Atheros to provide 802.11n Chip for Handhelds

6th November, 2009 by adina
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The semiconductor producer Atheros Communications claims the new addition to the ROCm chip series, AR6003, consumes less power than the already low-power AR6002, almost 20 percent less. This happens despite the added bandwidth and the co-existence with a Bluetooth chipset which is running in the same device. The AR6003 is used in the Wi-Fi part of the smartphones and other kinds of handhelds and is said to be the faster of this kind. Based on features that are not used, the maximum speed will increase up to 85Mbps when on the 5GHz band and is greater than that of devices using 802.11g wireless. The 802.11n was expressly designed to support more advanced networking for high-bandwidth/capacity applications.

Few devices are using the 802.11n chip nowadays due to power requirements. The iPod, for example, has a Broadcom 802.11n chip, but has disabled its n-level speeds for not known reasons.

There are no named customers for the new Atheros chip yet, but it was already sent to companies that could incorporate it into future products. The Atheros AR9001 second-generation 802.11n chips are in full volume production already.


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