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Intel Plans to Return Wi-Fi Support into Desktop Chipsets.

Category: Chipsets

by Anton Shilov

[ 11/03/2004 | 01:32 PM ]

Intel Corp. said it would add support for wireless networking into its chipsets scheduled for mid-2005 launch after it scrapped plans to offer Wireless AP technology to its current core-logic products.

“Intel’s next generation of desktop-use chipsets, to be introduced in the second half of 2005, will support wireless technologies such as 802.11a/b/g,” Sunil Kumar, director of chipset and software marketing at Intel, is reported to have said on Tuesday in Taipei.

In late 2003 Intel Corp. promised to bring wireless local area networks controller’s logic into its chipsets code-named Grantsdale and Alderwood. A mainly advertised feature of this Wi-Fi technology was a potentially free Access Point that allowed a PC based on i915- or i925X-series chipsets to serve as a hub for Internet access to other computers equipped with WLAN cards.

Then, in mid-2004 Intel said it would delay the support of Wi-Fi by its fresh breed of chipsets. The reason for postpones of Intel’s software WLAN access points (AP) were not clear, but one of the possible problems might be availability of special daughter cards with antennas required for wireless networks’ operation. Then, in late September, 2004, Intel said its clients saw no value in the software access point.

Asked if Intel will bundle its next-generation desktop-use CPUs, core-logic chipsets and wireless chips as a platform, as it had with its Centrino platform for notebooks, Kumar stated that he could not comment on products not yet available, although there exists such a possibility, DigiTimes web-site reports.

In addition to Wireless LAN capabilities Intel’s future chipsets code-named Lakeport and Glenwood will also support DDR2 SDRAM, PCI Express, advanced multimedia and management features.