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 Posted: Thu Jan 05, 2012 5:00 pm Post subject: Broadcom Announces Family of 802.11ac Chipsets & 5G WiFi Br |
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If you've read our 802.11ac primer you already know that the fifth generation of WiFi is something to be excited about. At 433Mbps of bandwidth per stream with excepted 1, 2 and 3 stream configurations to launch early this year, we should see a pretty big performance increase in transfer speeds on 802.11ac equipped devices. </p>
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In order to get those devices however we'll need to see 802.11ac chipsets. As our luck would have it, today Broadcom is announcing the first four 40nm 802.11ac chipsets:</div>
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<table align="center" border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="1" width="575">
<tbody>
<tr class="tgrey">
<td align="center" colspan="7">
Broadcom 5G WiFi 802.11ac Chipset Family</td>
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<tr class="tlblue">
<td width="120">
Chipset</td>
<td align="center" valign="middle" width="85">
Manufacturing Process</td>
<td align="center" valign="middle" width="85">
Interface</td>
<td align="center" valign="middle" width="85">
Spatial Streams</td>
<td align="center" valign="middle" width="85">
Max PHY Rate</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="tlgrey">
BCM4360</td>
<td align="center" valign="middle">
40nm</td>
<td align="center" valign="middle">
PCIe 2.0 x1</td>
<td align="center" valign="middle">
3</td>
<td align="center" valign="middle">
1.3Gbps</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="tlgrey">
BCM4352</td>
<td align="center" valign="middle">
40nm</td>
<td align="center" valign="middle">
PCIe 2.0 x1</td>
<td align="center" valign="middle">
2</td>
<td align="center" valign="middle">
866Mbps</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="tlgrey">
BCM43526</td>
<td align="center" valign="middle">
40nm</td>
<td align="center" valign="middle">
USB 2.0</td>
<td align="center" valign="middle">
2</td>
<td align="center" valign="middle">
866Mbps</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="tlgrey">
BCM43516</td>
<td align="center" valign="middle">
40nm</td>
<td align="center" valign="middle">
USB 2.0</td>
<td align="center" valign="middle">
1</td>
<td align="center" valign="middle">
433Mbps</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
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The BCM4360 is the highest end offering supporting three spatial streams and PHY rates of up to 1.3Gbps. The BCM4352 drops down to 2 spatial streams (866Mbps). Both of these chipsets are native PCIe 2.0 x1 and are targeted at client systems (e.g. notebooks, add-in cards) as well as wireless access points.</div>
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The BCM43526 is a USB 2.0 version of the 4352, again supporting two spatial streams. Broadcom is expecting some of its customers to bundle 43526 based USB sticks with their 802.11ac wireless routers/APs. Finally there's the BCM43516, another USB 2.0 based design but with support for only a single spatial stream (433Mbps).</div>
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All of the 802.11ac chipsets support 80MHz channels and 2.4GHz fallback to 802.11b/g/n.</div>
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Broadcom is also launching a new brand for its 802.11ac devices: 5G WiFi. The brand and logo are available to Broadcom's customers (not competitors) with no financial requirements, although they obviously have to use one of these Broadcom 802.11ac chipsets. </div>
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Note that although smartphone and tablet vendors could use these 802.11ac controllers in their devices, they aren't the intended target. We will see SDIO/HSIC based 802.11ac controllers from Broadcom at some point the future.</div>
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You can expect to see the first 802.11ac devices based on these chipsets next week at CES. </div>
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Source: AnandTech
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