The announcement last week that the Wi-Fi Alliance would evaluate and potentially embrace the WiGig Alliance technology for its 60 Ghz variant, seemed to make it game set and match for the nascent wireless standard, until on the heels of the announcement WirelessHD inventor SiBeam came out with a chip that supported both WirelessHD and WiGig applications.
The Wi-Fi Alliance has been developing a rival standard at 60 GHz called IEEE 802.11AD, but now appears to think that WiGig is the way to go or at least will look at both of them.
Throughout its development WiGig adherents have tried to claim the high ground for both video distribution around a living room (though not through walls) as well as for very high speed wireless LANs. But WirelessHD was clearly ahead of the game because it has had products built into HD, and soon into 3D, TV sets and Blu-ru players, which have been in the market for almost a year. In March it raised another $36.5 million in funding from VC funds, and has had prior rounds that included trade investors Best Buy, Panasonic, Samsung, and Cisco.
The WiGig news was really about it getting a look in ahead of other Wi-Fi standards which wanted to invade the 60Ghz spectrum space, and given that Wi-Fi backers Intel, Broadcom and Atheros are all behind WiGig, this was expected, if not assured.
But SiBeam has really thrown a cat among the pigeons with its new chip, already being delivered in samples. The WiGig specification is supposed to deliver chips which run at 7 Gbps, faster than the initial WirelessHD chipset which operated at around 4 Gbps. But in January SiBeam came out with its second generation chip, which is meant to run anywhere between 10 Gbps and 28 Gbps. Now it has a hybrid that can support both standards, making the point that it still thinks WirelessHD is the best way to go for video distribution, but conceding that WiGig might be good for PCs and LAN applications. The main chip makers are expected to included WiGig capability onto Wi-Fi chips, so that home wi-fi networks can blaze incredibly fast when they have line of sight connections.
SiBeam however has already created its hybrid, making it safe for its customers to continue installing its chips in their TV sets and Blu-ray players, knowing they are future proof if the world take a fancy to WiGig to the exclusion of other technologies. The thing about 60 GHz is that it weakens so radically when line of sight is not present that we’re not sure what will happen when two separate 60GHz radios are trying to speak across the same room. It is possible that WiGig and WirelessHD would work side by side and not interfere with one another.
The Sibeam chip is called the SB8110 WirelessHD/WiGig RF transceiver and in June will soon come with an associated SK8100 Development Kit and reference platforms for using it at either WirelessHD, or as WiGig and finally as a switch-able component between the two standards.
SiBeam says that it is already supplying WirelessHD chips to Panasonic, LG Electronics, Best Buy’s Rocketfish brand, Sony, Gefen, and Cables To Go.