By Claus Hetting, WiFi NOW CEO & Chairman
Synaptics – the youngest and probably still the least-known major Wi-Fi chipset provider – today released a new family of Wi-Fi 7 SoCs aimed at the market for high-end IoT client devices. Synaptics’s strategy is to secure the early mover advantage in supplying high-performance Wi-Fi 7 IoT chips to a market segment that is expected to grow substantially during the next 2-3 years, the company says. Synaptics’ Wi-Fi 7 vision and unique value proposition for wireless IoT includes built-in ‘multi-modal’ AI at the edge.
Starting this week established Wi-Fi chipset giants will be facing new – and not least inspired – competition: Synaptics is shaking up the market with the release of a new Wi-Fi 7 family of SoCs designed for high-end IoT devices. The company is using the term ‘IoT’ in its broadest sense because these chips are not primarily intended for doorbells and sensors. They’re powerful enough to connect 8k video streaming and gaming devices including AR/VR headsets, as well as drones, smart speaker systems, automotive entertainment systems, and more, the company says.
Strategy: Early market entry & very high performance with AI
These are by a wide margin the fastest Wi-Fi chips ever to be positioned for IoT. In short, the new SoC family – part of the Synaptics Veros™ wireless portfolio – will ultimately support channel bandwidths of up to 320 MHz (to deliver an impressive 5.8 Gbps of peak throughput) with the first two SoCs released today (dubbed SYN4390 and SYN4384) supporting channel bandwidths of 160 and 80 MHz, respectively. They integrate Wi-Fi 7 with Bluetooth 6.0 as well as Zigbee/Thread, which means they fulfil the connectivity requirements for the Matter IoT standard.
All three are tri-band capable and even support up to 2+2 STR (Simultaneous Transmit-Receive, a client-side version of MLO) to drive latency down and reliability up. But despite the high-end specs, Synaptics insist that the new SoCs are both cost and power efficient, the company says.
“Within the next couple of years we will see Wi-Fi 7 proliferate within the home and even within the automotive sector, and this will drive up demand for high-speed, ultra-low-latency multi-media connectivity on the client side. Our strategy is to get out ahead of this growing market segment with this and future releases. There is no doubt that high-end IoT devices will migrate to Wi-Fi 7 within the next couple of years,” says Ananda Roy, Senior Product Manager at Synaptics.
So what is the Synaptics strategy for challenging the deeply-entrenched Wi-Fi SoC competition? The answer comes in two letters: AI. The new Veros Wi-Fi 7 SoCs come with built-in support for the Synaptics Astra™ AI-at-the-edge platform, which delivers the AI processing capabilities required for multi-modal sensing of the environment, for example via voice, sound, touch, motion, video, and more. Synaptics Astra was introduced last year.
Accurate Wi-Fi sensing for occupancy, fall, or intrusion detection are a few of the many AI-powered use cases that in time are expected to deliver a rich fabric of personalised services for the home, office, or even within industry. Most Wi-Fi IoT SoC vendors offer some form of AI capability but Synaptics’ early and fierce commitment to AI shines through and arguably sets them apart. To get started and to speed up time to market for new products, Synaptics is making available a new Astra Machina SL1680 processor kit with support for Wi-Fi 7 SoCs, the company says.
Broadcom IP licensing agreement fuels innovation
But Wi-Fi 7 SoCs featuring this degree of sophistication don’t just pop up out of nowhere. In January of this year Synaptics signed an IP licensing agreement with Broadcom that includes rights to a wide range of wireless technologies and new standards. The agreement forms the basis of – among other products – the new Wi-Fi 7 SoCs released today. It also spans Wi-Fi 8, ultra-wideband (UWB), advanced Bluetooth, and “next-generation GPS/GNSS products and technology for IoT and Android™ ecosystem,” Synaptics says. Many of the company’s Wi-Fi technical staff also have their roots in Broadcom.
Reading between the lines this means that Synaptics effectively has taken over a sizeable chunk of Broadcom’s Wi-Fi client chipset business. This bodes well for competition as well as a richer, more diverse Wi-Fi ecosystem. Ultimately, this will lead to more innovative Wi-Fi products for consumers and businesses alike. Also read about Synaptics’ recently released ultra-low power Wi-Fi chips here.
Don’t miss Synaptics’ Mohan Karnam, Senior Director of Bluetooth & Wi-Fi Systems Engineering speaking at Wi-Fi World Congress USA 2025 on April 29. For more information and tickets click here.
/Claus.
