Intel Acquires Killer Wi-Fi Owner Rivet Networks

(Image credit: Intel)

Intel has acquired a rival in the Wi-Fi space. It purchased Rivet Networks, which makes the Killer-branded Wi-Fi cards and Ethernet in gaming laptops from Alienware, Dell, Lenovo, HP and more. No price was disclosed when Intel announced the news via press release.

The Rivet Networks team will join Intel's wireless solutions group, a subset of Intel's client computing group. Intel will roll the Killer brand into its own Wi-Fi lineup. Rivet also produced the Killer-branded software that minimized latency and allowed users to prioritize which software got access to bandwidth.

"Intel will continue to sell Rivet Networks’ software technologies and the Killer line of products to customers," an Intel spokesperson told Tom's Hardware. "Intel plans to continue the vast majority of Rivet Networks’ existing products and services. Some minor changes may be made after full evaluation in alignment with Rivet Networks’ customer commitments."

Intel has done manufacturing for Rivet Networks before, but now Windows PCs might have one less competitor in the field (and most premium laptops and gaming laptops were already using one or the other). 

In it's press release, Intel wrote that it will "contribute to the developer ecosystem and deliver new value for our PC OEM customers."

Andrew E. Freedman

Andrew E. Freedman is a senior editor at Tom's Hardware focusing on laptops, desktops and gaming. He also keeps up with the latest news. A lover of all things gaming and tech, his previous work has shown up in Tom's Guide, Laptop Mag, Kotaku, PCMag and Complex, among others. Follow him on Threads @FreedmanAE and Mastodon @FreedmanAE.mastodon.social.

  • tom10167
    do the world a favor and destroy the drivers, IP, and brand.
    Reply
  • setx
    tom10167 said:
    do the world a favor and destroy the drivers, IP, and brand.
    This. Please do it.
    Reply
  • bit_user
    I'll admit I always thought they were just a gimmick. I never imagined they'd stick around this long (going back at least to 2006).

    (Credit: Anandtech )
    Reply
  • digitalgriffin
    Killer NICs were an interesting curiosity. They employed a Linux stack on the chip so that it could handle all the work of rearranging and handling packets and ping without the need for CPU intervention.

    There were some minor benefits if your PC tended to be network heavy (Stream and play for example) But it really doesn't solve the problem of the edge (router/gateway) having enough bandwidth. With today's household families using multiple gaming and streaming devices at once, this makes killer kind of moot.

    I would prefer a good Router like untangle, or DUMA OS (high end netgear), or pfSense. The first and last my preference because installing 10gb NICs intel NICs is easy.
    Reply