Picture credit score: Eliane Fiolet
At its latest Govt Summit, MediaTek talked about its Filogic 880 and Filogic 330 WiFi 7 options (introduced in Might 2023) and, extra importantly, confirmed reside demonstrations of each the router and consumer sides. One of many demos encompasses a pace of 13Gbps between two WiFi 7 gadgets, which is phenomenal.
When you’re unfamiliar with these two platforms, Filogic 880 is destined to energy WiFi 7 within the router, whereas Filogic 330 is built-in into shoppers similar to computer systems, Sensible TVs, and so on.
Regardless that these demos are set as much as present the best-case eventualities, the technological prowess is nonetheless spectacular and previews the place consumer-level wi-fi networking is heading within the close to time period.
On this case, two WiFi-7 router gadgets had been shut to one another, and an indication laptop computer had exterior antennas. It’s not a real-world situation, however the laptop computer demo exhibits the ultimate WiFi 7 pace is perhaps restricted by the antenna design somewhat than the chipset. This once more exhibits that many wi-fi networking challenges additionally reside within the analog area.
The Filogic 880 is supposed to speak with a number of WiFi 7 gadgets concurrently, and its most theoretical bandwidth is 36Gbps. That’s an imposing quantity, even for customers geared up with quick gear. I nonetheless use wired Ethernet for its reliability and low latency, however these demos made me need to attempt wi-fi once more on my main PC.
Filogic 880 has significant options similar to a VPN accelerator (tunneling offload engine) or its {hardware} cryptography engine. Due to the rise of Work-from-Dwelling workers, extra folks want these options than ever earlier than.
For essentially the most demanding prospects, Filogic 880 helps two 10Gbps wired Ethernet ports, which could possibly be very helpful for transferring information between two workstations on the native community. That’s assuming such computer systems do have 10 Gbps Ethernet assist, and that’s sadly unusual with out shopping for an adapter ($100-$300). It’s not low cost, however SMBs and energy customers would recognize the choice.
All this pace is made potential by a number of the nerdiest and most superior radio and sign processing applied sciences, similar to working a number of frequencies (MLO, A number of Hyperlink Operation) or supporting all potential WiFi bands, superior beamforming, and extremely parallel processing.
The Filogic 380 is a client-side WiFi 7 chip that sometimes talks to 1 router machine, or mesh node, at a pace of as much as 6.5 Gbps. It achieves such charges by utilizing simultaneous bands and channels. I can’t think about a real-world situation the place WiFi 7 efficiency is restricted by the chip somewhat than by the antenna design or exterior components WiFi surroundings or router. This looks like a great long-term funding.
The previous few years have been unimaginable for WiFi with the arrival of WiFi Mesh networks, then WiFi-6, adopted by WiFi 6E. The work on WiFi 7 appears properly underway, with stable demos from MediaTek. This provides OEMs an awesome connectivity platform to construct upon, and it’s an awesome incentive to make use of MediaTek as the general platform (together with SoC) somewhat than doing a little mixing and matching. Anticipate extra demos at CES 2023, maybe with product bulletins.
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