Broadcom Crams 802.11n, Bluetooth, and FM Onto a Single Chip 174
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."
The real winner is the retailers (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:The real winner is the retailers (Score:1, Insightful)
So you buy the cheapest one and enable it.
Broadcom? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Broadcom? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Broadcom? (Score:5, Insightful)
Meanwhile, the manufacturers who play nice with Linux are reaping the benefits of the Linux-running hardware tinkerer's credit cards.
This isn't rocket science... the more places your device can work, the bigger your market. Their spec obfuscation is akin to DRM - it only needs to be broken once for it to become globally worthless, yet if you don't use it in the first place then your loudest users will praise you.
What's there for Broadcom to gain by making it harder to write drivers? Surely it's in their best interest to have Linux support, especially given it's massively widespread use in the embedded devices market.
Re:FM transmission?!? (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:The real winner is the retailers (Score:3, Insightful)
Good luck soldering the pins they removed and coding the drivers they didn't include.
Re:Linux laptops (Score:4, Insightful)
The Linux users have paid for the hardware, same as everyone else. All they're asking for is the minimum specifications so they can write the software to make it work themselves.
Whats new with that? (Score:5, Insightful)
We have to code the effing drivers anyways.
Narrowcom? (Score:4, Insightful)
"Meanwhile, the manufacturers who play nice with Linux are reaping the benefits of the Linux-running hardware tinkerer's credit cards."
Obviously you didn't hear the news about the credit crunch. Anyway tinkerers have always been a small part of overall sales for a manufacturer. Not because they don't have the money but because most people buy hardware to solve a problem. Not tinker with endlessly into the night.
"This isn't rocket science... the more places your device can work, the bigger your market."
They're devices already WORK. Just because they don't play nice with a small subset of the population doesn't mean they're unsuccessful. They're a chip vendor, not Apple computers selling a finished product to discriminating buyers. The people who work with what they sell work for companies that already can afford NDAs.
Re:Broadcom? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Broadcom is crap (Score:5, Insightful)
A significant linux deployment project was once abandoned by a client of mine because it was impossible to spec a PCI 802.11/g card.
There's no way to identify a product meaningfully, and no way to make the order repeatable. The few vendors who will guarantee linux support for a device, would only do so at an unacceptable price, and it was clear that they had no better way of guaranteeing it than the consumer did.
I know there have been a few cards that have stable chipsets (e.g., certain 3COM models). This doesn't really help the situation.
The wireless-compatability HOWTO is good for a laugh. There are devices listed that were only available for a short time, only in certain countries, and many devices that, given the same part number, get you several completely different cards.
I lost count of the number of times I was referred to that list when shopping for a vendor that would guarantee delivery and repeatable support of a card that would work.
What really stunk about the whole thing was that wireless internet was fast becoming "the killer app" for computing in many sectors, and Linux missed the boat. You can say it's not "linux's fault" but, why in the hell aren't the people who got rich off Linux, also sitting on the boards of some of these companies? Or at least, competing with them so that it's not possible, business-wise, to be openly hostile to Linux developers? Not "supportive", mind you, just not flatly hostile please. It's as if the directors of Broadcom used their leverage in an active campaign to keep Linux off portable computers.
Re:The real winner is the retailers (Score:1, Insightful)
I thank you for your reply. It clearly shows that the OP didn't put half a thought into his post. At least you come up with something one can think about.
I had the same thought as you too. But I can't think of a way that would work.
How would you safe money in QA or project management? You still have to develop your product WiFi, Bluetooth and FM. You still have to test it for each one. You still use different interfaces for each one. From the usage point of view it does not really matter whether this is on one chip or on three different ones.
If you can develop a product where you can insert the same chip with three different configurations I don't see how it would be more expensive to develop the same to work with three different chips in this case. You would have a point if those functionalities would be somehow similar, but IMO they are not. I don't see how you could just replace Bluetooth with WiFi and much less with FM.
Really, the only benefits of that chip probably are space, energy consumption and in some cases failure rate.
Re:FM transmission?!? (Score:3, Insightful)
I hate to disagree but a USB jack that works with a line in to USB adapter is the most versatile of the two. 3.5mm stereo jack takes us all the way back to unbalanced analog 2 channel audio at best. These has to be a pile of cheap chips to do the conversion.
My current setup gets me 5.1 digital audio at the bit rate and compression of my choosing, video as well, works with my steering wheel controls, and will allow for my main screen and 2 auxiliary screens to all have there own content (only 2 audio channels on those) all played back from the same storage device. Sure it's got it's own internal HD etc but people want to play back there ipods etc on occasion and I only upload/sync what I like via WiFi or 3G/EDGE.
I will agree that USB is not well suited but Firewire never took off, HDMI is to DRM laden and not suited for portable devices and spdif does not provide power (HDMI either for that matter).
Re:Broadcom is crap (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:The real winner is the retailers (Score:3, Insightful)
To their credit it wasn't *that* evil. Pipelines and clocks were turned off/down based on manufacturing defects, so it's not as if they placed some arbitrary restriction on your hardware for no good reason, although most would run quite well at boosted specs.
Re:Slashdot Advertising (Score:3, Insightful)
Damnit! Slashvertisements escape Adblock.
Re:The real winner is the retailers (Score:3, Insightful)
How come none of these chips ever come with an AM receiver? FM is just filled with a bunch of teeny-bopper music, but AM has all the cool talk shows like "Rush Windbaugh" and "The Corn Outlook". ;-)