Intel in talks to sell home connectivity unit to MaxLinear

Intel is in talks to sell its home connectivity unit to MaxLinear, multiple industry sources have said. Bloomberg first reported that Intel and MaxLinear are in M&A discussions, but noted that no final decision has been made and that Intel might still keep the unit. The Intel unit makes chips for DOCSIS modems and gateways and silicon for WiFi and smart home products. Intel has also shopped its home connectivity unit to others, including Qualcomm and MediaTek, industry sources said. A sale of all or part of Intel's home connectivity unit to MaxLinear makes sense, given long-standing collaborations on cable modem products that have paired Intel's DOCSIS chipsets with MaxLinear's front-end silicon. In January 2019, for example, Intel and MaxLinear announced they were partnering on platforms designed to support Full Duplex DOCSIS (FDX), an original annex to DOCSIS 3.1 that targets symmetrical speeds of 10 Gbit/s over hybrid fiber/coax networks.