Entropic to Sample MoCA 2.0/Set-Top Processor ICs in 2013

While Entropic completed development and is shipping the TSC174/178 multi-format HD SoCs for cable set-tops and is readying the TSC184/188 SoC for IP devices, R&D is increasingly focused on combining them with MoCA, Henry said. The TSC chip designs came with the Trident purchase and feature Imagination Technologies’ 3D graphics core and ARM Cortex A9 processor. “The SoC plus MoCA is really the core part of our business going forward,” said Henry, whose company has a 50 percent share of the MoCA chip business.

Entropic inherited some “legacy” SoC set-top business from Trident that generated about $25 million in revenue in Q3, short of the $30 million it produced prior to Trident’s financial collapse. Entropic has “fully resolved” chip supply issues that plagued Trident before it tumbled into bankruptcy, Henry said. Among the customers for the set-top SoCs is Motorola, which also buys MoCA ICs and accounted for 12 percent of Entropic’s Q3 revenue of $89.8 million. The SoC business will be accretive to the company’s earnings by Q4 2013, Entropic has said. While much of Trident’s set-top processor supply was sourced from NXP, Entropic will gradually go direct with TSMC, Henry said.

For now, Entropic is bundling MoCA 1.1 and 2.0 ICs with the set-top SoCs and has landed design wins, said Henry, declining to identify the customers. Entropic’s MoCA 2.0 business remains characterized by “modest shipments” and isn’t expected to reach volume sales until 2014, he said. That’s largely because “product lifecyles are so long” in the cable set-top business, he said. MoCA 1.1 and MoCA 2.0 chips are likely to co-exist for three years, he said. MoCA 2.0, ratified in 2010, allows channel bonding and increases transfer speeds to 400 Mbps from 175 Mbps. It also adds two sleep and standby low-power modes and an “enhanced” feature that increases throughput to 800 Mbps. Entropic’s MoCA 2.0 transceiver and baseband processor are in production using 40-nanometer and 65-nanometer processes.

Entropic is expected to combine MoCA with Zenverge’s quad HD transcoding technology in samples in 2013 as Entropic seeks to cash in on its $10 million investment in Zenverge. Entropic has landed some design wins bundling Zenverge’s ZN200 quad-stream HD transcoder with MoCA 1.0 and 1.1 chips, Henry said. Entropic also expects to ship the first products in 2013 stemming from its $8 million acquisition of PLX Technology’s digital channel stacking switch (DCSS) technology in Q2, Henry said. Entropic pays PLX a $4 million one-time licensing fee as part of the purchase. DCSS allows a channel stacking design in which multiple channels can be transmitted on a single cable based on demands of multiple set-tops and tuners attached to it.

Entropic also is continuing its joint development effort with Intel on DOCSIS 3.0, despite its acquisition of Trident, Henry said. While Intel targets gateway devices for technology it acquired when it bought the Texas Instruments DOCSIS 3.0 business, Entropic is focusing on client set-tops, Henry said. “It’s still a collaborative and cooperative effort,” he said. Entropic is planning to work Comcast’s reference design kit (RDK), issued earlier this year, for SoCs and Zenverge’s transcoding technology, Henry said. The RDK is a pre-loaded software bundle that powers Tru2way, IP and hybrid set-tops. It has already been designed with Broadcom’s BCM7425 chip and is built into Intel’s Groveland IC used in Comcast’s “Parker” set-tops deployed in Augusta, Ga. Charter Communications, Time Warner Cable and Liberty Global’s Unitymedia and UPC Broadband cable systems are among the cable operators that have licensed the software.