infoTECH Feature

October 22, 2014

Qualcomm Announces Availability of New Wi-Fi Chipsets

A subsidiary of Qualcomm (News - Alert) recently announced that it will seek to place high-speed wireless chipsets in homes and businesses en masse with its multi-user multi-input/multi-output (MU-MIMO) 802.11ac 2.0 products.

Qualcomm Atheros (News - Alert) says that manufacturers are already using the Qualcomm VIVE 802.11ac chipsets in their devices. It is based on the Qualcomm MU | EFX MU-MIMO technology that was designed to work in multiple environments and can provide speeds at several gigabits per second. The 1-Stream VIVE for smartphones and tablets and can deliver speeds up to 433 Mbps; this scales up to the 4-Stream VIVE available for home routers and gateways which delivers up to 1.7 Gbps. Cristiano Amon, executive vice president and co-president of Qualcomm Technologies, spoke in his company's announcement about the benefits of the technology.

“Consumers are constantly looking for a faster, more efficient Wi-Fi experience. Qualcomm and companies like AVM are working to ensure that consumers can easily access and enjoy 4k video, gaming, and other latency-sensitive activities by delivering reliable high performance connectivity,” Amon said.

Qualcomm Atheros said the home networking manufacturer AVM is one of the companies using the new Wi-Fi technology in its own products. Qualcomm's newest MIMO technology hit shelves earlier this year and came with the promise that it would greatly improve Wi-Fi connection speeds in homes and businesses. The new QCA9377 chipset, in particular, will extend MU | EFX performance to notebooks, televisions, cameras, and other consumer electronics. It takes advantage of both 11ac and Bluetooth 4.1 to provide high performance with reduced power consumption. Overall, wireless speeds with the latest Qualcomm technology should triple traditional speeds.

Perhaps the farthest-reaching feature of VIVE 802.11ac is its ability to send signals to multiple devices at once. It improves on the ability of legacy chips that are only able to transmit signals to one device at a time. Therefore, it can make better use of its overall capacity by not wasting time dealing only with singular devices.

To receive the high-speed wireless signals, Qualcomm reported, mobile device manufacturers are working to enhance their own smartphones and tablets so they can be ready for widespread implementation of the chipsets. It should not be long before Qualcomm begins to spread the new technology across the globe. 




Edited by Alisen Downey
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