SAN FRANCISCO—RF and mixed-signal chip vendor MaxLinear Inc. Tuesday (May 22) rollout out a pair of front-end receivers that use the company's Full-Spectrum Capture (FSC) technology for cable video gateway applications and set-top boxes.
The single-chip MxL258 and MxL256 are eight-channel and six-channel digital cable front-end receivers, respectively, with on-chip quadrature amplitude modulation demodulators, MaxLinear (Carlsbad, Calif.) said. Both chips are fabricated in a standard 40-nm digital CMOS process and are part of the FSC product family including the 16-channel MxL265 and 24-channel MxL267 receivers that were
announced in March, the company said. On Monday, MaxLinear announced that the MxL265 and MxL267 are used in new DOCSIS 3.0 cable gateway reference designs based on the Intel Corp.'s Puma 6 gateway solution.
By capturing the full 1 Gigahertz (GHz) cable spectrum, both the MxL258 and MxL256 FSC receivers enable cable operators to deploy next-generation home media gateways, which support richer and more compelling multi-channel video services, MaxLinear said.
"The video gateway market is rapidly evolving as cable providers launch new systems with an expanded number of channels for DVR and enhanced OTT and in-home wireless video distribution services," said Brian Sprague, MaxLinear's vice president and general manager for broadband and consumer products, in a statement. "Our advanced-technology MxL258 and MxL256 ICs offer these video gateway systems low power and small form factor multi-channel receiver solutions that enable better video tuning performance, thanks to our FSC technology."
The MxL258 and MxL256 devices are capable of simultaneously receiving any combination of eight or six channels, respectively, located arbitrarily in the cable spectrum, MaxLinear said. As a result, MaxLinear's FSC cable receivers reduce the power consumption in a gateway or a set-top box, minimize PCB footprint, eliminate external RF components and simplify the design of customer platforms requiring multiple channel access, the company said.
Customer samples of the MxL258 and MxL256 are available now with volume production in expected in the third quarter, MaxLinear said.