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Apple Supplier Broadcom Reportedly Phasing Out Wi-Fi Chip Business
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I don't see the problem, No doubt apple will want to continually reduce size by integrating as many functions as possible on to as few chips as possible. Now that they have the engineers it makes sense to put WiFi and Bluetooth on future processor chips.
On the other hand WiFi chips have long been a commodity product and their [Broadcom's] business model is not really to compete with the high volume, thin margin commodity suppliers. They are essentially removing products that are difficult to make a return on and instead focusing their attention on products where there are fewer competitors and therefore better profit margins.
On the other hand WiFi chips have long been a commodity product and their [Broadcom's] business model is not really to compete with the high volume, thin margin commodity suppliers. They are essentially removing products that are difficult to make a return on and instead focusing their attention on products where there are fewer competitors and therefore better profit margins.
I wonder what this will mean for projects like TomatoWRT and the raspberry pi? I know the raspberry pi has had many allwinner challengers but none actually took off.
encapsulating packets + RF magic w/ voice as an afterthought
but not that different
WiFi itself has two different bands with different channels in each band. Do the clients always use different antennae, or, do they make do with one antenna sometimes?
lots of different protocols on cell phone, what's adding a couple more for WiFi?
true but the WiFi part is automatic
to first order, the same: encapsulating IP packets and putting them through an RF modem and out an antenna
Lots of different protocols for cell phone-- what is adding a few more for WiFi and bluetooth?
The real point of my question was with ever-increasing integration, e.g. look at the SOCs available now, why not combine all the RF stuff onto the cell phone chip -- WiFi and bluetooth seem like they would be easy add-ons to the cell chip.
As opposed to what other kind of success?
Back to thread:
You only know about this news because you were told about it. You didn't know about the different variants of the A9 until the masses in their hysteria-fuelled ignorance, parroted the "news", and no - stop pretending you could tell the difference between them OR that you'd benefit from having one CPU inside versus the other; you couldn't, and wouldn't (even a friend of mine who I expected to know better, went off on one about this total non-issue, LOL.)
Next we'll have people telling us that they can tell the difference between A & B revisions of a certain product because an obsolete USB controller chipset has been replaced with another drop-in replacement. You'll tell us you can tell that Apple have switched resistor suppliers from the precise temperature coming from your MacBook vents - yeah? Okay
Clearly the majority of the MR readership know little-to-zero about electronics and board layouts, unpopulated PCB pads, multiple SMD footprints for drop-in replacement parts (which are factored into many designs - only a fool wouldn't do that when they lay out the board - you want to cover your back, and DO NOT want to lay it out again if you can help it.) You don't get a new Apple product when they switch solder paste suppliers or transistor manufacturers - wake up and smell the coffee - you're in the dark where you belong, because engineers are paid to know this stuff, not everyday people, and why would you care OR pretend to know more than qualified electronics engineers?
Broadcom may or may not disappear, I ain't losing a picosecond of sleep over it, nor should you.
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Eben Upton works for Broadcom as an engineer. If he can't sort something out for them, there's not much hope for the Pi.
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And Apple says something like "I'll take 74,000,000 of product A this quarter"... ("We don't want any of product B")
Gary
That's why I skipped over the Raspberry Pi 3 and got the Odroid C2 instead. Broadcom SoC architecture on the RPI3 is stagnant, not true 64-bit, slower performance and lower memory bandwidth with DDR2 instead of DDR3, still on 40nm so it runs hot even when idle, no eMMC 5.0 storage, no gigabit ethernet, etc.
http://www.hardkernel.com/main/products/prdt_info.php?g_code=G145457216438
People are talking here about Atheros/Qualcomm, other big names and no-name Chinese makers for the WiFi, when earlier this month Intel was revealed as the LTE producer for iPhone 7! Intel also makes modems for about two decades or so, and is probably the reason Broadcom is phasing out of the business.
Macrumors - 2016/03/04/intel-secures-lte-chip-production-iphone-7/
Macrumors - 2016/03/04/intel-secures-lte-chip-production-iphone-7/
I think people are making too much of Apple in this story.
Chips end up with greater and greater levels of integration. We're quickly reaching the point where WiFi isn't a product, it's a feature.
Mobile application SoCs are already swallowing up the baseband, and once they have the kinks worked out of adding analog RF circuitry to the digital logic on an SoC die, the others(WiFi, Bluetooth) are sure to follow.
Meanwhile, little upstart fabless Chinese semiconductor companies are already managing to get a highly integrated single stream 802.11n radio and a 32-bit micro-controller on a single die AND sell if for ~$1/chip. They aren't ready to compete with Boadcom on 802.11ac chips, but the writing is on the wall.
This should be interesting for the SOHO router market though. Broadcom has a good footprint there.
Chips end up with greater and greater levels of integration. We're quickly reaching the point where WiFi isn't a product, it's a feature.
Mobile application SoCs are already swallowing up the baseband, and once they have the kinks worked out of adding analog RF circuitry to the digital logic on an SoC die, the others(WiFi, Bluetooth) are sure to follow.
Meanwhile, little upstart fabless Chinese semiconductor companies are already managing to get a highly integrated single stream 802.11n radio and a 32-bit micro-controller on a single die AND sell if for ~$1/chip. They aren't ready to compete with Boadcom on 802.11ac chips, but the writing is on the wall.
This should be interesting for the SOHO router market though. Broadcom has a good footprint there.
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They make SOCs intended for the cable and satellite industry's STBs (video encoding/decoding). Also chips for DOCSIS modems (not wireless).
Rumor for a number of reason probably false.
See this:
http://www.fool.com/investing/gener...gn=article&utm_medium=feed&utm_source=yahoo-2
The electronics industry is facing a perfect storm. Consumer demand is waning, chip designs are encountering serious diminishing real returns, R&D costs to push smaller feature sizes are exploding for silicon fabs and rising labor costs in China are hurting everybody. You know the industry is in trouble if IIRC somebody like Asus can sell so many $200+ DIY motherboards and still earn only $10 of profit per unit, much less companies that sell <$1 IC chips.
