Broadcom extends “5G” Wi-Fi portfolio to home entertainment market
Broadcom (BRCM) launched a new “5G” Wi-Fi chipset aimed at the tablet, PC, TV, set-top box and home router market. The new line of 2×2 MIMO Wi-Fi solutions support 866 megabit per second wireless local area network PHY rates, as well as beamforming, which enables Wi-Fi signals to travel through the home more efficiently by going around physical barriers.
One chip is designed specifically for PCs, tablets and set-top-boxes and supports Android and Microsoft Windows. The BCM4350 also supports content sharing between mobile devices and TV sets.
Two other new chipsets offer interoperability between Wi-Fi-based routers and Wi-Fi-based digital TV platforms. The BCM43556 is a standalone chip and the BCM43558 is a combo Wi-Fi and Bluetooth chipset.
Intel turns a corner
Intel (INTC) rallied on Wall Street today after FBR’s Christopher Rolland upgraded the stock to outperform, saying the company now has “more than enough new avenues of growth to replace lost PC units.”
The world’s largest chipmaker has moved aggressively to provide chips for set-top boxes, mobile phone and tablets. It still has just a sliver of the all-important smartphone processor market, but it has had 9 customer wins, according to Sravan Kundojjala, senior analyst for handset component technologies at Strategy Analytics. He says OEMs Asus, ZTE, Motorola Mobility, Lenovo have all committed to build products with Intel processors, as have carriers Lava of India, Orange in the UK, Safaricom in Africa, and MegaFon in Russia. Kundojjala says 10 smartphones based on Intel chipsets have already been released, but that he does not expect to see significant market share for Intel for two to three years.
GPUs are not just for gaming
A supercomputer powered by 3,000 Nvidia (NVDA) Tesla K20 GPU accelerators has enabled scientists at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign to learn the structure of the HIV “capsid,” a protein shell that protects the virus’s genetic material. The capsid has become an attractive target for the development of new antiretroviral drugs, largely due to the discovery that Rhesus monkeys have developed an immunity to HIV through a protein that disrupts capsid functioning.
“GPUs have fundamentally accelerated the pace of our research,” said Klaus Schulten, professor of physics at the University of Illinois. GPU-powered supercomputers are delivering higher performance and better efficiency than CPU-powered supercomputers.
Nvidia says its Tesla GPU accelerators are enabling researchers worldwide to make dramatic new breakthroughs across a variety of scientific domains – including alternative energy, astrophysics, drug development and climate research, among others.
