This week, Broadcom announced they are introducing their first run of chips that are based on the proposed IEEE 802.11ac standard. Much like 802.11n before it, companies can’t wait for the standard to be ratified to start selling it, so they start making tech based on the draft. While it means consumers get earlier access to the technology, it may also mean incompatibilities with the finalized standard.
Worth noting is that 802.11ac has a spectrum of setups. While it is often spoken of as has having more than a gigabit per second throughput, that isn’t necessarily true. The incredibly high speeds are based on the concept of MIMO: multiple-input and multiple-output. 802.11ac solutions can have upwards of eight antennas. That’s great that the technology exists, but that’s not what we’re dealing with just yet.
Broadcom:
BCM4352 and BCM43526 implement 2-stream 802.11ac specification to reach up to 867 Mbps. BCM4352 supports PCIe interface; BCM43526 supports the USB interface. BCM43516 supports USB and reaches speeds of up to 433 Mbps with its single stream 802.11ac implementation.
This technology will make large-scale file transfer much better over wireless, and the ratification of the standard will mean good things for us all. Now comes the ten thousand dollar question: When will Apple jump on the 802.11ac bandwagon? They didn’t bother waiting for ratification of 802.11n before adopting the draft standard. Will they make the same move this generation? Sound off in the comment section to let us know what you think. This should be an interesting conversation.
Source: PR Newswire
