Marvell's silicon gets G.hn certification

Marvell, a developer of broadband silicon solutions, on Wednesday became the first vendor to have its G.hn silicon certified by the HomeGrid Forum's Compliance & Interoperability program.

The silicon vendor's 88LX3142 digital baseband processor and 88LX2718 baseband analog front-end chipset gained G.hn certification after completing testing at HomeGrid's accredited test house, TRaC Global.

HomeGrid said that two other unnamed chip vendors are currently in the final stages of preparing their G.hn silicon for certification.

Gaining this certification is important for vendors that want to participate in building the broader G.hn ecosystem, which will support various wires in the home network.

Tom Starr, Chair of ITU-T's Study Group 15, Working Party 1 and chairman of the Broadband Forum, said that this certification process "will ensure that all G.hn products will be compliant and interoperable from Day One--an important consideration for both service providers and ultimately for end users."

This month, the forum will hold a system-level Plugfest to advance the system test suite at TRaC Global's headquarters in Hull, United Kingdom. Participants will also prepare for product Certifications to begin early next year.

Liam Quirke, connectivity analyst for IMS Research is bullish on the G.hn market. He has forecast that "annual shipments of G.hn ICs are forecasted to surpass the 25 million unit mark in 2016."

Michael Inouye, senior analyst for ABI Research said in a recent report that even though G.hn has great potential, its key challenge will be in dealing with the reality that it has less market share than MoCA (Multimedia over Coax Alliance) and HomePlug, both of which are improving the speed and quality of their technologies.  

"This time period, coupled with earlier entrances by competing technologies, however, has engendered significant advantages to the incumbent players--particularly in North America and Europe where MoCA and HomePlug, respectively, have established a significant market presence among service providers," he said.,

For more:
- see the release

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