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Intel, Qualcomm set up their WiGig 802.11ad devices on blind dates

Good news, seeing as they're already flogging the hardware

Intel and Qualcomm say they have gotten their respective 802.11ad (WiGig) chips and antennas to successfully link up.

The two chipmakers announced on Tuesday they are now confident that (under the right conditions) devices with Intel WiGig hardware can link up to Qualcomm-powered base stations at the full 4.6Ghz connection rate of 802.11ad.

This should help to clear the way for both Intel and Qualcomm to begin pushing hardware vendors to put WiGig hardware into their mobile devices, notebooks, routers etc., with confidence that everything will be able to link up correctly.

"These tests spanned across many use cases and scenarios, including peer-to-peer connections between Intel- and Qualcomm Atheros 802.11ad WiGig-based clients and Qualcomm Atheros-802.11ad WiGig-powered access points," Intel and Qualcomm said in their joint statement.

"Tests examined various cases and conditions – from device discovery and connection to full-blown data uploads and downloads, streaming and more."

This should come as particularly welcome news for those who have their hearts set on getting one of the new 802.11ad-equipped routers or notebooks that were shown off at CES this year and promised for delivery later this year.

While vendors have talked up WiGig in recent months for its high-speed potential, the 60Ghz wireless networking standard has limitations (most notably a short range) that limit use cases to short-range, high-speed connections such as linking to a docking station.

Intel and Qualcomm say that the 60-Ghz radios will be folded in with the 2.4Ghz and 5Ghz WiFi hardware to create tri-band devices that would be able to handle the short-range WiGig connections, and then switch to 802.11ac (and older) connections as needed. ®

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