Intel Puts WiFi Back Into Next Gen Chipsets 83
bizpile writes "After announcing that they were removing WiFi from their next generation of chips, Intel has decided to put it back. The next generation of chips are also expected to include the 1066MHz frontside bus Intel introduced this week and support 667MHz DDR 2 SDRAM."
Wot's next? (Score:1, Insightful)
Maybe they would be doing better (Score:2, Insightful)
I have yet to see AMD have these poor planning issues (also thinking of those TV chips that could have cut costs for consumers that were cut recently).
"Wi-Fi" meaning... (Score:5, Insightful)
I bet they're struggling with heat dissipation and power consumption.
Probably they see that 'g' is commoditized and ripe for inclusion on the motherboard, and that the practical concerns over heat and power will be solved..
New Slogan (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Intelligent (Score:3, Insightful)
Personally, I like the fact that I can upgrade my individual components and customize my machine. I'd rather my CPU not lock me into its integrate features when they might become obsolete.
Re:But what about WiMAX? (Score:3, Insightful)
Nope.
Antenna size (beyond a half-wave dipole or a quarter-wave whip above a relatively large ground - such as a handset) doesn't give you any more power. It just lets you direct the power you have more selectively, making your signal stronger in some directions by stealing power from other directions. (When receiving it lets you intercept more approximately in proportion to the area of the antenna plus an imaginary quarter-wavelength "aura" region around it, provided it's coming from the correct direction - expanding the antenna unavoidably makes it directional.)
But "size" is in terms of wavelengths of the frequency in question.
WiFi usually operates at shorter distances - but it uses less efficient modulation and coding schemes. WiMAX can pack more bits per unit of bandwidth and its forward error correction lets you pull them out from much closer to the noise floor. So (at the same frequencies as WiFi - and one of the WiMAX bands is right there) it can go farther or send more bits with a given amount of power.
WiMAX is similarly more efficient than the codings used on most cellphone systems - so again you can go farther for a given bit rate or run a higher bit rate over the same distances for a given unit of power. If you want to send live HDTV you'll still drain your batteries faster than if you want to send voice. But if you're sending voice (or anything with a similar bit rate) you might come out ahead.
A typical WiFi deployment uses omnidirectional antennas at both the transmitter and receiver. With the energy going in all directions from the transmitter and noise picked up from all directions at the receiver. A typical WiMAX or cellphone deployment uses a high-gain directional antenna at the base station, acting as a spotlight rather than a floodlight on transmit, a telescope collecting lots of light from that particular direction on receive. Just as with cellphones (or WiFi with a beam antenna at one end) you can get a good connection over several miles to a small omnidirectional antenna this way.
Just as with cellphones (or WiFi with beam antennas at BOTH ends) you can go still farther if you use large aimed (or electronically "steered") directional antennas at BOTH ends. But you can happily go miles with a directional antenna at the base and a rubber duckie at the subscriber station.
WiFi g is 52 MBps raw, while a 14 MHz WiMAX channel is 70 MBps raw. But WiFi is pure contention while WiMAX uses allocated timeslots (similar to DOCSIS cable TV boxes) so WiMAX makes more efficient use of the spectrum - you don't have to waste power retransmitting because of collisions. WiMAX can operate on licensed bandwidth, too, so you can have a lower noise floor (no microwave ovens, speed-trap radar, cordless phones, or non-system hotspots to compete with) and that means lower transmit power again.
So for distances of a couple miles without obstacles, using directional antennas at the service provider end, a WiMAX enabled laptop with an internal antenna could be running at a battery drain comparable to a similar WiFi setup running at your local coffee shop, airport, or office hotspot.