Intel Cuts Cord On Its Current Cord-Cutting WiGig Products

An anonymous reader shares a ZDNet report, which also has some clarification from Intel: It looks like you can add WiGig wireless docking to Intel's dustbin (along with IoT products axed earlier this summer), as the company has discontinued existing products using the 802.11ad wireless standard, according to Anandtech. [Since publishing this report, we've received a statement from Intel clarifying its WiGig support: "We continue to offer current versions of our 802.11ad products, such as the Intel Tri-band Wireless AC 18265 and Gigabit Wireless 10101R antenna module. We remain committed to WiGig and think it has exciting potential for a number of applications, including enabling VR to become wireless, mesh networking and as part of Intel's leading products for 5G."] WiGig was developed several years ago with faster speeds than then-current Wi-Fi standards, but because it relied on the 60GHz channel, its high throughput could only travel over short distances. As a result, it eventually became marketed as a feature for wireless laptop docking stations, and while it received some support from enterprise laptop manufactures like Dell and Lenovo, the technology didn't make a big dent against standard wired laptop docks.

Die, Intel. Die.

[sexconker]

Any setback for Intel is a win for the world.

Re:

[SeaFox]

Any setback for Intel is a win for the world.

Uh, discontinuing support for product lines that are not going anywhere streamlines their operations and puts people and capital into more profitable ventures. But thanks for playing...

Re:

[sexconker]

More profitable ventures like what?
IoT? Mobile? McAfee? Quarterly layoffs?

Intel's got nothing beyond their "core competency" - CPUs and chipsets for their CPUs. They've been flinging shit at the wall for a while and nothing has stuck. And here comes AMD to break their stranglehold on the CPU market.

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[Marlin Schwanke]

WiGig was developed several years ago with faster speeds than then-current Wi-Fi standards, but because it relied on the 60GHz channel, its high throughput could only travel over short distances. As a result, it eventually became marketed as a feature for wireless laptop docking stations

So, a non-docking docking station???

WTF is the point of that?

Are you being intentional obtuse or going for a jab of sarcasm? A "dock" to plug all my desktop bound peripherals that I don't actually need to plug in to my laptop when I get home is actually kind of cool. Perhaps he we actually called it a "hub" just for you then?

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[PRMan]

Yeah. That would be awesome at work to just set my laptop down and have everything connected.

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[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

The concept had its uses(though, without some wireless charging arrangement, the utility of a 'dock' that made your laptop battery drain a bit faster(because running that multi-Gb wireless link isn't free) was always a bit troublesome.

For the things that already have reasonably sane and standardized 'over-IP' or bluetooth flavors; a wireless dock doesn't make a whole lot of sense because 'no dock' is pretty close to a wireless dock: you just dump your laptop on your desk, wifi connection handles network,

I wonder

[bobstreo]

If leasing Internet Of Shit devices is the way to go.

You can switch to something new every time your existing devices are orphaned...

Heh

[scdeimos]

As a result, it eventually became marketed as a feature for wireless laptop docking stations, and while it received some support from enterprise laptop manufactures like Dell and Lenovo, the technology didn't make a big dent against standard wired laptop docks.

I can't help but chuckle whenever I see "support" and "Lenovo" in the same sentence.

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[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Their enterprise support still has moments of competence. It's usually a good sign if you run into part of it that still hasn't had the IBM badges filed off; I'm not sure if this represents actual institutional inertia that has spared these areas; or whether there are pockets of resistance among the employees that have made failing to update their paperwork a signal of adherence to the old ways; but in my experience it is a good sign when you get one of them.

Anything explicitly Lenovo, without a history

Lack of Awareness

[crow]

This sounds like a good idea if it could be used along with wireless power, and if it can really provide sufficient bandwidth.

If I could have a pad that I could set my laptop on, and suddenly be able to use an external monitor, keyboard, and wired ethernet, all while charging the laptop, that would be a big win. Especially if it's a widely supported standard, so the docking pad won't become obsolete when I buy a new laptop.

But what should really sell is a good wireless standard for conference room projecto

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[crow]

Perhaps, though I haven't used it, so I can't say for sure. There's no Android support, so it's not a real solution yet, and it looks like it's trying to do a lot more than simply manage projectors wirelessly.

I'm thinking of something dead simple almost like pairing Bluetooth, only for video displays. For example, you might have an app on your phone, and you would click, "find displays." It would then show you the names of any displays (like "Conference Room 7 projector"). You click on a display, and it

Re:

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

What you describe is(for the most part) what 'airplay' is(but only if you are fully immersed in the Apple universe); and what 'miricast' is slightly wonkier and less predictable about being; but widely available across Windows and Android(not actually sure if Macs can do it; though it requires no hardware features except a modestly recent wifi chipset, so if they can't it's for want of software, not a hardware thing).

Things aren't all rosy(as noted, miricast devices and support; since just about anyone c

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[drinkypoo]

There's really no good reason not to use one connector. That's what docking stations were all about. It's nice if it could be standardized, which is sort of what thunderbolt was all about, although intel thought they would control that whole market and as a result it is tiny. As usual. They didn't learn from Apple and firewire. Or themselves and USB.

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[rfengr]

It's not going to be any more trivial using light than 60 GHz. You think mmWave is directional, try a laser beam.

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[MattskEE]

There's no need to use a laser beam, you can use an omnidirectional light and superimpose a small signal which is invisible to the eye on top of room lighting. LEDs can be use but the data rate is lower. Laser diodes are actually being explored for lighting, they are already used in some car headlights and maybe other specialized applications, and they will support gigabit modulation rates.

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[MightyYar]

Radio is just plain wrong for massive data bandwidths

Light is radio at a different frequency. Light has more bandwidth at its higher frequencies compared to radio, but there is also a lot of occurring interference... We tend to have a lot of it in the same areas that you'd want to use light to transmit data. Visible modulating light would also be annoying as hell - in the past it's been IR... which brings me to:

The ONLY reason light isn't used is because light hasn't been used in the past, save for remote control units.

I assume you are very young? I say this because the main technology used for wireless communication of computers and related equipment was IR. Everyth

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[amorsen]

Visible modulating light would also be annoying as hell

I hate to tell you this, but your LEDs are likely to be awfully flickering in the 100kHz range. Some as low as 10kHz (and some just dispense with that part of the driver circuit and flicker at 100Hz or 120Hz, but let us disregard those).

It would be tricky to get more than one bit per flicker out of light that just shines around without being in a proper fiber, so to get e.g. 1Gbps out of it you'd need to flicker at 1GHz. Good luck telling that apart from the 100kHz flicker you are already dealing with.

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[MightyYar]

I don't mean that you could see the flickering - I mean that there would be this persistent light shining right at you as long as data was transmitting.

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[amorsen]

Yes the technology only works when the office lights are on. In a lot of offices, that is the majority of the time.

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[MightyYar]

I think you are referring to a theoretical technology whereas I am talking about something you could do today. If you want to integrate high-speed visible light data transmission into office lighting, that may very well be a wonderful replacement for WiFi in many settings. But that is currently not possible - certainly nothing you could buy today. Today what is possible is point-source LEDs.

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[MattskEE]

Actually the 60 GHz band was selected precisely because the propagation loss is especially high here which reduces interference between adjacent users. Even though transmit powers must be higher for a given range and data rate the higher loss still translates into smaller adjacent user interference once you're outside of the range.

The problem is that it's challenging (i.e. expensive) to get useful range at this high frequency at high data rates where generating power is more difficult and where the propagat

Not excited.

[jimbo]

I'm fed up with everything being "exciting".