Broadcom Crams 802.11n, Bluetooth, and FM Onto a Single Chip

Broadcom has managed to cram 802.11n, Bluetooth 2.1+EDR, and FM reception/transmission all into a single "combo wireless chip." Designed to be a better wireless implementation for portable devices, the chip seeks to lower chip counts and integration costs. "Broadcom is the second firm — following Atheros in a single-function chip — to announce a single-stream 802.11n product, in which one of 802.11n's advantages is shaved off in favor of a faster baseline performance and lower battery consumption. This move is meant to replace 802.11g in portable devices without draining a battery faster and providing other advantages that make up for what's become a slight cost difference."

Comments

The real winner is the retailers

[utahraptor]

They can sell the same hardware in 3 versions charging more for each one depending which features are enabled.

Broadcom is crap

[rewter]

Broadcom wireless chipsets are crap. And I am speaking out of real embedded system design experience here.

Re:Broadcom is crap

[Hordeking]

Broadcom wireless chipsets are crap. And I am speaking out of real embedded system design experience here.

Agreed, but from a different perspective. Their support for users running Linux is atrocious. I absolutely hate purchasing a wireless PCI card from a major maker only to find they've changed chips between revisions, and the new chip doesn't have drivers. Of course, the makers are just as guilty, since they don't mark the packaging in any way.

Re:Broadcom is crap

[fishbowl]

A significant linux deployment project was once abandoned by a client of mine because it was impossible to spec a PCI 802.11/g card.
There's no way to identify a product meaningfully, and no way to make the order repeatable. The few vendors who will guarantee linux support for a device, would only do so at an unacceptable price, and it was clear that they had no better way of guaranteeing it than the consumer did.

I know there have been a few cards that have stable chipsets (e.g., certain 3COM models). This doesn't really help the situation.

The wireless-compatability HOWTO is good for a laugh. There are devices listed that were only available for a short time, only in certain countries, and many devices that, given the same part number, get you several completely different cards.

I lost count of the number of times I was referred to that list when shopping for a vendor that would guarantee delivery and repeatable support of a card that would work.

What really stunk about the whole thing was that wireless internet was fast becoming "the killer app" for computing in many sectors, and Linux missed the boat. You can say it's not "linux's fault" but, why in the hell aren't the people who got rich off Linux, also sitting on the boards of some of these companies? Or at least, competing with them so that it's not possible, business-wise, to be openly hostile to Linux developers? Not "supportive", mind you, just not flatly hostile please. It's as if the directors of Broadcom used their leverage in an active campaign to keep Linux off portable computers.

Re:Broadcom?

[Chirs]

Broadcom is one of the last remaining holdouts that doesn't give out chip specs for their networking devices. Because of this, it's *very* difficult to create decent linux drivers for their chips.

Re:Broadcom?

[Firehed]

Meanwhile, the manufacturers who play nice with Linux are reaping the benefits of the Linux-running hardware tinkerer's credit cards.

This isn't rocket science... the more places your device can work, the bigger your market. Their spec obfuscation is akin to DRM - it only needs to be broken once for it to become globally worthless, yet if you don't use it in the first place then your loudest users will praise you.

What's there for Broadcom to gain by making it harder to write drivers? Surely it's in their best interest to have Linux support, especially given it's massively widespread use in the embedded devices market.