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WiGig's 60GHz WiFi prototypes slated for 2011, real products for 2012
The second half of 2010 is nearly behind us, and we're afraid we're not seeing a whole lot of 60GHz modems on store shelves. So, when will WiGig's 1.5Gbps wireless transfer speeds forever shape our content-consuming lifestyles? The inside word is 2012. TrustedReviews sat down with VESA chairman Bruce Montag -- who also happens to be on the WiGig board -- and was told that the wireless DisplayPort products made possible by the recent WiGig / VESA partnership are due in "the first half of 2012." You won't necessarily need to wait that long to read about how they're going to make mothers of young, video gaming children jump for joy -- should all go according to plan, we'll be treated to glimpses of the first prototypes early next year.
WiGig and VESA team up, promise wireless DisplayPort gear
Tired of going at it alone, eh WiGig? The aforesaid Alliance has just teamed up with yet another organization -- a mere six months after doing likewise with the Wi-Fi Alliance. For those unaware, WiGig's 60GHz multi-gigabit technology has already begun to penetrate the higher-end AV market, particularly in devices that shoot 1080p from source-to-display sans cabling. But as we've seen, the adoption rate there isn't anything to write home about, and it seems as if the entity is branching out in an effort to broaden its potential profit portfolio. The newest partnership is with VESA, and the most important aspect of it (from a consumer standpoint, anyway) is summed up here: the two will be working to create a certification program for wireless DisplayPort products. The goal, as you may imagine, is to create a new spate of products that'll connect PCs and handhelds to monitors, projectors and HDTVs, all without wires and with gobs of bandwidth. Sadly, no time table is being revealed just yet, but we'll be cautiously expecting a few prototypes at CES. Right, dudes?
Atheros and Wilocity embrace 'tri-band' wireless wares, 60GHz wireless PCIe
The amount of dual-band products (you know, those that support both 2.4GHz and 5GHz bands) is slowly growing, but already a pair of companies are thinking about the next big thing: tri-band. Atheros and Wilocity have both been eying that 60GHz stuff that the WiGig Alliance is pushing around these days, and now they're announcing a collaboration to "build tri-band wireless solutions that combine the ubiquity and coverage of WiFi with the multi-gigabit performance of the Wireless Gigabit Alliance's 60GHz technology." The new gear would enable all sorts of backwards compatibility, and while there aren't too many details being shared just yet on exactly what kind of kit is in the pipeline, we do know of one particular tidbit. That tidbit, of course, is wireless PCI Express, or wPCIe. Developed by Wilocity, this black magic would essentially enable PCIe devices to be docked outside of the desktop and have their signals beamed to a receiver card within the desktop. Think external graphics, storage arrays, etc., all sans cabling. It's being reported that wPCIe can push data at up to 5Gbps, and if all goes to plan, the spec should scale easily to 7Gbps. Be sure to give the links below a visit for a deeper dive, and get ready to give that SFF machine you've often overlooked... well, another look.
Wi-Fi Alliance and WiGig sync up for 60GHz WiFi
We already heard that Hitachi, Panasonic and Toshiba would be delivering 60GHz wireless products in the latter half of this year, but it looks like a whole heap of other companies will be as well after this bombshell drops. The Wi-Fi Alliance and WiGig (which just nailed down a final spec in December) have finally got their respective ducks in a row, and thanks to a new partnership announced today, 60GHz WiFi products are now possible. For those unaware, 60GHz airwaves are typically reserved for high-bandwidth applications -- think streaming a Blu-ray flick from a player to an HDTV sans any cabling. The two will be working in unison in order to create a next-generation certification program for products operating in the 60GHz band, and best of all, a "significant portion, if not all, of these devices are expected to also support traditional WiFi networking in the 2.4GHz and 5GHz bands." There's no mention of when exactly the first 60GHz WiFi wares will begin to ship, but we can certainly say we're eager to update this here tutorial when tri-band becomes reality. Update: The rival WirelessHD alliance (updated to 1.1 today with support for 3DTV, HDCP 2.0, data applications and data rates in excess of 10Gbps) says it will support WiGig with dual-mode WirelessHD/WiGig silicon now available from SiBeam for sampling. Hey, what would a standard be if we didn't have options?
