Intel's Wi-Fi Chip Delay Met With Silence

With the emphasis having shifted to 802.11g and dual-band a/g, however, the delay may not matter.

Who cares? "Not too many," said Ed Rerisi, director of research at Allied Business Intelligence, Oyster Bay, N.Y. "Yes, a/b is better than just b alone," he said, "but a/b/g is what the enterprise wants and it's the way to go." As for 802.11g-only solutions, Rerisi sees it as the main contender for home networks.

Also, the much-touted Centrino platform that Intel heavily promoted earlier this year is also on its way out. "Laptop OEMs are moving on from Centrino [802.11b only] as they see a/b/g as the next step and are starting to incorporate those chipsets more and more," Rerisi said.

Nevertheless, Intel in moving ahead with its a/b plans. Its chip set was originally due the first half of this year, but has now been pushed out until early in the fourth quarter. "We expect to ship by mid October," said an Intel spokesman.

Meanwhile, Wi-Fi competition is stiff. Broadcom and Philips this week announced low-power 802.11b chips, with a slew of other companies set to weigh in with their latest a/b/g offerings next week.

Intel's delays, said the spokesman, were due to validation requirements necessary to "ensure a stable mobile computing experience."

The 802.11b portion of the Intel chip set will be the same Centrino technology with a Philips radio and Symbol Technologies' baseband technology implemented in Texas Instruments' silicon. However, the 802.11a portion will be all Intel, said the spokesman, who was unclear as to the degree of integration involved.

The a/b chip set will be followed, he said, by an all-Intel .11b/g chip set that will ship to customers by year's end. That, in turn, will be followed by an all-Intel 802.11a/b/g chip set by mid-2004.

This story courtesy of TechWeb.