Five different series have been released, each with three sub-categories

Feb 14, 2012 18:31 GMT  ·  By

Texas Instruments is one of the primary suppliers of chips that enable the sort of wireless connectivity all consumers have come to expect, and it looks like a new batch of such chips is ready to serve.

Antennas may be the product component responsible for projecting wireless electromagnetic waves, but they are just a tool in the end.

The electronic product component that actually generates the signal and handles the connection is a semiconductor, a chip as it were.

Texas Instruments has just announced the availability of quite a number of new chips of this sort, the WiLink 8.0 line.

There are five new series, each with three sub-sections, most of them intended for portable consumer electronics and everything else that could use a multi-purpose and fast wireless component.

The most basic of them support Wi-Fi, but more complex ones exist as well, with Bluetooth 4.0 support and even FM radio receiver/transmitter.

There is even GNSS support on a number of them, this being a sort of merger between GPS and GLOSNASS.

Furthermore, 2x2 MIMO Wi-Fi or SISO 40 MHz is offered on part of the new WiLink 8.0 chips as well (they enable speeds greater than 100 Mbps on 2.4 GHz or 5 GHz bands).

For the sake of comparisons, smartphones today don't have means capable of pushing Wi-Fi to over 65 Mbps.

Unfortunately, though Texas Instrument was more than generous in handing out performance information, it did not say what products all of these things are supposed to land in (probably phones, slates, laptops, etc.).

Likewise, it did not go into details about when and where applications for them would emerge, but it should take no more than a quarter or two.

Every scrap of info, big and small, known about the WiLink 8.0 line is found on the official product page. Go here to check it out.