
Meh...
Great. More crap downloads, delivered faster. Teenagers livestreaming the most boring parts of their lives.
Can't wait.
Qualcomm is sampling its Wi-Fi 7 Networking Pro Series chips aimed at throughput of more than 10Gbps for enterprise access points, gateways, and premium home routers. The third generation of the chipmaker's Networking Pro Series platforms is set to "initiate a new era" of 10Gbps Wi-Fi, Qualcomm claimed, stating that the new …
Not to worry, this is only the bandwidth you have in house (digressing slightly, I wonder how this ranks in terms of emissions - the more data you haul, the more signal you need).
To haul that volume of data from/to the Net also demands that your ISP (1) gives you a circuit that can handle it and (2) deals with that fun issue called contention - a term we became very familiar with in the early, pre-www days of the Internet.
Downside is that it also provides so much more bandwidth to spy on you.
To haul that volume of data from/to the Net also demands that your ISP (1) gives you a circuit that can handle it
Exactly. 10 Gbps WiFi speed is nothing if the internet link is only 1 Gbps (or less).
Besides, with this current "chip shortage" BS going around, by the time the first WiFi 7 WAP gets delivered from the manufacturer, WiFi 10 will be available for order.
I am really impressed with Wi-Fi technology in general. It deals with radio signals and the fact that we have the technology to use multiple channels at a given frequency is mind-boggling when you think about it.
I mean, you're sending out radio waves. They can overlap. How on Earth do we know how to determine what is part of what signal ?
Any technology that is sufficiently advanced can be regarded as magic. Well, Wi-Fi is kinda magic to me.
Each channel isn't using the same frequency - they're spread 5MHz apart across the spectrum of the base bandwidth of the associated WiFi standard, and within a given channel all devices are assigned a subcarrier frequency to avoid cross-talk.
Happy to help: Wi-Fi is kinda magic to me.
:)
Channel aggregation and increased bandwidth is all very fine, but not much help in urban areas. Finding, a reasonably, free channel let alone one supporting 160MHz bandwtdth is nearly impossible in most urban areas let alone 320MHz. Admittedly 5GHz/6GHz helps a little bit but still leaks enough that you're sharing with nearby neighbours.
Qualcomm knows that if it wants developers to build and optimize AI applications across its portfolio of silicon, the Snapdragon giant needs to make the experience simpler and, ideally, better than what its rivals have been cooking up in the software stack department.
That's why on Wednesday the fabless chip designer introduced what it's calling the Qualcomm AI Stack, which aims to, among other things, let developers take AI models they've developed for one device type, let's say smartphones, and easily adapt them for another, like PCs. This stack is only for devices powered by Qualcomm's system-on-chips, be they in laptops, cellphones, car entertainment, or something else.
While Qualcomm is best known for its mobile Arm-based Snapdragon chips that power many Android phones, the chip house is hoping to grow into other markets, such as personal computers, the Internet of Things, and automotive. This expansion means Qualcomm is competing with the likes of Apple, Intel, Nvidia, AMD, and others, on a much larger battlefield.
Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise is the latest networking outfit to add Wi-Fi 6E capability to its hardware, opening up access to the less congested 6GHz spectrum for business users.
The France-based company just revealed the OmniAccess Stellar 14xx series of wireless access points, which are set for availability from this September. Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise said its first Wi-Fi 6E device will be a high-end "premium" Access Point and will be followed by a mid-range product by the end of the year.
Wi-Fi 6E is compatible with the Wi-Fi 6 standard, but adds the ability to use channels in the 6GHz portion of the spectrum, a feature that will be built into the upcoming Wi-Fi 7 standard from the start. This enables users to reduce network contention, or so the argument goes, as the 6GHz portion of the spectrum is less congested with other traffic than the existing 2.4GHz and 5GHz frequencies used for Wi-Fi access.
Wi-Fi 6 and 6E are being promoted as technologies for enabling industrial automation and the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) thanks to features that provide more reliable communications and reduced costs compared with wired network alternatives, at least according to the Wireless Broadband Alliance (WBA).
The WBA’s Wi-Fi 6/6E for IIoT working group, led by Cisco, Deutsche Telekom, and Intel, has pulled together ideas on the future of networked devices in factories and written it all up in a “Wi-Fi 6/6E for Industrial IoT: Enabling Wi-Fi Determinism in an IoT World” manifesto.
