Networking: Turbulence 1981-1982 The PBX, the IBM PC and the
Chaos of Competition 8.34 Ethernet Chips, Boundless Hope and
Market Confusion By October 1982, the progress of Ethernet
semiconductor development had become generally known. At first
there would be four Ethernet chips: Source of Ethernet
technology ||Seeq (Silicon Compilers) |Xerox (DIX consortium)
||AMD and Mostek The availability of Ethernet chips had already
driven the price of a controller from two printed circuit boards
to one and from $3,000 to less than $1,000. The dataPBX will
still be cheaper (roughly $650 per connection), but it did not
enjoy the steeply declining cost curve of Ethernet, or of other
network connections that could be reduce to a chip - that is
software and logic becomes a chip. This advantage, when combined
with the communication speed that could be supported at the
connection, or device, of 10 million bits/second, not a paltry
19,200 its/second, gave Ethernet an ever-gaining edge. The
dataPBX and CBX speed per connection s