Intel Cuts Cord On Its Current Cord-Cutting WiGig Products (zdnet.com)

An anonymous reader shares a ZDNet report, which also has some clarification from Intel: It looks like you can add WiGig wireless docking to Intel's dustbin (along with IoT products axed earlier this summer), as the company has discontinued existing products using the 802.11ad wireless standard, according to Anandtech. [Since publishing this report, we've received a statement from Intel clarifying its WiGig support: "We continue to offer current versions of our 802.11ad products, such as the Intel Tri-band Wireless AC 18265 and Gigabit Wireless 10101R antenna module. We remain committed to WiGig and think it has exciting potential for a number of applications, including enabling VR to become wireless, mesh networking and as part of Intel's leading products for 5G."] WiGig was developed several years ago with faster speeds than then-current Wi-Fi standards, but because it relied on the 60GHz channel, its high throughput could only travel over short distances. As a result, it eventually became marketed as a feature for wireless laptop docking stations, and while it received some support from enterprise laptop manufactures like Dell and Lenovo, the technology didn't make a big dent against standard wired laptop docks.

Comments

WHY THE FUCK IS EVERYTHING BROADCAST

[Anonymous Coward]

headphones, mouse, kb, this is fucking bullshit. If I cant buy a computer that isnt broadcasting every goddam signal I am going to be pissed. Like 'burn down nearest Amazon warehouse' pissed.

I want a computer not a fucking radio tower

Re:WHY THE FUCK IS EVERYTHING BROADCAST

[Anonymous Coward]

Someone is feeling salty today...

Cut the cord!

[Anonymous Coward]

But save the sac because it tastes good!

Die, Intel. Die.

[sexconker]

Any setback for Intel is a win for the world.

Re:Die, Intel. Die.

[SeaFox]

Any setback for Intel is a win for the world.

Uh, discontinuing support for product lines that are not going anywhere streamlines their operations and puts people and capital into more profitable ventures. But thanks for playing...

Re:Die, Intel. Die.

[sexconker]

More profitable ventures like what?
IoT? Mobile? McAfee? Quarterly layoffs?

Intel's got nothing beyond their "core competency" - CPUs and chipsets for their CPUs. They've been flinging shit at the wall for a while and nothing has stuck. And here comes AMD to break their stranglehold on the CPU market.

LOL ... WTF?

[Anonymous Coward]

WiGig was developed several years ago with faster speeds than then-current Wi-Fi standards, but because it relied on the 60GHz channel, its high throughput could only travel over short distances. As a result, it eventually became marketed as a feature for wireless laptop docking stations

So, a non-docking docking station???

WTF is the point of that?

Re:LOL ... WTF?

[mschwanke97402]

WiGig was developed several years ago with faster speeds than then-current Wi-Fi standards, but because it relied on the 60GHz channel, its high throughput could only travel over short distances. As a result, it eventually became marketed as a feature for wireless laptop docking stations

So, a non-docking docking station???

WTF is the point of that?

Are you being intentional obtuse or going for a jab of sarcasm? A "dock" to plug all my desktop bound peripherals that I don't actually need to plug in to my laptop when I get home is actually kind of cool. Perhaps he we actually called it a "hub" just for you then?

Re:LOL ... WTF?

[PRMan]

Yeah. That would be awesome at work to just set my laptop down and have everything connected.

Re:LOL ... WTF?

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

The concept had its uses(though, without some wireless charging arrangement, the utility of a 'dock' that made your laptop battery drain a bit faster(because running that multi-Gb wireless link isn't free) was always a bit troublesome.

For the things that already have reasonably sane and standardized 'over-IP' or bluetooth flavors; a wireless dock doesn't make a whole lot of sense because 'no dock' is pretty close to a wireless dock: you just dump your laptop on your desk, wifi connection handles network, file shares, printers; bluetooth peripherals reconnect in pretty short order when you come into range and you are 'docked'.

The Intel 60GHz thing(it was a pair of SKUs, one card for adding support to the client system, plus the W13100 "Wireless Gigabity Sink" part designed to build a docking station around) was aimed mostly at shoving the interfaces without good wireless abstractions over a wireless link: video(yes, 'airplay', 'miricast', etc. can do an OK job of 'wireless display' by sending an H.264 stream to a device that expects it; but they don't work with dumb monitors; and don't tend to work with software that isn't explicitly expecting them; so they aren't really an option for the "dump laptop in dock, receive dual monitors" use case) USB(there are various vendor specific hacks; but unless the USB device can be shared out at a higher level, like a printer or a mass storage device, there isn't really network-transparent USB support; the USB network extenders that do exist can be pretty dodgy and generally require fiddly drivers) and ethernet(probably the least useful for end users; since wifi is a direct substitute; but when IT wants to PXE boot...)

