Broadcom Announces BCM4389 Wi-Fi 6E Client Chipset (anandtech.com) 13
The Wi-Fi Alliance announced the new Wi-Fi 6E terminology for 802.11ax operation in the 6 GHz band last month. At CES 2020, Broadcom announced a number of Wi-Fi 6E access point solutions. Today, Broadcom is announcing the BCM4389 client Wi-Fi 6E chipset. From a report: Consumers can expect to see the chipset in the next generation of high-end smartphones. We have already covered the advantages of Wi-Fi 6E in terms of lower latency, higher throughput, and the availability of more number of 160 MHz channels in our coverage of the Wi-Fi Alliance announcement at CES. The BCM4389 builds upon Broadcom's success with the BCM4375, which happens to be the currently leading client Wi-Fi 6 chipset in the smartphone market. In addition to the new 6 GHz support with tri-band simultaneous operation and 160 MHz channel support, the BCM4389 also brings in additional power efficiency, thanks to its 16nm process technology and architectural improvements.
The BCM4375 is a 28nm chipset with 2x2 2.4 GHz and 2x2 5 GHz support, while the new BCM4389 adds 2x2 6 GHz to the mix. The scanning radio accounts for the additional radio chain. The Bluetooth 5.0 functionality has also received a boost with MIMO support. Broadcom claims that the new implementation can reduce pairing time by a factor of 2 and also alleviate glitching issues when connected to Wi-Fi at the same time (compared to the BCM4375). The icing on the cake is that the MIMO support works with implicit beamforming ensuring that legacy Bluetooth devices stand to benefit too.
The BCM4375 is a 28nm chipset with 2x2 2.4 GHz and 2x2 5 GHz support, while the new BCM4389 adds 2x2 6 GHz to the mix. The scanning radio accounts for the additional radio chain. The Bluetooth 5.0 functionality has also received a boost with MIMO support. Broadcom claims that the new implementation can reduce pairing time by a factor of 2 and also alleviate glitching issues when connected to Wi-Fi at the same time (compared to the BCM4375). The icing on the cake is that the MIMO support works with implicit beamforming ensuring that legacy Bluetooth devices stand to benefit too.
Power consumption (Score:1)
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You consume current.
That also seems like an odd choice of words since the current going out of the chip is equal to the current going in.
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...for when you tire of living in a cramped cell.
This is the new normal, especially in places like China. Nobody chooses to do that, they have to.
Re: Just what the hooker asked for (Score:5, Insightful)
You can be a fair distance away, as long as there's a clear-air path and/or reflective surfaces between them. Think of it as behaving kind of like light. If you put an arc light in a hallway, you'll still get illumination in rooms with no direct view of it from light bouncing off the walls & ceiling before passing through an open doorway, a crack underneath, or through an interior window.
At 6GHz, a single access point won't work well for a home that isn't a door-free studio apartment, but if you put in a bunch of them (interconnected via wired ethernet or functional equivalent), it'll work brilliantly... high throughput, with minimal interference from neighbors.
What *really* needs to improve, though, is the way APs deal with hand-offs. Present-day roaming is too dependent upon Enterprise-level management & explicit client support that rarely exists (esp. in Android-land).
Instead, we have clients that connect to one, then blindly hang on until they have no choice besides giving up. So... your phone connects to the AP in your bedroom, struggles to use it as you move around the house despite having 3 others within literal plain sight, then finally gives up when you close the bathroom door. It then connects to the AP you put in the bathroom, and struggles to remain connected to it as you subsequently move around the house. Without proper 802.11r (and some other extension) support by the client, this is today's sad reality.
Ubiquiti HAD a kick-ass solution for roaming by naive clients. The APs all pretended to be the same one, compared signal-strength notes over ethernet, and only the best one communicated with the client. Unfortunately, they took away the feature. They CLAIM it was because it "didn't scale".
It's true, it didn't work well in large networks with lots of users... but for HOME networks with a shit-ton of stupid, brain-damaged 802.n clients stuck in the 2.4ghz ghetto and neighbors stomping over each other, it was FANTASTIC.
My theory is that some patent troll sued Ubiquiti, and they abolished the feature instead of fighting or paying royalties precisely because it was most useful to purchasers OUTSIDE Ubiquiti's core Enterprise market. But it still sucks, because for the specific use case I mentioned, it was the only solution that actually *worked* in real life, with random low-quality clients.
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6 GHz isn't far from the 5GHz so no big deal. 802.11ay [wikipedia.org] is however 60GHz - and there you can get quite some bandwidth but even more absorption. However in a small apartment or office it might be useful
Should I wait? (Score:2)
Now that Broadcom is selling a chipset, it's probably not too far out for vendors to start offering it in routers. Of course, I realize the devices will have to be 6E capable as well, but I'd like to lay out a good 'foundatio
Why the "E"?? (Score:4, Funny)
Wasn't the whole point of the new terminology, to make names simper?
I thought it was supposed to be Wifi 6, period.
What will be next?
Wifi 6EX S XFX Titan II Turbo?
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-Can't wait for that 5G bluetooth.
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