MaxLinear has unveiled its first Wi-Fi 7 SoCs with the MxL31712 and the MxL31708 single-chip solutions targeting service provider gateways, Wi-Fi routers, and access points, and delivering more than 70% higher tri-band throughput compared to Wi-Fi 6.
The MxL31712 aims at the premium 4×4 tri-band market with a throughput of up to 18.6 Gbps and up to 12 spatial streams, while the MxL31708 will be integrated into mid- to high-range 4×4 dual-band access points and gateways with a throughput of up to 17 Gbps, and up to 8 spatial streams.
MaxLinear MxL31712 and MxL31708 share the following features:
- Single-chip WFA Wi-Fi 7 R1 certifiable
- Based on IEEE 802.11be (aka WiFi 7 or Extremely High Throughput “EHT”) backward compliant to IEEE 802.11a/b/g/n/ac/ax WiFi 6
- Wi-Fi 7 features:
- Bandwidth up to 320MHz
- 4096 QAM modulation
- Multi-Link Operation (MLO)
- Multi Resource Unit (MRU)
- Dedicated antenna for Zero Wait DFS (ZWDFS)
- Enhanced Network Efficiency
- Digital Pre-Distortion (DPD)
- Automatic Frequency Coordination (AFC) support
- Fully offloaded Wi-Fi traffic
- Coexistence support for PAN radios
- Host Interface – PCIe Gen4
Both chips are optimized to interface with MaxLinear’s AnyWAN URX broadband SoCs and will be found in gateways with cable, fiber, copper, Ethernet, 2-Box (CNXSoft: not sure what this is…), and/or 5G FWA connectivity, as well as Wi-Fi 7 routers, access points, extenders, repeaters, and mesh networking solutions.
Since the WiFi 7 chips are coprocessors there’s no information about software support, but we previously reported that MaxLinear’s AnyWAN URX SoC could run the Yocto-based prplOS (formerly known as prplWRT), RDK-B, or MaxLinear’s UGW (Universal Gateway Software) based on OpenWrt.
MaxLinear MxL31712 and MxL31708 Wi-Fi 7 chips are at the pre-production stage with some samples available to selected partners, and mass production is scheduled to start next year. More details can be found on the respective product pages and the press release.
Thanks to TLS for the tip.
Jean-Luc started CNX Software in 2010 as a part-time endeavor, before quitting his job as a software engineering manager, and starting to write daily news, and reviews full time later in 2011.
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