WiFi & WiGig Team Up
The WiFi Alliance (the group that is resposible for controlling the WiFi Standard) has teamed up with the team behind WiGig — the WiGig alliance. The WiGig Alliance is a forum that was formed last year and has the combined the might of Inte [NASDAQ:INTC], Broadcom [NASDAQ:BRCM] and Atheros [NASDAQ:ATHR] — all large chip makers in their own right. While we know what WiFi is, WiGig is a standard that will transmit HD Video across short distances at a rate of 7Gbps. Hence the name WiGig. And this joint force has some major implications for the industry.
WiGig’s main competitors at the moment are WirelessHD makers SiBeam and WHDI makers Amimon. Both are reatively new to the field and have nothing that will back them up in the face of such a threat. However, each technology has its own benefits to showcase. WHDI’s utilization of the 5GHz spectrum ensures that the signal is clear across multiple rooms — an advantage that the 60Ghz spectrum using standards do not have. SiBeam in the meantime has decided that it will make chips that will have both WirelessHD and WHDI support.
In the meantime, the coming together of WiFi and WiGig has resulted into an unified standard that will make sure that the most commonly used Wireless standards are all found on one chip. WiGig will be releasing a chip that will support 2.4GHz & 5GHz WiFi bands along with WiGig spectrum. So any device that has this chip will be able to connect with most WiFi networks and will also be able to push data rates up to 7Gbps when it detects a WiGig compatible device nearby. This could mean that laptops, tablets and handheld devices will soon have this threefold advantage at their disposal.
Both WirelessHD and WHDI will have to cope with this and come up with a solution that trumps the clear advantage that WiGig currently has in order to stay in the industry.
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Date: May 17, 2010
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