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 […]
MaxLinear AnyWAN URX850, URX851, and MxL25641 Intel Atom SoCs target broadband routers and gateways
MaxLinear has just announced the availability of the first three AnyWAN broadband SoCs featuring Intel Atom cores with the MxL25641, URX850, and URX851 processors designed for 5Gbps and 10 Gbps broadband routers and gateways, usually referred to as CPEs (customer premise equipment). When I first read the news of MaxLinear releasing Intel Atom SoCs, I could not quite compute how it was possible, as I can’t remember any third-party releasing Intel processors and I thought it might be a system-in-package instead. But MaxLinear keeps calling those Intel Atom SoCs, and the reason is that the company acquired Intel’s Home Gateway Platform Division in 2020. MaxLinear AnyWAN x86 SoCs key features and specifications: AnyWAN URX850/URX851 (for 10Gbps systems) CPU – 4x Intel Atom CPU cores @ 2 GHz Memory – Up to 16GB LPDDR4 or DDR4 Storage – eMMC 5.1 flash Networking 4x 2.5GE PHYs XFI WAN Packet processor for full […]
MediaTek T830 to power 5G FWA routers and mobile hotspots
MediaTek T830 is a consumer premise equipment (CPE) SoC with a quad-core Cortex-A53 processor, an integrated Sub-6GHz 5G modem, hardware-based network acceleration engines,and optional support for Wi-Fi 6/6E, and son the new WiFi 7. It’s unrelated to the MediaTek Filogic 830 WiFi router SoC and instead, offers an upgrade to the MediaTek T750 5G chipset for higher performance multi-gigabit CPE products, such as fixed wireless access (FWA) routers and mobile hotspots (Mi-Fi) with up to 7 Gbps 5G speeds. MediaTek T830 specifications: CPU – 4x Arm Cortex-A55 cores @ up to 2.2 GHz GPU – Unnamed 3D GPU Networking accelerators MediaTek Network Processing Unit QoS Acceleration and Tunneling Offload Engine for VLAN / PPTP / L2TP / GRE Memory I/F – LPDDR4x / LPDDR5 Storage I/F – nMCP (NAND-based Multi-Chip Package) suggested. SPI, eMMC 5.1, and ONFI (Open NAND Flash Interface) supported Display I/F – MIPI DSI interface for up […]
MediaTek Filogic 880 and Filogic 380 to power WiFi 7 access points and clients
I first heard about WiFi 7 (802.11be) when MediaTek demonstrated some unknown Filogic solutions to customers, but few details were known at the time. The company has now formally announced the Filogic 880 and Filogic 380 WiFi 7 solutions designed for access points and clients respectively. MediaTek Filogic 880 for WiFi 7 access points, gateways, and routers Filogic 880 specifications: CPU – Quad-core Arm Cortex-A73 application processor @ up to 1.8 GHz (about 30K DMIPS performance) AI accelerator – Advanced NPU (previously called “packet accelerator” or “off-load engine” :)) with HW NAT/IPv6 acceleration, QoS acceleration, (EIP-197) crypto engine for accelerating IPSec, SSL/TLS, DTLS (CAPWAP), SRTP and MACsec, etc… System Memory – Up to 8GB 32-bit DDR3/DDR4 3200 Storage – SPI NOR flash, SPI NAND flash, eMMC flash Networking Wired 2x 10 Gbps Ethernet 1x 2.5 Gbps Ethernet 4x 1 Gbps Ethernet Wireless Wi-Fi 7 technologies such as 4096-QAM, 320MHz, MRU, […]
Qualcomm Wi-Fi 7 Networking Pro Series SoCs support up to 33 Gbps PHY rate, up to 2,000 clients
