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No WiFi In 'Grantsdale' Chipset
bizpile writes "A company spokesman confirmed Friday, Intel has decided not to enable the wireless access-point functionality in its 'Grantsdale" chipset. Intel decided not to include this feature because of the proliferation of cheap wireless access points. Spokesman Dan Snyder said, 'So many wireless APs are out there, and they're essentially free" when purchased in conjunction with DSL or cable service from an ISP. The company may still develop a custom chipset to re-enable the WiFi functionality if a large customer requests it. Also, their Centrino plans and production will be unchanged."
What's the big deal? They disabled the ability to use the pre-installed chipset as an access point. This is just a cheap, consumer grade chipset for people who want wireless to come with the laptop they buy. anyone who needs to use their laptop as an access point will know about this and buy a different laptop, or just use a different Wifi card.
Wireless network cards for desktops are never free. Access points are not generally free either, unless somehow bundled with the Internet service by the ISP. Maybe I am missing something.
What I don't understand is why anyone needs a wifi access point in their desktop. I know it could be useful in some circumstances, but far more useful, IMHO would be an on board adapter so you could just log onto your wifi network w/your desktop.
Doesn't matter if you want it or not, Intel sells to IBM, DELL, etc. The OEMs are saying they don't want it. Most likely the OEM's have their own WiFi "solution" if you want it, so they'd rather not have to worry about dealing with the WiFi daughter card.
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Grantsdale is a chipset, not a CPU. And I think it still needs an external radio module to work. I'm not sure why a desktop needs wireless though, usually I figure if it is a desktop, it will stay where it is for a while and it is worth wiring it so I'd get good bandwidth. "a" and "g" can only get about 20Mbps, and that is half duplex, a 100mbps wired card is usually full duplex.
haven't look into Grantsdale processor yet, assuming it will be used in a laptop, won't it be more battery friendly to let cpu handle the wireless function instead of having another power hungry minipci wifi card? It's a sure winner if this can at least add 30 minutes to the battery life.
This Sig is removed due to factual inaccuracy
Not a whole lot of people are turning computers into access points, it is kind of inefficient when a 12W device can route, firewall, run QoS, act as a switch AND be an access point.
I really haven't had any problems with existing WAPs.
How interesting is it that we read this after seeing the interview with Craig Barrett posted earlier where he says that Intel's future growth is dependent on merging their technology with communications. Ha!
Well, when your DSL modem only pumps out 1Mb/s, a 20Mb/s connection is fine.
Occam's razor is the blind faith in the natural selection of least resistance and in universal oversimplification. -- EF
There aren't any buyers for the feature, so it's not enabled. If a company isn't going to be able to turn a profit, then they don't waste resources. Otherwise, they cut their losses and move on.
It's good to hear that Intel won't be including wi-fi capability in its upcoming chipset..
With all the talk about them including DRM in their processors it would have been interesting, and scary as well, to see how it would affect their wi-fi chips (had they continued production)..
Might as well make their job easier (and a deeper stab at privacy) by having it notify them in seconds of any sort of "violations".. *cough cough*
"The ones who dont do anything are always the ones who try to pull you down" -- Henry Rollins
Let us assume electricity costs $0.15 per kWh.
I'll assume you already have a low-end PC for use "Free", e.g. already paid for and with a market value near zero.
I will also assume you can configure it to spin down the HD and turn off the monitor. We'll say this is around ~30W; it's actually much less if your processor is idle. My via c3 backup server consumes about 14W, the firewall a little more, an older 486 at around 20W.
Let's stick with 30W. To be a fair comparison, it needs to run a wireless card. That's not a major addition to power, but we'll account for it.
30W is 0.003 kW, so per day, this device costs 0.72kWh x $0.15/kWh = $0.108/day. Per year electricity cost would be roughly $40.
An access point costs about $150 in my parts; I'll say you can get it for $100 for the sake of arguement though.
At 12W, using the above calculations again, this access point takes 40% of the power. Or, a yearly power bill of about $16. The difference in the power bills is $24.
So it would take about 4 years to catch up, assuming the access point doesn't die. I have enough spare parts and obsolete hardware to run a firewall indefinately for no extra expense. The PC based firewall can do a lot more stuff too - much more configurable, patchable, can run other servers, etc etc. I run OpenBSD on mine and find it more than adequate. Plus, unlike every access point I've seen in the $100 range, my ages-old USR modem I bought 10 years ago sits there doing it's job shuffling bits around. No DSL in these parts.
At best I'd consider it a draw. You add a little polution, but can save that firewall computer from ending up as toxic waste, too.
Myself, I run an access point and a firewall. I don't like trusting one device to do everything, and I know the firewall is very hard to beat.
..don't panic
As a student, I have changed apartments several times, and some of these places were not suited to run wires from one end of the apt to the other. Thus, wireless made a lot of sense even for the desktop, as it saved me the hassle of trying to work the wires around the place.
I'm not entirely convinced about the bandwidth argument either. Duplex or not, a cheap 11Mbps wireless still has more bandwidth than a 3Mbps cable internet connection, so the narrow pipe is obviously not the wireless.
but moving gigabytes of data around and casually browsing the net are two completely different activities. an ethernet connection is suitable for either activity. a wlan card is really only suitable for browsing.
I prefer the cat 5e, but don't mind having 802.11x built in for occasional convenience.
as far as security is concerned, just a couple of important measures should keep you pretty safe.
1)a.) Use a unique SSID (out of the box it's going to be linksys, mshome, or default - get rid of that pronto!). b.) Don't broadcast your SSID.
2)White List MAC addresses: I tell my AP's - do not allow any connections unless they're on the list.
3)Encryption Encryption Encryption - the more the better. i'm at 128 bit.
To my knowledge i've had 0 wireless intrusions in the last three years. i do live in a low income neighborhood, so it's not like there's a lot of risk. i am far more likely to have my house broken into than have my WiFi hijacked.