Many companies are banking on future home-electronics systems being based on networks akin to those in offices. However, while Ethernet has been universally adopted in the workplace, the home gateway will likely have to cope with multiple wired and wireless communications standards.

ST's road map, together with those of other chip companies — and an assumed desire for Internet access almost anywhere in the home — could drive the adoption of home communications standards.

To control the devices on its road map, ST plans to use embedded ARM7 and ARM9 32-bit RISC microprocessor cores licensed from ARM Ltd. (Cambridge, England) and to move signal-processing duties from hardwired logic to the ST100 DSP architecture.

However, ARM's lack of a high-performance core above the ARM9 could jeopardize its position, said Pietro Palella, general manager of ST's Wireline Communications Division.

"We have no reason to dispense with ARM. The relationship with ARM is still good. But we are not married to them," Palella said. He added that for the ST100/ST120-based asymmetric digital subscriber line (ADSL), voice-over-Internet Protocol (VoIP) and RF gateway chip set due at the end of 2002, "the first assumption is we'll use an ARM9, which is not really sufficient. We may be forced to change."

That change could be to the ARM10 core or to an alternative from a third party.

ST has always been closely aligned with telecommunications giant Alcatel and its semiconductor subsidiary, Alcatel Microelectronics, which is also looking at MIPS processor cores as possible alternative controllers for its own home-gateway products.

Alcatel Microelectronics (Brussels, Belgium) has licensed and deployed processor cores from ARM as controllers in line-card Integrated Services Digital Network and ADSL applications.

As recently as last November, Eric Schutz, strategic business development director for Alcatel Microelectronics, said, "MIPS may be gaining ground for residential-gateway-type applications."

The Hornet home gateway architecture comes in two major pieces. One piece faces out to the ADSL interface with the public network linked via Ethernet, USB or a simple UART to a second piece that faces into the home local-area network.

One reason for that configuration, Palella said, is uncertainty over which high-data-rate wireless LANs may become popular in the home environment, as different groups lobby for Home-RF, Home-PNA and proprietary schemes.

As a result, the Home LAN part of the Hornet home gateway will be provided by one of several chips supporting either Bluetooth, 802.11b, VoIP, Home-PNA and others as needed. The Hornet system itself comprises the ADSL-in, Ethernet/USB/UART-out chip set plus flash and RAM memories. The Hornet chip set includes the ST70150 ARM7-based baseband and the ST70136 analog front end for ADSL.

Palella said that toward the end of 2001, ST would add a "bridging" capability to allow data streams at up to 10 Mbits/second to be passed through Hornet, followed by the addition of the first RF capability in the second quarter of 2002. By the end of that year, when the company expects to complete development of its high-end multicommunications chip set, Palella said he expected the bridging rate to have been increased to 100 Mbits/s.