Marvell Unveils Four Channel 802.11n Chip

Building on its Avastar family of chips that empower a brace of always-on consumer products, Marvell has introduced an 802.11n 4x4 single-die solution with the goal of promoting a new generation of wireless devices.

Announced Monday, the Marvell Avastar 88W8764 is targeted at a variety of applications ranging from enterprise access points and service provider gateways to routers, servers, digital TVs, and set-top boxes.

The 4x4 architecture is designed to lead the way for four independent transmit-receive radio frequency (RF) chains while at the same time supporting three multiple input, multiple output (MIMO) special streams for as much as 450-Mbps data rates. Marvel said the four RF chains create stable and robust high-order 802.11n modulation and coding scheme data rates.

"Wi-Fi has become the critical common link in today's mobile communications as users now expect and demand seamless, high-performance, robust, and secure connectivity, zero latency, and crystal clear communication between all their connected devices," said Weili Dai, co-founder of Marvell, in a statement. "Marvell's groundbreaking 802.11n 4x4 Wi-Fi solution will (truly) enable the entire spectrum of always-on consumer products."

The highly integrated single-die Avastar 88W8764 adds a fourth transmit-receive chain, which can steer data towards the client using its Tx beamforming capacity, which improves link robustness for clients. The new chip also supports the national Chinese standard for wireless LANs.

Marvell noted that its Avastar family supports a wide spectrum of consumer products including tablet computers, smartphones, eReaders, digital cameras, laptops, printers, access point routers, Blu-ray players, and high-definition (HD) television sets. The new chip, as well as some of Marvell's earlier chips, work to seamlessly move content among many Wi-Fi connected devices. The company has targeted enterprise markets as well as consumer and mobile wireless markets for its Avastar family.

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