee the best possible user experience. Furthermore an embedded Packet Processing Engine enables wire speed routing throughput for all packet sizes. This Smart Acceleration technology boosts routing performance while reducing the workload of the CPU core in the Amazon-SE and Danube Infineon chipsets, and also in future CPE generation devices.

In addition to implementing the new, innovative IPTV over DSL feature package, Infineon continues an extensive interoperability test program both in its own facilities and with independent test labs (ITL). Recently, KTL Laboratories, a worldwide accredited ITL, validated the interoperability of the Amazon-SE chip in compliance with the Broadband Forum’s TR-067 and TR-100 requirements.

According to Bruce Wright, General Manager of KTL in Santa Clara, California, “The Amazon-SE solution from Infineon has reached an interoperability and performance level comparable to Infineon’s AR7 chipset solution. KTL has conducted a lot of interoperability testing with the Amazon-SE and AR7 chipsets, and is pleased to report that both devices are passing physical layer tests against TR-067 and TR-100 with several deployed DSLAMs.”

Infineon initiated its xDSL interoperability footprint initiative after completing the acquisition of the DSL CPE Business from Texas Instruments in 2007. Infineon is the cumulative worldwide market share leader for xDSL CPE devices with more than 110 million units shipped since 2003 (Source: iSuppli). This means that nearly one in three devices installed worldwide comes from Infineon.

Infineon’s strategy is to accelerate its customer’s time-to-market by intelligent re-use of the DSL subsystem of its products, including analog and digital front ends and the interoperability firmware, across its current and future CPE platforms.