Hitachi, Panasonic and Toshiba to deliver 60GHz wireless products in 2H 2010
The year's 2010, yet we're still leering at the dusty pile of cables behind our AV equipment and wondering, "O UWB, where art thou?" Well, the folks at Tech-On have got a little update for us: Hitachi, Panasonic and Toshiba are reported to be delivering products donning 60GHz wireless chips -- which sip little juice but churn out 7GHz of colossal bandwidth and 1.5Gbps of data rate -- in the second half of this year. While none of the manufacturers are directly pimping either WirelessHD or WiGig, it appears that Hitachi and Panasonic are siding with WiGig's extra functionalities like media access control (MAC), and the latter even envisions "embedding the functionality into portable gear" for downloading digital content from kiosks. Either way, it's nice to see some progress here -- we don't want things to drag on any longer, do we?
WiGig Alliance completes multi-gigabit 60GHz wireless specification: let the streaming begin
The WiGig Alliance captured our imaginations back in May, but now it seems that the world of multi-gigabit streaming is so close, we can taste the data slipping over our tongues on their way to the next access point. Put simply, the specification that the group has been toiling on over the past few months is finally complete, and while some of its members have been prototyping wares along the way, this 1.0 announcement effectively opens the flood gates for partnering outfits to implement it into their gear. In case you're curious as to how 60GHz will help you, have a listen: WiGig enables wireless transfer rates more than ten times faster than today's fastest wireless LAN, and it's completely backward compatible with existing WiFi devices. As we've already seen with those totally bodacious dual-band (2.4GHz / 5GHz) routers, having another band with this kind of speed potential can only mean great things for the future. We had a talk with Dr. Ali Sadri (the group's chairman and president) as well as Mark Grodzinsky (board director and marketing work group chair) in order to get a better idea of what's at play here, and frankly, we're anxious to see this get implemented into... well, just about anything. WiGig v1.0 supports data transmission rates up to 7Gbps, and if living in a house full of WiGig-enabled devices, you could finally envision streaming HD content from a bedroom PC to an HDTV and a living room netbook without any wires whatsoever. In the case of the netbook, there's even a chance that the embedded WiGig module could support faster transfer rates than the sockets around the edges, which would simultaneously enable wireless to be faster than the wired (at least in this scenario) and your brain to melt. Finally, the group has picked up four new members -- NVIDIA, AMD, SK Telecom and TMC -- though unfortunately, WiGig wouldn't comment on the future availability of 60GHz products. We were told that they would be shocked if anyone had a prototype 60GHz device on the CES show floor, but you can bet that won't stop us from looking. Oh, and if we had to take a wild guess, we'd surmise that companies interested in speeding up their own offerings will be jumping on this quick, so hopefully you'll be ditching 2.4GHz once and for all come next summer(ish).
Heavily-backed WiGig Alliance to stream everything over 60GHz
Yes folks, we're back to the drawing board. Again. With a litany of wireless technologies floundering about and struggling to find real traction in the market, a cadre of market powerhouses have joined up to take wireless streaming to the next level -- or so they say, anyway. The newly formed WiGig Alliance aims to use unlicensed 60GHz waves in order to stream just about anything you can think of: HD video, images, phone contacts, instant messages, audio, etc. This "unified" approach differs from most other alternatives, which generally pick one niche (1080p video, for instance) and stick to it. If the more than 15 technology firms have their collective druthers, the WiGig specification will find its way into everything from set-top-boxes to telephones to home stereos, ready and willing to stream to other WiGig-enabled devices at a moment's notice. The group consists of household names such as Microsoft, LG, Dell, Samsung, Marvell, Nokia, NEC, Intel and Broadcom (just to name a few), and when we spoke to executives about the announcement, they told us that plans were to have the specification available to member organizations in Q4 of this year. The sad part is that this likely means we won't see shipping products with the WiGig logo for another year after that -- if we're lucky. We can't argue that some stability would be nice in this volatile sector; after all, we've been waiting for promising products like Belkin's FlyWire to ship for well over a year. The execs we spoke with couldn't speak on behalf of the partner firms in terms of what WiGig products were looming on the horizon, but as we alluded to earlier, the playing field is wide open. Honestly, we'd love for this to take off and finally give high-bandwidth wireless applications the support it needs to flourish, but as we've seen over the past few years, the road ahead ain't an easy one to walk. The full release is after the break.