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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."
The company may still develop a custom chipset to re-enable the WiFi functionality if a large customer requests it.
7'2" 300 lbs... do I count?
This is a good thing. There's little reason to enable wi-fi in the chipset, and this eliminates the chance that something will be wrong with it. This means fewer patches and a more stable system.
You have enemies? Good. That means you've stood up for something, sometime in your life. --Winston Churchill
It seems to me that it was more of a nonessential feature getting cut in order to ship ontime. They do have a point though that WAPs are cheap, but more often than not they suck. Why else would people turn certain WiFi network cards into WAPs (perhaps on a Linux server)? If there was some sort of awesome "do everything" WAP and for cheap, maybe then you'd have a valid excuse to cut this feature out.
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.
How much would it cost Intel to enable the WiFi? I mean... if it's a small cost, then they'd get their wireless access points into computers instantly so people don't have to go out and buy wireless APs. I mean, if my computer came with a wireless access point, then I certainly wouldn't go out and buy another one (unless it was terrible). It's the same deal with firewire. Most people don't use it, but it's sure a lot more convenient if it was there when you needed it.
Hate to be suggesting monopolistic marketing ideas, but Intel can really get a lot of their wireless AP into computers by bundling it.
Kidding! ;)
Agile Artisans
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.
Intel made a 486SX chip which was a 486 with the math co-processor disabled and it was slightly cheaper than the 486DX. They also sold a 487SX which they called the co-processor, but in truth it was just a 486 with a working co-pro, and when you used the 487SX, it completely disabled the 486SX and took over as the only CPU in the system.
The whole thing seemed like a test of how gullible their customers were. It looks like they're doing the same thing again.
Jason
ProfQuotes
And as a complementary gift for our "large customers" we provide coupons for 20 big macs per buyer. *Lawyer whispers in Intel CEO's ear* And by large buyer we mean someone who buys a lot of our products, we would never, ever think to provide so much almost 700g of pure fat to those struggling with weight at McDonalds...
Click here or a puppy gets stomped!
that maybe someone who's more familiar with Intel's recent chips could answer...
When Intel says they're "disabling" this, do they mean they're going to be physically leaving it out, or permanently disabling it, or just deactivating a jumper or something? By which I mean, could overclockers re-enable the feature on chips they possessed themselves if they really, really wanted to?
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
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
I see, thanks for clarifying.
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.
Convenience. A lot of people don't want to deal with or are too stupid to deal with wires; using wireless for your desktop allows you to use the same network appliance for your desktop and laptop even if the appliance lacks ethernet out; and some people don't have all the desktop computers in their home in the same room.
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
Yes, I read the article.
And even the article is unclear about being either the Access Point component or the 802.11x in the chipset.
My guess is that they are leaving a feature connector attached for a third party WIFI card, and disabling the Access Point features.
Which means absolutly nothing. The third party WIFI card can act as an Access Point.
Can a daughter card providing WIFI be considered part of the chipset (ala Centrino)?
I really wish article authors could show an attempt to clarify ideas.
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.
Not exactly a rewrite, but how's this?
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
Perhaps this is Intel's first steps toward their own secure implementation of the wireless WEP protection. As any bearded terminal hacker knows, WEP (Wireless Encryption Protocol) is insecure in it's use of shifting between key frames, so perhaps Intel has come up with a solution for this that is more secure than the hacks that Cisco and Lucent have put into place so far.
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
Other than economics I wonder why Intel just doesn't produce a kick-ass mini-PCI card that supports the various wireless standards and then flog the Hell out of it to the PC makers. The mini-PCI approach, combined with well designed internal antennas works very well for the Macintosh.
cheap labor conservatives - they want to keep you hungry enough to be thankful for minimum wage.
Who would ask for WIFI to be put into the chipset of a computer?
Look back five or eight years. Who would have asked for any network card to be built into the chipset of a computer? (I remember listening to people whine that the IDE controllers were being integrated into the chipsets.) And yet NVidia's integrated NIC is a top-notch performer, and it's tough to find a motherboard without integrated network these days. And as more people move from ethernet to wireless networking, moving from embedded ethernet to embedded wireless is a natural shift - and I believe that we will, in the future, see more motherboards with integrated wireless networking.
Who would like an Access Point feature placed into the chipset?
Anyone who wants to use the computer as a router. You know, like all of those people who use PCs with that one OS as routers. What was it called? Oh yeah, "Linux"....
There is, of course, no denying that Microsoft does some pretty underhanded and monopolistic things. But, there's also no denying that these things (done correctly) can be a great convenience to a lot of people.
steve
Oh, you're not stuck, you're just unable to let go of the onion rings.
Normally I would agree with you.
I work out of my home for a company a couple provinces away. They have provided me with a high-end nortel VoIP phone which works great when my laptop is wired into my network.
If I try and make the connection travel over the WAP, it introduces quite a lot of popping and dropped words due to lost/out-of-order packets.
So in some cases wired does make the difference.
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.
QUake required one, but quake was WAY after the days of 486s, let alone 486sx. When quake was release i had a P133...
NO game of the 486sx are needed FPU. Not doom, not Duke nukem 3d, not Rise of the Triad,... They all didnt even SUPPORT fpu ops, because at that time even the 487 was much slower than integer math and look up tables (4cyle add and 15 or so cycle mul if i remember correctly)
HI O WISE PRINCE. WHT TOOK U SO DAM LONG?
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.