[EFM] Interesting headline
Those that remained in Edinburgh until the bitter end of the interim at
seven PM Wednesday, would have woken to see the headline on the business
section of The Scotsman on Thursday morning reporting:
EFM future in doubt .....
The EFM in this instance is the Edinburgh Fund Managers. If I was at home I
would scan the headline and post it on my web site, not post it as a zip
file :^). I'll bring it to the July meeting.
However, given the deadlock in the copper track these may be prophetic
words.
It all comes down to rate and reach. So to cut to the chase what is required
is a copper PHY and coding scheme that can support 10Mbit/s and a reach of
22k feet, and preferably a new specification, so that no major manufacturer,
industry body or other standards body has an axe to grind.
So I guess I am supporting Scott's call for the chip vendors to bring their
finest forward at the July meeting.
There are plenty of Ethernet over copper products out there today based on
existing non-IEEE PHYs that work at sub-rates with long reach. There is
little point in trying to shoe-horn one of these into EFM. The fighting is
all about not letting the other camp win, because we all know that none will
get 75% unless everybody bar one camp quits, and that will not happen. So
can we let them go as first generation, or whatever, and get on with the
next generation please?
These products can already be labelled Ethernet as they have a conformant
Ethernet port, so the marketing argument doesn't fly, and I don't buy the
'buy it at Frys' argument either. I have never seen a Fry's outside of
California ;-). Seriously, the copper to your home and your service provider
will define what type of product you can use. The nearest that we will get
to an open market is the SP providing a list of products that will work on
the end of their copper.
Best regards
Bob