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Intel To Include Draft 802.11n In Centrino
filenavigator writes "Intel announced at the Globalcom 2006 Expo that they will be including Draft 802.11n hardware in their Centrino chips. It will be interesting since they said that they will start doing this sometime in the middle of 2007, and the 802.11n standard is not to be finalized until 2008. Additionally Draft 802.11n has been dogged by interoperability problems." From the article: "Although the news caused barely a ripple of reaction in the audience of software and hardware engineers, there are industry analysts who have already warned large buyers of wireless technology to resist the temptation to deploy high-speed IEEE 802.11n devices until the standard is ratified."
The only major issues I've seen with 802.11n is the decrease in range and the obvious speed differences. If it is backward compatible with 802.11a/b/g then this should be a big issue.
/whisper/ Thanks for the candy!
802.11p
-b.
"news caused barely a ripple of reaction in the audience"
I misread that as "barely a nipple reaction".
Now I'm off to buy some more SCO stock!
Pretty obvious how this plays out:
* Intel will become, pretty much overnight, what all of these routers have to interoperate with,
* Everyone else tweaks their chipsets to work with Intel,
* Intel's interpretation of the draft standard becomes the standard.
Yeah, I'm quite sure that the IEEE will do something to rock that boat.
1) it's still a draft, and anything can change between now and then (ask Synoptics)
2) while backwards compatible with G, N requires special antennas (two of the, in diff-mode, so to increase bit-rate); Centrino silicon will be new
3) even though every fab house is trying to get marketshare in N, there's lots unproven about its future, and which technologies might eclipse it
4) it thwarts the draft process of the IEEE; but I guess standards will go to those that buy them.
Many tests have proven incompatibility issues, and the mistakes made. Reserving notebook real estate for a chipset is just a rook move, and nothing more.
Move along, therefore; nothing but PR prattle to see here.
---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
Obviously there'd be interoperability problems.. the standards not final yet.
I always thought that centrino was the general laptop platform, and the chips were pentium-M? Centrino was just a marketing tech term to imply a laptop with certain capabilities which include wifi.
And if Centrino does literally mean the cpu chip, how the hell do they put a wireless network card IN the chip? Is this just a news report typo, or am I missing something?
The technology will someday scale to 600Mbps, according to Bill McFarland, a member of the IEEE committee, with a range 50 percent greater than available with Wi-Fi now.
In physics there's measurement called "skin depth" which is the distance a wave travels before its power level drops by 1/e or about 1/3. The formula is something like (wavelength/2*pi). The FCC regulates the power of 802.11n to something like 1mW per channel. So unless these new chips will have more power than is currently allowed, how can they have a greater range?
i just got my router, bridge, and laptop moved over to 54g, it figures that things would change.
sarcasm:
-noun
1. harsh or bitter derision or irony.
Kiwipedia made it sound like 802.11n didn't really work. There was too much interferance from all the other 2.4Ghz devices. 802.11n over copper was replacing wireless 802.11n in most applications. It was the same modulation but over wire to increase bandwidth. When corporations talk about supporting draft 802.11n, they tend to refer to copper and not wireless.
They are not advertising it, but Apple's new laptops have pre-n built in already. There is speculation that pre-n will fuel the iTV and its HD capable HDMI port. Don't you love rumors?
Apple has apparently slipped 802.11n into some of the currently shipping machines via buffed up Airport cards - gotta love stealth upgrades, eh? :)
Why is everyone so hyped up about faster wireless? Next to nobody is using it to move anything more than broadband, and that about 3 Mbs at most.
Why not spend your money on better antennae? I think most people who complain about speed will continue to be disappointed until they get a high-gain antenna, which is what really matters in wireless.
(Meantime, I'll enjoy my flawless 100 Mbs Ethernet I buried after dumping wireless.)
The government can't save you.
Looks like the /. editors dropped the ball in the Company Logo Department.
Intel's Old Logo (1968-2005) should be replaced with Intel's New Logo (2006-?)
I wonder what ever happened to WiMAX. Intel has been talking about integrating WiMAX into their chipsets for over two years now and so far nothing happened. At least 802.11n, just like WiMAX and 802.11b/g, is well suited for wireless mesh networking which has become a huge trend.
There's a certain point in the pre-standard development cycle when you know the range of possible ways the standard can go such that you can implement ANY possible final standard with the same physical radio -but with updated firmware. The trick is not to do it so early that you've guessed wrong and have a radio that cannot be upgraded to the final standard.
One assumes that Intel will have made sure their N implementation is upgradeable to the final IEEE standard.
...It's only been 12 months since they changed it to the new one
Why? Is your 54G stuff not working?
Tom
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
More importantly, Intel will in all likelyhood be using draft 2.0 of the 802.11n spec, which is much closer to the final spec than today's crappy "pre-N" stuff (draft 1.0). Draft 2.0 equipment will even be tested and certified by the Wi-Fi Alliance for interoperability.
Draft 2.0 is due to be ratified in March 2007. Next-gen Centrino (Santa Rosa) is due in April 2007. In the unlikely event that draft 2.0 is not ratified, the Wi-Fi Alliance will put together de-facto standards, which will still be much better than today's current draft 1.0. Any respectable article would mention this very important information.
TO START
PRESS ANY KEY
Where's the 'ANY' key? I see Esk, Kitarl, and Pig-Up...
With the widespread adoption of 802.11(pre-)n devices, as consumers are likely to bend eventually to the marketing of all the retailers, even more interference will be caused on 2.4Ghz bands (especially since there are only 3 non-overlapping channels for 802.11{b,g} devices. In the times ahead, 802.11a will become more popular as there is less interference and more channels, even though the range is shorter and has "only" 54mbps bandwidth.
From RoughlyDrafted:
I got some criticism for writing in How Apple's iTV Media Strategy Works that I thought Apple's new iTV was going to incorporate 802.11n, the new and much faster industry standard for wireless networking. Some readers thought that n isn't going to be ready in the timeframe Apple announced for iTV's arrival, while others said 802.11g is plenty fast enough to stream video already.
N: Ready and Willing
Wireless n is most certainly is going to be ready however. Even if the IEEE doesn't get around to filing their papers on the standard, Apple has compelling reasons to deliver n for the iTV, as well as pre-n competition. Belkin, D-link, Linksys, Netgear and others have shipped pre-n gear since 2004, so the technology isn't just some far off, futuristic and undeliverable crazy talk.
Remember too that Apple introduced Airport Extreme in January of 2003, prior to the official ratification of its underlying 802.11g, which didn't happen until six months later in July. Since final approval of 802.11n is due in July 2007, it won't be a stretch at all for Apple to deliver n in the first quarter of next year. The real problem for existing vendors is that the various pre-n non-standard implementations aren't compatible with each other, and that that there hasn't yet been a killer app for n.
iTV: the Killer App for Wireless N
How Apple's iTV Media Strategy Works
I'm sure your valuable insights could save them hundreds of millions of dollars.
Intel announced at the Globalcom 2006 Expo that they will be including Draft 802.11n hardware in their Centrino chips.
Whoa, hold on a minute here.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I was under the impression that "Centrino" is something of a blanket term encompassing an Intel processor, chipset, and wireless card/chip.