Five years ago this week… The Faultline office was brought to a standstill as ST Micro dropped out of the set top game. Up until that point, it had always been Broadcom versus ST Micro, and suddenly the balance of power was gone, with any likely candidates for filling the power vacuum hailing from the East (China’s MediaTek, for example). Not only were 800 jobs lost, but many of ST Micro’s partners that were less welcome at Broadcom, such as MaxLinear and Quantenna, would experience setbacks. This semi-monopoly raised fears around vendor lock-ins, as well as legitimate serious questions as to Broadcom’s incentives for innovation, considering that the emergence of multiple security cores on its chips had taken years. …