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Intel Demos Software Defined WiFi/WiMAX/DVB-H Chip
Doc Ruby writes "Electronics Weekly is reporting that Intel has developed a new prototype chip for software defined radio. The new chip will be able to handle WiFi, WiMAX and DVB-H digital TV all on the same chip. 'This kind of chip would allow equipment to access the WiFi network in the home, automatically handover to a WiMAX network when you leave the house and also access digital TV on the move, all through one chip.' It's also a proof that the entire class of SW radios that could possibly converge CDMA, GSM and various other radio networks for opportunistic handoffs by a single device, a 'universal radio' that could use content formerly locked into a single radio type."
It's about bloody time. Good grief, I mean, I wrote about this in '94 in my digital communications class.
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And presumably the drivers for this will be closed source because of that dumb FCC rule that end-users shouldn't be able to tinker with wi-fi chips because they are a dangerous radio device.
But the real question is, can I change software modes and nuke a burrito with my wireless card?
Or, even better, my roommate?
I'm waiting for a "-1 somepeoplejustshouldn'tgetmodprivileges" meta-moderation.
Will it be documented so we can get a FOSS driver?
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The chip is also believed to lay golden eggs and make coffee. I think I'll remain sceptic until they actually demonstrate convergence of a wide range of frequencies without using too much power.
Will these chips end up like Winmodems? no intelligence in the chip and impossible to get drivers for?
There are still a few stages in the receiving chain that have to be analog.
In particular the first few stages of input filtering, RF amplification, and mixing all HAVE to be analog, and delicate, tricky analog at that.
Someday we may have 5Gig sample/second 32-bit floating-point A/D converters with microvolt sensitivity, but until then radio receivers can't be quite as flexible as the term "software defined radio" implies.
http://www.ettus.com/
http://www.gnuradio.com/trac
a USRP (or soon to be released USRP 2) with a 2.4 GHz card will do the same..
With a resounding cry of "Ahhhhh crap." from carriers relying on clients using only their devices.
"You need to replace your phone? well then you can sign a new contract for a discount on our new..."
"I already have a device to use for it right here....picked it up online, and its not part of your expected sell/refurb/resell cycles. I believe you know what you can do with your contract..."
Course there will still be the "But don't you want 6 months of unlimited local talking and a discounted rate plan?!", still cuts out a lock in technique though.
Ice Cream has no bones.
Now I'll be able to open and close people's garage doors while accessing their wifi, all with one device!
An integrated 3-protocol chip, if produced for a reasonable price, could be just the thing to spark a new age of computing. Let's compare most "movie-future" computers to this: Easy wireless access almost anywhere you go, plus reception of live digital TV broadcasts. Sounds like the movies to me!! Granted -- the chip doesn't appear to be a ATSC decoder (I could be wrong) so current US broadcasters won't have their digital signals accessible by this chip. Additionally, wireless access in most municipalities is not existent, and most of those implementations just plain suck. At any rate, we need the hardware base to exist before the demand for "quality" municipal WiFi will grow.
Continue this development, and you may reach the point of having essentially a HTPC on a card, with TV tuning and wireless internet built in. With the new FCC mandates to open up the cable box market, Intel may open the door for competition that isn't a TiVO. And...even if no new companies step up, TiVO would probably be interested in providing Internet and TV via the same box -- something most cable boxes cannot do.
I also LONG for the day where WiFi chips/cards begin coming standard on motherboards; I prefer a desktop to a laptop any day. That, and I am tired of running CAT5 throughout my house to my multiple boxes.
khasim (12/9/06): In a blind taste test, more people preferred Coke over the Pepsi that I had previously pissed in.
because we all know how well software modems work, right?
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You still have a fundamental problem with radio communications - how to tune the antenna for multiple frequency bands in a small package. Not an easy task.
I don't know a lot about them, but I've read that Mid-Tex Cellular uses software defined radios from Vanu, Inc. From what I've read they updated from TDMA (using conventional hardware) to GSM (using quite unconventional hardware) in early 2005. Instead of installing GSM hardware at each site, they installed this software defined radio hardware. So, now they've decided to add in CDMA also for roamers; instead of having to add expensive and specialized CDMA base station hardware to each site, they just add software to the control computers (and, possibly add an extra computer to a site if it needs more processing power.)
