ANADIGICS Seeks United Solutions

By Jim Barthold Cable World

ANADIGICS Inc., known for its gallium arsenide (GaAs) chip technology, has shot off in a new direction by introducing a silicon-based dual-frequency synthesizer.

The new integrated circuit (IC) supports cable modem, set-top box and cable telephony tuner applications and eases module integration, said Ron Michels, ANADIGICS' VP-cable and broadcast segment.

"The solutions that we want to come out with in the future will be more along the lines of highly integrated modules," Michels explained. "By opening the portfolio, we can now do many things; We have more building blocks where we can put different ICs together inside of one package and pull a lot of functionality into it."

ANADIGICS' previous product philosophy was based on individual GaAs-based ICs. That must change as its end customers, set-top box makers, move away from hiring large design teams to integrate the various system components and move toward integrated systems supplied by the IC vendors, Michels said.

"They want to buy pretty much ready-made solutions so that's the direction we're going in," Michels noted.

On the other hand, he emphasized, GaAs is still the primary player and "we're having trouble meeting demand, actually.

"The concept here is people who buy our GaAs parts now will buy the part we just came out with, and the part we just came out with, to an extent, controls other parts," he explained. "If you're going to put a tuner together, you need certain building blocks and this is another one of the building blocks which you couldn't do with gallium arsenide because of the complexity of it."

This article was originally published by Cable World, 12 July, 1999