The detailed whitepaper makes the case that wireless communications has become the preferred way to network sensors as part of IIoT deployments because it's faster and cheaper than fiber or copper infrastructure. The alliance is a collection of technology companies and service providers that work together on developing standards, coming up with certifications and guidelines, advocating for stuff that they want, and so on.
Taiwan's GlobalWafers announced on Monday a new use for the $5 billion it first earmarked for a purchase of Germany's Siltronics: building a 300-millimeter semiconductor wafer plant in the US state of Texas.
Construction on the facility – which will eventually span 3.2 million square feet – is expected to commence later this year, with chip production commencing by 2025. The plant will sit in the city of Sherman, near the Texas-Oklahoma border, where it is slated to bring in 1,500 jobs as production climbs towards 1.2 million wafers per month.
GlobalWafers is the world's third largest producer of silicon wafers and Sherman is already home to its subsidiary, GlobiTech.
Taiwan's state-owned energy company is looking to raise prices for industrial users, a move likely to impact chipmakers such as TSMC, which may well have a knock-on effect on the semiconductor supply chain.
According to Bloomberg, the Taiwan Power Company, which produces electricity for the island nation, has proposed increasing electricity costs by 15 percent for industrial users, the first increase in four years.
The power company has itself been hit by the rising costs of fuel, including the imported coal and natural gas it uses to generate electricity. At the same time, the country is experiencing record demand for power because of increasing industrial requirements and because of high temperatures driving the use of air conditioning, as reported by the local Taipei Times.
The semiconductor market is flattening out after a period of record revenues, according to research outfit Omdia.
The report joins a growing list of warnings that the chip industry is heading for a slowdown because of companies stockpiling components and global economic effects such as inflation.
Omdia's latest analysis of the worldwide semiconductor market shows that it reached a plateau in the first quarter of 2022 following five straight quarters of record revenues and continual growth in demand.
In yet another sign of how fortunes have changed in the semiconductor industry, Taiwanese foundry giant TSMC is expected to surpass Intel in quarterly revenue for the first time.
Wall Street analysts estimate TSMC will grow second-quarter revenue 43 percent quarter-over-quarter to $18.1 billion. Intel, on the other hand, is expected to see sales decline 2 percent sequentially to $17.98 billion in the same period, according to estimates collected by Yahoo Finance.
The potential for TSMC to surpass Intel in quarterly revenue is indicative of how demand has grown for contract chip manufacturing, fueled by companies like Qualcomm, Nvidia, AMD, and Apple who design their own chips and outsource manufacturing to foundries like TSMC.
Scientists in Germany claim to have developed bipolar transistors from organic materials, opening a path for flexible and transparent electronics.
The study, led by Shu-Jen Wang, post-doctoral researcher Technische Universität Dresden, built an organic bipolar junction transistor using doped rubrene. That could help the semiconductor industry to make the switch to organic materials, increasing access to a wide library of materials for building electronic devices.
Transistors are the basis of today's digital circuits and, at a simple level, allow one signal to control another. They can amplify a signal, or switch between 'on' and 'off' states, through control of a current of charge carriers – which are either electrons or their positive counterpart (holes), or both.
Samsung has started production of chips using its 3nm fabrication process, beating rival TSMC, which expects to begin making chips with its N3 node generation later this year.
The resultant chips are claimed to reduce power consumption by up to 45 percent and improve performance by up to 23 percent, with further gains promised in a second generation of the process.
Korea's electronics giant said it has started initial production with its 3nm process node, which introduces what the firm calls Multi-Bridge-Channel FET (MBCFET) technology. This is Samsung's version of the Gate-All-Around (GAA) transistor architecture, where the gate material wraps around the conducting channel.
Comment How serious is Intel about delaying the build-out of its planned $20 billion mega-fab site in Ohio?
It turns out very serious, as Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger made clear on Tuesday, less than a week after his x86 giant delayed the groundbreaking ceremony for the Ohio site to show its displeasure over Congress' inability to pass $52 billion in subsidies to fund American semiconductor manufacturing.
In comments at the Aspen Ideas Festival yesterday, Gelsinger warned Intel would prioritize building factories in Europe over the US if Congress fails to act on the long-stalled chip subsidies bill.
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