Intel and Qualcomm collaborate to build robust 802.11ad ecosystem

802.11ad represents an important step in the evolution of Wi-Fi, enabling new user capabilities such as wire-equivalent docking and high-quality, low-latency video streaming, multimedia kiosks, while bringing a step increase in network capacity, and much more.

We are excited to announce that Qualcomm Atheros and Intel have reached a crucial milestone in making 802.11ad WiGig* a mainstream and widely available technology. Intel and Qualcomm Atheros have successfully demonstrated multi-gigabit interoperability between our companies’ respective 802.11ad WiGig solutions. This milestone will help pave the way for industry development of 802.11ad WiGig devices that can communicate and connect seamlessly with each other at amazing speeds of up to 4.6 Gbps [1]. Moreover, this milestone underscores both companies’ commitment to the strong evolution of Wi-Fi, both infrastructure and peer-to-peer communications, as well as the critical role 802.11ad WiGig plays in this evolutionary process.

Laptops, tablets, smartphones, access points, storage devices, untethered VR glasses and other 802.11ad WiGig-capable devices offer multi-gigabit speeds, high density, low latency and very high network capacity, as well as empower a new class of applications and services. 802.11ad will transform the experience of Wi-Fi users, be it in their offices, homes or even in public places. Bringing the vast, new spectrum in 60 GHz band to Wi-Fi’s fold, 802.11ad will be one of the potent tools to address burgeoning data demand in homes, enterprises and carrier networks.

Qualcomm Atheros and Intel engineers worked collaboratively for months in each other’s labs, running countless tests, culminating in this achievement. These tests spanned across many use cases and scenarios, including peer-to-peer connections between Inteland Qualcomm Atheros 802.11ad WiGig based clients and Qualcomm Atheros 802.11ad WiGig powered access points (wireless routers). Tests examined various cases and conditions—from device discovery and connection to full-blown data uploads and downloads, streaming and more. As part of the testing, we successfully achieved multi-gigabit real data throughput between our devices.

Achieving full interoperability is not easy. This level of collaboration and focused effort is essential in creating new markets and building a robust ecosystem, and in ultimately providing seamless user experience across multi-vendor devices.

While more work lies ahead, our collaboration lays the groundwork for a large ecosystem of interoperable commercial 802.11ad products across networking, mobile and computing segments. We are excited about the new capabilities 802.11ad enables—from 4K display connectivity to tri-band (2.4 GHz, 5 GHz and 60 GHz) Wi-Fi networking and high-speed cellular offload—and we think you should be excited at our progress in bringing these capabilities to your favorite devices.