Even so, the niche was pretty limited, when you could get the same features, plus charging, for less money(and without a fan in your docking station; most models had a nice noisy 60mm, users loved that) in exchange for going to slightly more effort and mechanically docking. Plus, while fast, the WiGig link wasn't fast enough for fully transparent transport of things like video; and range was severely compromised if line of sight wasn't available. Plus, there were some very unpleasant Gen1 quirks and power management bugs, depending on the model.

Not really a surprise that it didn't do so well. It did offer capabilities that other things didn't(and still don't); but wired docks were doing all of that better and cheaper, with charging; and since the arrangement relied on the 60GHz radio(I'm not sure if falling back to the more usual wifi bands just wasn't implemented, or didn't offer nearly enough bandwidth to handle things like dock video without egregious compression; either way it wasn't an option); you had to be pretty close to the docking station for it to work, so the extra effort of mechanical docking was limited.

If it had gained broader acceptance; it probably could have been a winning 'enterprise' equivalent of miricast/airplay for conference room video and the like; but since those work with mostly cheap and common hardware at the expense of some relatively minor H.264 artifacts, they are a hard target for an expensive, model specific, fancy interconnect to compete with. For docking; things were bad enough with the various proprietary(but mostly functional) docks sold with 'business' laptops since forever; and they are worse now that TB3 and USB-C allow you to get full dock bandwidth out of a single connector.

I wonder

[bobstreo]

If leasing Internet Of Shit devices is the way to go.

You can switch to something new every time your existing devices are orphaned...

Heh

[scdeimos]

As a result, it eventually became marketed as a feature for wireless laptop docking stations, and while it received some support from enterprise laptop manufactures like Dell and Lenovo, the technology didn't make a big dent against standard wired laptop docks.

I can't help but chuckle whenever I see "support" and "Lenovo" in the same sentence.

Re:Heh

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Their enterprise support still has moments of competence. It's usually a good sign if you run into part of it that still hasn't had the IBM badges filed off; I'm not sure if this represents actual institutional inertia that has spared these areas; or whether there are pockets of resistance among the employees that have made failing to update their paperwork a signal of adherence to the old ways; but in my experience it is a good sign when you get one of them.

Anything explicitly Lenovo, without a history of once having been better, though...

Qualcomm...

[Anonymous Coward]

Good thing my vendor did not use intel. We have 11ad wireless bridges being used for building to building links. I am working on building a gige network around town and soon we will be upgrading to a full gig commit on the fiber.

Lack of Awareness

[crow]

This sounds like a good idea if it could be used along with wireless power, and if it can really provide sufficient bandwidth.

If I could have a pad that I could set my laptop on, and suddenly be able to use an external monitor, keyboard, and wired ethernet, all while charging the laptop, that would be a big win. Especially if it's a widely supported standard, so the docking pad won't become obsolete when I buy a new laptop.

But what should really sell is a good wireless standard for conference room projectors, especially one that would let people display presentations from phones, and one that really just worked all the time. Companies would buy them by the truckload with just a hint of marketing effort.

Re: Lack of Awareness

[Anonymous Coward]

Like Intel unite?
https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/architecture-and-technology/unite/intel-unite-overview.html

Re: Lack of Awareness

[crow]

Perhaps, though I haven't used it, so I can't say for sure. There's no Android support, so it's not a real solution yet, and it looks like it's trying to do a lot more than simply manage projectors wirelessly.

I'm thinking of something dead simple almost like pairing Bluetooth, only for video displays. For example, you might have an app on your phone, and you would click, "find displays." It would then show you the names of any displays (like "Conference Room 7 projector"). You click on a display, and it would say something like, "Press the green button on the projector to take control," or, "This projector is being used by another device, press the red button on the projector to disconnect it."

When you pair with the display, it wouldn't automatically mirror your main display--for Presentations, for example, the projector might show the slide show, while your device might show the current and next slides or something else.

Build this, and everyone will want it.

Re: Lack of Awareness

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

What you describe is(for the most part) what 'airplay' is(but only if you are fully immersed in the Apple universe); and what 'miricast' is slightly wonkier and less predictable about being; but widely available across Windows and Android(not actually sure if Macs can do it; though it requires no hardware features except a modestly recent wifi chipset, so if they can't it's for want of software, not a hardware thing).

Things aren't all rosy(as noted, miricast devices and support; since just about anyone can offer them, are a bit uneven; and since 'airplay' appears to have been designed around home users with a handful of devices on one router; bodging it into a large network can be annoying; and trying to get the right conference room; rather than the other 50 that are on the same LAN, to display can be fiddly); but as long as the modest latency and compression introduced by the arrangement being an H.264 stream over a wifi connection aren't an issue; these give you most of the 'connect to the display without wires!' experience with basically no special requirements on the client side and a relatively cheap little box on the monitor side.

