WiGig promises finished 7Gbps devices shipping by 2012
updated 05:35 pm EST, Mon November 8, 2010
WiGig interview reveals devices ready in 2012
VESA chairman and WiGig board member Bruce Montag in an interview this weekend revealed that the 7Gbps WiGig standard for Wi-Fi should be ready in just over a year. He expected prototypes based on the ultra wideband, 60GHz technology to be ready in 2011 and shipping devices in 2012. TrustedReviews didn't get direct clues as to which companies and devices would be the first.
The technology will nonetheless support much more than any current wireless standard, Montag said. The bandwidth should be enough to handle wireless DisplayPort or HDMI while still supporting data, which the formal Wireless HDMI spec can't manage. WiGig was also designed from the start to be viable on smartphones and other low-power devices and has both 2.4GHz and 5GHz support to fall back to 802.11a/b/g/n Wi-Fi.
A competing format from the IEEE standards group, 802.11ad, shouldn't compete with WiGig as the two can co-exist. Devices on the standard can run at a much slower 1Gbps but may have more of an official blessing by coming from the same group responsible for earlier Wi-Fi.
The members of the WiGig alliance include AMD, Dell, Microsoft, Nokia and Toshiba among others in the first wave and hint that notebooks and smartphones could be some of the first production devices to use WiGig.