This sounds like something Alltel could use, given in the west they run AMPS, TDMA, GSM, CDMA, and EVDO. (Western Wireless, which Alltel bought, provides the only coverage in a lot of the rural desert, and so they found the more standards they supported, the more roaming money they made... since it's desert, they didn't have problems with network congestion or whatever, so they just decided to run all standards 8-) They run CDMA + EVDO for themselves, and the rest for roamers.)
Turn off the TV, I wanna check my email ! (?)
Lurking in the desert
And as soon as I can get my Win Vista quadcore PC to boot, I'll tell you more ...
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
"It's also a proof that the entire class of SW radios that could also possibly converge CDMA, GSM and various other radio networks for opportunistic handoffs by a single device, a 'universal radio' that could converge all wireless device types into a single device that can use content formerly locked into a single radio type." 1) The above is not a sentence. You haven't bothered to say what it proves even as it converges. 2) "SW" radio means short wave. That acronym is already taken.
There. It's been a while since I made a stupid joke here. Quota fulfilled for the next couple of months I guess :)
________
Entranced by anime since late summer 2001 and loving it ^_^
So there's a much better chance that some of the clever people capable of reverse engineering this sort of stuff will make the effort to do so.
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I wonder how long Apple has known about this. The switch from IBM was a great move!
...but the biggest hurdles are more political than technical. You mean you want to have music contect streaming all loosy-goosy on the whatevernet? Can't have that!
expandfairuse.org
Oh wait...
Those awesome devices people used to use in cars? You could tune them to a wide variety of frequencies and even different bands all in one device! They had access to free transmissions of music, news and a wide variety of other programming.
Oh, but your right, this new thing is totally revolutionary!
I refer everyone else to section B of FCC regulations. If you can't Google it, then you don't belong here. :) In short, a device may not cause interference, but it must accept any interference it may receive due to natural or other issues that interfere with/tie into the operation of an EM-based device.
To put it short, you can receive and listen in to anything you choose to, but to transmit may be a different story. End of simple statement.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
It has nothing to do with "win"modems or reverse engineering ability. The difference between a good old hardware modem and a "win"modem is that one follows a standard and the other doesn't.
An external hardware modem is a serial device (standard) that obeys the AT command set (standard). An internal hardware modem behaves like a serial port card (standard) with an attached device that obeys the AT command set (standard).
The only problem with "win"modems is that there's no baseline standard for talking to an ADC/DAC for a phone line, but there's no reason it has to be that way! Remember seeing "NE2000 compatible" in the advertisements for NICs? Instead of making 100s of different NICs that all behaved differently and required their own software drivers, NIC makers all constructed their hardware so that it would behave like a NE2000 ethernet card. Then one driver can work with all the devices. VGA for video? USB mass storage for thumbdrives and external HDDs? All examples of hardware being designed around a standard so that the OS only has to have a single driver to interface with the same class of hardware from any manufacturer.
The device is flawed. It cannot decode Morse Code. dit.dit.dah, dit dit dit etc.
Leslie Satenstein Montreal Quebec Canada
"onechiptorulethemall..."
.... ...either one seems to fit!
is this the "classic"
One chip to rule THEM ALL
or as it first seemed to say
One chip to rule THE MALL
WiFi+WiMax+Bluetooth+3G.
This is the real need.
Maybe Computers will never be as intelligent as Humans.
For sure they won't ever become so stupid. [VR-1988]
"The test chip measures 24mm2 overall and consumes 79mW in receive mode at 52Mbit/s and 72mW in transmit, and links to three RF chips for the different networks."
This isn't really a one chip solution. It's a one chip solution to the digital portion, but honestly, that's not that exciting. Yes, it would be smaller than having separate chips for each protocol but this isn't the "one chip to rule them all" solution. To do that, they would want to merge the RF functionality onto the same chip. At current (and not so current) feature sizes, the RF portion is a significant fraction of the chip area. Therefore, if you don't reduce the number of RF sections, you're not really saving that much. You could probably get similar area savings if you just wait for another generation of feature sizes when the RF portion will dominate chip area anyways.