To the degree that there is actual demand for wireless video; I suspect that both of these helped bury the fancy 60GHz version; which is better under specific circumstances; but pricey, works only with specific hardware, has poorer range and LoS constraints, etc. Mediocre and adequate has a way of doing that. That, and VGA is too dumb to know that it is obsolete, so just keeps on working.

Re:Lack of Awareness

[drinkypoo]

There's really no good reason not to use one connector. That's what docking stations were all about. It's nice if it could be standardized, which is sort of what thunderbolt was all about, although intel thought they would control that whole market and as a result it is tiny. As usual. They didn't learn from Apple and firewire. Or themselves and USB.

Better use light over really short distances

[Anonymous Coward]

Radio is just plain wrong for massive data bandwidths- like uncompressed video. Either the radio link will pollute the neighbourhood, or the neighbourhood will pollute the radio link.

But modulating light is very very cheap and reliable- and does not pollute outside of the room. The transmitter is trivial tech and so is the receiver. The ONLY reason light isn't used is because light hasn't been used in the past, save for remote control units.

Intel promised a useful mega-high bandwidth radio tech- but as with all Intel 'innovations' totally failed to deliver. VR headsets do need badly to 'cut the cord'. Ironically, such headsets are already using light for position tracking.

Of course, light needs 'line of sight', but for the use cases that really need the cord to be cut, LOS is not an issue. There is also the problem that first world military nations use light LOS communication - and don't want the tech to be widely commercially exploited (the 'teflon' effect).

Anyhoo, Intel is so badly failing in its ONLY area of commercial success, the x86 processor (now AMD has released the amazing Ryzen CPU), that all its corporate attention is on the future processor war with AMD.

Re:Better use light over really short distances

[rfengr]

It's not going to be any more trivial using light than 60 GHz. You think mmWave is directional, try a laser beam.

Re:Better use light over really short distances

[MightyYar]

Radio is just plain wrong for massive data bandwidths

Light is radio at a different frequency. Light has more bandwidth at its higher frequencies compared to radio, but there is also a lot of occurring interference... We tend to have a lot of it in the same areas that you'd want to use light to transmit data. Visible modulating light would also be annoying as hell - in the past it's been IR... which brings me to:

The ONLY reason light isn't used is because light hasn't been used in the past, save for remote control units.

I assume you are very young? I say this because the main technology used for wireless communication of computers and related equipment was IR. Everything - laptops, PDAs, phones - had an IrDA port. It worked, but it was not fast and the line-of-sight requirement was a pain. There are researchers trying to make IR systems faster, but it's not a trivial problem. If they can get it working, the bandwidth would be gigabit-class.

Re:Better use light over really short distances

[amorsen]

Visible modulating light would also be annoying as hell

I hate to tell you this, but your LEDs are likely to be awfully flickering in the 100kHz range. Some as low as 10kHz (and some just dispense with that part of the driver circuit and flicker at 100Hz or 120Hz, but let us disregard those).

It would be tricky to get more than one bit per flicker out of light that just shines around without being in a proper fiber, so to get e.g. 1Gbps out of it you'd need to flicker at 1GHz. Good luck telling that apart from the 100kHz flicker you are already dealing with.

Re:Better use light over really short distances

[MightyYar]

I don't mean that you could see the flickering - I mean that there would be this persistent light shining right at you as long as data was transmitting.

Re:Better use light over really short distances

[amorsen]

Yes the technology only works when the office lights are on. In a lot of offices, that is the majority of the time.

Re:Better use light over really short distances

[MightyYar]

I think you are referring to a theoretical technology whereas I am talking about something you could do today. If you want to integrate high-speed visible light data transmission into office lighting, that may very well be a wonderful replacement for WiFi in many settings. But that is currently not possible - certainly nothing you could buy today. Today what is possible is point-source LEDs.

Re:Better use light over really short distances

[MattskEE]

Actually the 60 GHz band was selected precisely because the propagation loss is especially high here which reduces interference between adjacent users. Even though transmit powers must be higher for a given range and data rate the higher loss still translates into smaller adjacent user interference once you're outside of the range.

The problem is that it's challenging (i.e. expensive) to get useful range at this high frequency at high data rates where generating power is more difficult and where the propagation loss is higher.

Re:Better use light over really short distances

[MattskEE]

There's no need to use a laser beam, you can use an omnidirectional light and superimpose a small signal which is invisible to the eye on top of room lighting. LEDs can be use but the data rate is lower. Laser diodes are actually being explored for lighting, they are already used in some car headlights and maybe other specialized applications, and they will support gigabit modulation rates.

Not excited.

[jimbo]

I'm fed up with everything being "exciting".