Qualcomm has announced the Wi-Fi 7 capable Qualcomm Networking Pro Series Gen 3 family designed for routers and access points with a PHY rate up to 33 Gbps with the quad-band 16-stream Networking Pro 1620 platform and offers some competition to the recently announced Broadcom WiFi 7 access point chips. The company will also offer the tri-band 12-stream Networking Pro 1220 with up to 21.6 Gbps aggregated link rate, the quad-band 8-stream Networking Pro 820 capable of 16.5 Gbps PHY rate, and at the low-end of the scale, the Networking Pro 620 limited to 10.8 Gbps with three bands and six streams. Qualcomm Networking Pro 1620 (IPQ9574) platform specifications: CPU – Quad-core Arm Cortex-A73 @ 2.2 GHz System Memory – DDR3L, DDR4 16/32-bit Storage – eMMC, NAND, Serial NOR, SD/eMMC Networking Wired – 6 Port Integrated Ethernet Switch 4 x 2.5 GbE + 5 GbE + 10 GbE Wireless Wi-Fi […]
Broadcom unveils WiFi 7 chips for access points and clients
We first noticed the new WiFi 7 (802.11be) standard in January 2022 with MediaTek demonstrating Filogic 802.11be processors, and later Qualcomm introduced the FastConnect 7800 WiFi 7 and Bluetooth 5.3 solution for wireless clients, but we had not seen anything for WiFi 7 access points yet. Broadcom has now announced four WiFi 7 chips for access points with the BCM67263, BCM6726, BCM43740, and BCM43720 up to 11.5 Gbps PHY rate, plus the BCM4398 Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 5 combo chip for mobile handsets with up to 6.05 Gbps PHY rate. We’ve not quite at the theoretical 40+ Gbps PHY rate for WiFi 7, but those solutions will more than double the speed of existing Wi-Fi 6/6E solutions, while simultaneously delivering lower latency and extending range. The BCM67263 and BCM6726 chips are designed for the residential Wi-Fi 7 access point market with the following key features: Support for 4 streams of […]
Qualcomm announces FastConnect 7800 WiFi 7 & Bluetooth 5.3 solution
Qualcomm has just announced the FastConnect 7800 WiFi 7 and Bluetooth 5.3 subsystem for smartphones, laptops, and virtual reality headsets promising peak speeds of 5.8 Gbps as well as sub-2 millisecond latency. We first detailed some of WiFi 7 features such as up to 40 Gbps link, and real-time capabilities when MediaTek showcased its future 802.11be compliant Filogic processor to customers, so it should be no surprise that Qualcomm had been working on its own solution, and announced it at Mobile World Congress 2022. Qualcomm FastConnect 7800 (WCN785x-1, WCN785x-5) specifications: Wi-Fi Standards – Wi-Fi 7 (802.11be), Wi-Fi 6E, Wi-Fi 6 (802.11ax), 802.11ac Wave 2, 802.11a/b/g, 802.11n Spectral Bands: 2.4GHz, 5GHz, 6GHz Peak QAM: 4K QAM Peak speed: 5.8Gbps or 4.3Gbps where the 6GHz spectrum is not available Features 4-stream Dual-band simultaneous (DBS) extended into the High Bands Multi-Link Operation (MLO) using 320 MHz (Single channel or 160 + 160) 8×8 […]
WiFi 7 (802.11be) will support up to 40 Gbps links, real-time applications
I still don’t own a WiFi 6 router, but MediaTek has already started to demonstrate WiFi 7 (802.11be) to customers with solutions based on upcoming Filogic 802.11be processors which deliver “super-fast speeds and low latency transmission” and provide a “true wireline/Ethernet replacement for super high-bandwidth applications”. The company goes on to explain that Wi-Fi 7 relies on the same 2.4GHz, 5GHz, and 6GHz frequencies as WiFi 6/6E, but can still provide 2.4x higher speeds than Wi-Fi 6, even with the same number of antennas, since WiFi 7 can utilize 320Mhz channels and support 4K QAM (quadrature amplitude modulation) technology. There’s limited information about MediaTek Filogic 802.11be WiFi 7 processors since it will take a few more years before becoming available, but we can find more details in a document entitled “Current Status and Directions of IEEE 802.11be, the Future Wi-Fi 7” from IEEE Xplore. Here are some of the […]