By Claus Hetting, Wi-Fi NOW CEO & Chairman
The jostling for Wi-Fi 7 poll position among Wi-Fi chipset vendors has begun with Taiwan-based MediaTek taking an early lead: Last week the company became the first among chipset vendors to announce plans to demonstrate Wi-Fi 7 capability at CES 2022 in Las Vegas. MediaTeak also announced two new Wi-Fi 6-capable IoT chips and a new partnership that will deliver Wi-Fi 6E connectivity for AMD devices.
The next Wi-Fi standard – Wi-Fi 7 – is still a few years out but that hasn’t stopped Taiwan-based chipset giant from announcing their plans to demonstrate Wi-Fi 7 capability at CES 2022, which kicks off Monday, January 3 in Las Vegas. The announcement came at a MediaTek event last week. It is probably reasonable to expect that MediaTek will not be the only chipset company to demonstrate Wi-Fi 7 capability at CES.
Enjoying this story?
Leave your email here and we'll get you all the latest Wi-Fi news.
The new Wi-Fi 7 standard – expected to hit consumer markets perhaps by 2023 or 2024 – offers peak speeds several times faster than current Wi-Fi 6 and Wi-Fi 6E but more important than that: Wi-Fi 7 is the first standard designed with 6 GHz and tri-band operation specifically in mind. Wi-Fi 7 will be able to operate on multiple links at the same time – using Multi-Link Operation (MLO) – leading to big improvements in reliability as well as to lower latency. Wi-Fi 7 devices are also expected to support outdoor 6 GHz operation with AFC – also read more here.
MediaTek also released two Wi-Fi 6-capable system-on-chip (SoC) platforms for IoT named Filogic 130 and Filogic 130A. Both include integrated processors (MCUs) and AI engines while the Filogic 130A features an audio digital signal processor to power voice assistants. The SoCs also include integrated front-end-modules for easy and fast integration into IoT-type products. Read more here.
Last but not least MediaTek has announced a new partnership with leading CPU vendor AMD to integrate MediaTek’s Filogic 330P Wi-Fi 6E-capable chipset into AMD’s RZ60o-series connectivity modules. The two new AMD modules featuring MediaTek’s Wi-Fi 6E technology are called RZ616 and RZ608. The new Wi-Fi 6E modules will power AMD Ryzen-equipped desktop and laptop PCs in 2022 and beyond, MediaTek says. Read more here.
/Claus.
