- 21 August 2006 -

Marvell WLAN plus Bluetooth single-chip solution

Santa Clara, CA, USA, based Marvell has announced the world’s first WLAN plus Bluetooth single chip solution for cellular handsets, battery-powered media players, portable gaming consoles, smartphones, PDAs and ultra-low-power computing platforms. Sadly, but not surprisingly it is not implemented in III-Vs but rather in silicon, 90-nm CMOS to be precise.

Expanding on its growing success in offering low-power, small footprint WLAN solutions to the consumer market, Marvell's WLAN plus Bluetooth solution offers leading edge integration, extensive host offload capability and advanced co-existence and power save modes – with a footprint of less than 80mm3. The Marvell 88W8688 will dramatically extend the battery life of consumer electronics devices, enabling a new level of mobile consumer broadband experience.

“The Marvell 88W8688 represents five years of interaction with our customers and partners. We are very pleased to deliver a new, fully customizable, software compatible platform that will allow them to launch products that are varied in scope and application ranging from gaming to cameras to smartphones up to emerging converged products,” said Dr. Paramesh Gopi, VP and GM of the Embedded and Emerging Business Unit, Communications and Consumer Business Group at Marvell. “The Marvell 88W8688 marks our fourth generation complimentary wireless solution and offers an extremely competitive cost structure thereby enabling mass adoption of both technologies into all tiers of consumer electronics.”

The Marvell 88W8688 builds on the Company’s field proven, robust embedded Layer 2 (MAC) and Layer 3 software that has powered numerous consumer wireless platforms. The integration of Bluetooth 2.0 EDR – which is firmware upgradeable to Bluetooth 2.1 features – and WLAN subsystems on a single die allows fully optimized simultaneous dual radio operation and cooperative co-existence. The Marvell 88W8688 platform enables the Company to provide ecosystem solutions by offering seamless bridging between WiFi and Bluetooth – ultimately enhancing the consumer’s experience.

The Marvell 88W8688 is the first device to deliver a fully integrated Bluetooth 2.0 EDR baseband/RF and Marvell’s market-proven 802.11a/b/g WLAN technology for next generation consumer electronic devices. The Marvell 88W8688 enables a converged WLAN plus Bluetooth subsystem implementation that is up to 50% smaller than discrete implementations. The integrated multi-protocol security engine includes hardware acceleration for UMA, IMS, and other network access methods requiring extensible end-to-end security. Following on Marvell’s ground breaking embedded client architecture, the Marvell 88W8688 incorporates full Layer 3 networking support (TCP/IP + UDP) and adds the ability to run supplicants natively, offloading WLAN functionality from the host CPU. Additionally, the Marvell 88W8688 incorporates voice and audio codecs that can be used in a wide variety of media applications and platforms.

Marvell’s advanced fourth generation co-existence algorithms ensure zero compromise voice and stereo Bluetooth functionality with complete WLAN operation. Marvell’s ultra-low-power Bluetooth architecture leverages four generations of 2.4GHz WLAN high-performance radios and provides dramatic improvements in Bluetooth range and connection quality. The Marvell 88W8688 supports all Bluetooth profiles with an industry standard HCI interface. The device runs Bluetooth profiles natively, offloading the host CPU. The Marvell 88W8688 can be connected to a host processor using either a unified host interface or independent host interfaces for WLAN and Bluetooth connections.

The Marvell 88W8688 is currently being sampled to key, tier one OEM partners. To shorten design cycles and accelerate time-to-market, Marvell is providing development kits with complete hardware reference designs, development boards and a complete suite of software.

www.marvell.com