Broadcom Crams 802.11n, Bluetooth, and FM Onto a Single Chip

Broadcom has managed to cram 802.11n, Bluetooth 2.1+EDR, and FM reception/transmission all into a single "combo wireless chip." Designed to be a better wireless implementation for portable devices, the chip seeks to lower chip counts and integration costs. "Broadcom is the second firm — following Atheros in a single-function chip — to announce a single-stream 802.11n product, in which one of 802.11n's advantages is shaved off in favor of a faster baseline performance and lower battery consumption. This move is meant to replace 802.11g in portable devices without draining a battery faster and providing other advantages that make up for what's become a slight cost difference."

Re:Broadcom is crap

[Hordeking]

Broadcom wireless chipsets are crap. And I am speaking out of real embedded system design experience here.

Agreed, but from a different perspective. Their support for users running Linux is atrocious. I absolutely hate purchasing a wireless PCI card from a major maker only to find they've changed chips between revisions, and the new chip doesn't have drivers. Of course, the makers are just as guilty, since they don't mark the packaging in any way.

Re:Broadcom?

[Chirs]

Broadcom is one of the last remaining holdouts that doesn't give out chip specs for their networking devices. Because of this, it's *very* difficult to create decent linux drivers for their chips.

Re:FM transmission?!?

[JesseMcDonald]

Well, like numerous similar (non-integrated) devices already on the market, it would probably be used most often to link the host device's portable media player function to a car stereo system. These are low-power transmitters, with a range of no more than a few feet, designed for use on otherwise unoccupied channels. There are no significant interference issues to worry about.

Re:SoftRadio?

[amirulbahr]

From the block diagram [broadcom.com], it looks like there are three distinct RF front-ends.

Re:SoftRadio?

[ceoyoyo]

Uh, neither. It's a wifi radio supporting two different protocols glued to an FM radio.

It's much less cool than a software radio.

Re:FM transmission?!?

[Locke2005]

I hadn't thought of using it to play your MP3s through your car stereo. Just bear in mind that all 3 of these radio services are mutually exclusive, and although you can time division multiplex between 802.11n and Bluetooth, if you are doing FM, that is pretty much the only thing you can do for the whole time. FM wireless transmission in a car is very much subject to interference; even the cassette tape emulator my wife uses to play her iPod on her car stereo works better. Ideally, car stereos would just come with a USB connector on the front panel! By the way, I've tried streaming hi-def videos over 802.11n to my MacBook while listening to the audio on Bluetooth stereo headphones and it DOES NOT WORK. There is just enough audio dropout over the Bluetooth to be extremely annoying; I don't know whether or not it can be fixed in firmware. Putting all your radios in the same chip should make it easier to time division multiplex them.

Re:Broadcom?

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, Broadcom recently released a Linux STA hybrid driver for some of their wireless chipsets. It works very nicely, even if it is a closed-source blob.

I believe this was a result of cooperation between Broadcom, Canonical and Dell.

Re:Broadcom?

[Anonymous Coward]

I meant to include this link: http://www.broadcom.com/support/802.11/linux_sta.php [broadcom.com]

Re:Broadcom is crap

[phantomcircuit]

Intel wireless chipsets work essentially flawlessly and are opensource

Re:Broadcom?

[IorDMUX]

What's there for Broadcom to gain by making it harder to write drivers?

Now, I work for a competitor, so take what I say with a grain (or more) of salt.

...That said, Broadcom is one of the most patent/trade-secret paranoid companies I know of. Their shotgun approach to patent lawsuits and insistence on playing their cards as close as possible to their chest is famous in the wireless industry. If they haven't released the specs on their networking devices, it's likely because they are terrified of *something* leaking out.

On another note, (and this is a beef I have with more than just Broadcom) how can they claim to have released an 802.11n device when 802.11n does not yet exist? [wikipedia.org] Yes, a draft version of .11n is out, and the final version *should* be *mostly* compatible with the draft versions... but there will almost certainly be features/protocol in the finalized version of the specification that differ from these different draft versions coming out at the rate of one every few months. It's like buying Vista (or OSX) before the first patches--except here, you can't patch hardware.