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The Next Communication Chip Marvel

Broadband and Storage

Although it is not as well known as communication chip makers Broadcom {BRCM}, PMC Sierra {PMCS}, Conexant {CNXT}, Vitesse {VTSS}, and LSI Logic {LSI}, Marvell Technology {MRVL} has turned a few heads on Wall Street with its explosive growth, "extreme broadband" chips, and high-speed storage chips. The company's broadband products primarily target the Gigabit Ethernet (the pervasive Local Area Network standard) market while the company's storage products focus on an area of technology known as "read channels". Read channels convert analog data from a magnetic disk into digital data for processing. In a nutshell, Marvell's broadband and storage chips substantially increase data transmission rates over existing infrastructures (i.e. copper phone lines), which saves customers time and money as they do not need to install new infrastructure (i.e. fiber optics) in order to improve the performance of their networks.

Integrating Digital and Analog Signal Processing on One Chip

Marvell's chips are able to provide the crucial function of improving the performance of existing infrastructure because they provide the key interface between analog and digital signals based on the company's proprietary Communications Mixed-Signal Processing (CMSP) technology. The speeds that Marvell's chips can achieve on ordinary twisted pair copper wires (speeds above both gigabit per second and GigaHertz) really set its technology apart from that of its competitors. For example, Marvell recently announced the first ever mixed-signal read channel chip (HighPHY) that achieves speeds above one GigaHertz. Nevertheless, keep in mind that, although Marvell's products improve the performance of copper phone lines exponentially, copper phone lines will never be able to surpass optical fiber in terms of broadband capacity.

According to the company, its products also utilize specialized DSP (digital signal processing) algorithms and specialized DSP engines that can execute those algorithms in real time. The company then takes all of these technologies and integrates them onto a single chip based on CMOS (complementary metal-oxide semiconductor), in a similar fashion to Broadcom's technology fabrication model. CMOS is a semiconductor technology that utilizes transistors to form a current gate that facilitates effective electrical control, which means that almost no power is used in the chip when it is not needed. Besides lowering the power requirements of chips, CMOS enables semiconductor makers to integrate hundreds of components on a single chip. On the other hand, semiconductor technologies such as gallium arsenide and silicon germanium are much harder to implement and, therefore, only increase cost and complexity.

Looking Forward

In order for Marvell to continue to be a marvel in the communication chip industry, it will have to substantially diversify its customer base. A staggering 98 percent of the company's fiscal 2000 sales were attributable to only five customers: Seagate, Samsung, Hitachi, Fujitsu, and Toshiba. Guess how that problem gots solved quickly. Yes, the recent Galileo acquisition will broaden Marvell's customer base considerably by adding numerous new customers such as Cisco {CSCO}, Hewlett-Packard {HWP}, Lucent {LU}, and Nortel {NT}. Besides bringing in new customers, the acquisition also thrusts Marvell into a leadership role in providing chipsets to the all-important Gigabit Ethernet standard because the company will be able to offer complete chipset solutions that provide speeds above one gigabit over copper. Gigabit Ethernet is found primarily on optical fiber (which is very costly to install) because these kinds of transmissions could previously be carried only short distances over copper phone lines due to the fact that copper lines were originally designed for data rates of only 100 Mb/s and lower. With Marvell able to attain speeds higher than one GB/s on copper wire, Gigabit Ethernet over copper becomes a reality. Marvell has also introduced a transceiver that performs the interesting task of bridging the gap between copper-based LANs and fiber-based WANs (wide area networks like the Internet) at speeds above one gigabit per second. In this time of fear regarding the slowing down of spending on communications infrastructure, Marvell appears to have the perfect solution to this problem: speed up the most prevalent communication infrastructure in the world, copper phone lines.