"GiFi" — Short-Range, 5-Gbps Wireless For $10/Chip

mickq writes "The Age reports that Melbourne scientists have built and demonstrated tiny CMOS chips, 5 mm per side, that can transmit 5 Gbps over short distances — about 10 m. The chip features a tiny 1-mm antenna, a power amp that is only a few microns wide, and power consumption of only 2 W. 'GiFi' appears set to revolutionize short-distance data transmission, and transmits in the relatively uncrowded 60GHz range. Best of all, the chip is only about a year away from public release, and will only cost around US $9.20 to produce."

A lot going around

[bandersnatch]

And this is different from these others... how exactly?

http://www.vubiq.com/news.php [vubiq.com]
http://gigaom.com/2008/02/20/60-ghz60-second-hd-movie-downloads/ [gigaom.com]
http://bwrc.eecs.berkeley.edu/Research/RF/ogre_project/ [berkeley.edu]

Re:Bluetooth replacement?

[gad_zuki!]

Yeah but blutooth is only a couple of mbps and in practice seems to be much more susceptible to interference. The few times I've tried to use it for large data transfers have been pretty slow. Its just easier to grab a usb cable.

Right now there's a sort of race to come up with a bluetooth replacement. UWB, wireless USB, etc are the things this product wants to compete with.

Re:Bluetooth replacement?

[CastrTroy]

Not a bad idea. But I wonder how much at 10 m is affected by walls. I also wonder how much it's affected by interference from cordless phones and other wireless devices. Usually when they say the range is 10m, the actual usable distance is half that, and only when there's no walls.

GiFi?

[sm62704]

Short for "GirlFriend"? Ok, I was joking there but I'm still wondering what in the hell the "fi" is for. WiFi the Wi is "wide" and GiFi the Gi is obviously "gigabit". The old "HiFi" stood for "high fidelity".

WTF does "Fi" stand for in WiFi and GiFi?

Re:Bluetooth replacement?

[Atlantis-Rising]

True, but all USB 1.1 gizmos are backwards compatible with USB 2.0, and this is hardly backwards compatible with Bluetooth.

In this case you have a totally different standard that appears to be competing not so much in the PAN area but in the wireless-USB area, and in that respect I see it competing with UWB and WUSB. However, WUSB is only 480 Mbits per second...

That said, at the moment, WUSB seems to be a solution looking for a problem; which leads back to my original issue. Where is this going to come in handy at this price point? Nobody's going to pay upwards of $35 for a glorified USB cable.

Re:"GiFi"???

[Anonymous Coward]

Right, because everyone remembers that "window" used to literally mean "eye of the wind". No-one cares about the "underlying" words, they're just groups of letters people put together when they discover a new concept they need a new word for.

So what if the "fi" suffix takes on a new meaning, different from its original one? Languages change, that's what they do. The only languages that don't evolve are _extinct_ languages. Get over it.

Disclaimer: IAAL (I am a linguist)
Captcha: hubris (heh)

Re:Bluetooth replacement?

[samkass]

At this data rate, this appears to be not so much competing with the keyboard/mouse/printer USB connector than it does the DVI video connector. Now all we need is some of Tesla's magic to transmit the electricity wirelessly and we're home free.

Re:Bluetooth replacement?

[*weasel]

... who cares?

This isn't a wifi replacement -at all-. This is a wireless USB replacement and then some.

At 5Gbps you'd have enough throughput to put a hypothetical smartphone on your desk, and not only use your desktop monitor/keyboard/mouse for comfort, but to be able to use your desktop's processor and ram to accelerate the apps that still basically 'live' on your phone.

So imagine a setting where work data is coming off the network, personal settings and user data are coming off your phone, and desktop workstations are glorified accelerator appliances with more comfortable input interfaces that can be swapped out, time-shared, simultaneously-shared, etc. Neat, huh? Any desk would be functionally equivalent and not being at your desk would just mean less convenient peripherals and slower processing.

That level of throughput is also overkill for wireless video from a portable to a headmounted display -- or even a more mundane wireless HDMI replacement for your TV, game console, BDR, DVD, Tivo, etc. Say good bye to that tangle of wires and video switches! There's also killer peer-to-peer networking capabilities you could build onto portables. (low-power, high-speed peer-to-peer internet for social apps, gaming and data sharing? yes please!)

If, in real world use, it could only go 3m at half that throughput and couldn't penetrate through so much as rice paper, it's -still- an incredibly exciting technology that could facilitate a staggering array of apps.