On Monday, Marvell announced that it has teamed up with Wilocity to bring tri-band Wi-Fi solutions enabled with 802.11ad to the market. Wilocity will supply its 60 GHz multi-gigabit wireless technology, adding a third channel to the existing 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz channels supplied in Marvell's WiGig-compliant wireless silicon.
"Wilocity and Marvell's partnership will deliver highly mobile, thin, light platforms that do not sacrifice performance and functionality with the first truly wireless bus extension (WBE) -- eliminating the need for cables and freeing devices from physical size constraints," the duo stated. "When combined with Marvell's market-leading Avastar devices, the WiGig solution enables advanced applications like wireless docking, high-speed synch and low latency wireless connections to displays."
So what does this mean to the consumer? The 60 GHz band is the spectrum used by the 802.11ad Wi-Fi standard promises up to 7 Gbps in peak download speeds -- today's 5 GHz Wi-Fi can work as fast as 600 Mbps. With this kind of download speeds, constant buffering because someone is hogging all the wireless bandwidth by streaming movies should be a thing of the past.
"We are honored to be teaming with an industry leader like Marvell to accelerate the momentum of 60 GHz in the market," said Dror Meiri, vice president of business development for Wilocity. "Together we will continue to lead the way to set new standards in truly wireless and ultra high-speed wireless connectivity and display solutions."
"60 GHz wireless is an exciting in-room multi-gigabit Wi-Fi technology that enhances end users' wireless experience and has the potential to eliminate more wires from consumers' homes," said Sameer Bidichandani, senior director of technology strategy at Marvell Semiconductor, Inc. "We look forward to collaborating with Wilocity to deliver cutting-edge WiGig products to the market that maintain compatibility with hundreds of millions of existing Wi-Fi devices."
According to EE Times, Beam Networks and Peraso Technologies also said they will announce their 60 GHz chips within the next six to nine months. However currently OEMs are focused on moving away from 802.11n, and adopting 802.11ac which promises download speeds up to 1 Gbps on the 5 GHz band. That said, until OEMs begin to integrate 802.11ad technology, a market will need to be created in order to introduce the consumer market to the new high-speed standard.
"[Currently] the easiest way to get [60 GHz] to market is going into the [notebook] docking station because the PC maker can bundle [the dock]," said Mark Grodzinsky, vice president of marketing of Wilocity. "Users won’t spend more money on a high performance wireless upgrade [for notebooks] if there is nothing to connect to."
