AMD today announced the beginning of sampling the AMD Alchemy Solutions Am1772 Wireless LAN chipset and a mini-PCI card reference design kit (RDK). A two-chip 802.11b wireless Local Area Network (WLAN) solution with next-generation architecture, the Am1772 chipset will provide customers the building blocks for a long-term wireless strategy. Customers who use the Am1772 chipset in their laptop computer, handheld computer or other portable computing device will be able to significantly lower their system cost, provide longer battery life, and lower host CPU.

The Am1772 wireless chipset is a Complementary Metal-Oxide Semiconductor (CMOS) solution that utilises baseband processor and a MAC, with a descriptor-based direct memory access (DMA) host interface. The CMOS design helps reduce power consumption for the mini-PCI-based reference design to 134mA while receiving and 232mA while transmitting – a significant improvement over competing designs resulting in increased battery life in mobile applications. In addition, the highly integrated solution reduces the number of additional components and enables a very compact design.

The Am1772 chipset is comprised of the AMD Alchemy Solutions Am 1770 Radio Frequency transceiver and the AMD Alchemy Solutions Am1771 baseband processor and MAC. The Am1770 transceiver utilises Direct Down Conversion, which eliminates the requirement for an Intermediate Frequency (IF) chip. The Am1771 chipset is an integrated baseband/MAC that features on-chip hardware acceleration designed to help significantly reduce host CPU load. The use of the baseband processor and MAC with a descriptor-based DMA architecture also benefits the customer by enabling lower system costs through the elimination of the on-chip micro-controller and the associated non-volatile (Flash) memory and SRAM. The use of auto-calibration technology also reduces the need for costly and time-consuming system calibration during the manufacturing process.

Widely available sampling of the Am1772 chipset and RDK is scheduled for this month and AMD plans production availability in first quarter 2003.