Hasta La Gadget!

Broadcom, wireless. Peanut butter, jelly. Together, they just work. So today’s announcement that the company is adding WiFi Direct to its WICED (Wireless Internet Connectivity for Embedded Devices) platform feels pretty natural. The firm believes that WICED Direct will allow OEMs to develop wearable sensors — pedometers, heart-rate monitors, keycards — and clothing that transmit everyday data to the cloud via a connected smartphone or tablet. This would help push along the internet of things movement that’s been bandied about so much recently, and maybe even ensure you aren’t locked out of the house again.

[Image credit: Brandon Shigeta / Flickr]

Filed under: Cellphones, Wearables, Mobile

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Broadcom is no stranger to the budget-friendly lineup for carriers and OEMs around the globe — especially in emerging markets — but quad-core chipsets are just gaining traction in this arena. Granted, companies like MediaTek have already begun cranking out low-cost four-core Cortex-A7 SoCs for markets like China and India, but a little friendly competition doesn’t hurt anyone, right? This is the case with the BCM23550, a 1.2GHz A7 quad-core processor capable of HSPA+ speeds up to 21Mbps down and 5Mbps up and is optimized to run on Android 4.2 devices. The new piece of silicon also supports HD Voice and 12MP cameras with H.264 1080p video capture and playback, and offers the usual litany of connectivity options such as NFC, Bluetooth, 5G WiFi, RFID and GPS. It even features dual HD (720p) display support which is compatible with Miracast. Lastly, it’s also pin-to-pin compatible with Broadcom’s dual-core BCM21664T, which means manufacturers already using that particular chipset can reduce the amount of time spent on R&D and handset design. If you’re curious, expect the chips to begin production in early Q3, right around the corner.

Filed under: Mobile

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Broadcom has focused most of its 802.11ac WiFi efforts this year on high- and low-end mobile chips. Today, it’s swinging that attention back to bigger machinery like PCs and set-top boxes. The company’s new BCM4350, BCM43556 and BCM43558 all carry more robust, 2 X 2 MIMO antennas that help them hit 866Mbps speeds and optimize traffic through beamforming. Any differences, Broadcom notes, revolve around everything but the WiFi. The BCM4350 carries a more PC-like set of interfaces that includes Bluetooth 4.0, PCI Express and SDIO 3.0; the BCM43558 drops the PCIe and SDIO in favor of USB 3.0, while the BCM43556 also sheds Bluetooth. Although we don’t know which companies plan to use the nimbler wireless technology, it should ship to gadget makers in the second half of this year.

Filed under: Home Entertainment, Laptops, Tablets, Networking, HD, Mobile

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Source: Broadcom

As we’ve mentioned before, 5G WiFi, aka 802.11ac is a good thing, unless you hate speed and range. After launching its integrated BCM4335 chip on flagship handsets like Samsung’s Galaxy S 4 and the HTC One, Broadcom has announced new 5G WiFi combo chips for lower-end smartphones, PCs, notebooks and tablets. Budget handheld devices can now be equipped with the BCM4339, which Broadcom says brings the same performance as its top-end mobile chip while integrating power and low-noise amplifiers for easier integration. Meanwhile, the BCM43162 is targeted at desktop and notebook PCs with direct support for the Microsoft’s Windows OS. Customers are now sampling both chips, and Broadcom expects volume production in the second half of the year — another possible reason to put off that notebook purchase a bit longer.

Filed under: Cellphones, Desktops, Laptops, Tablets

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We’re still a bit away from Ultra HD becoming the standard for television. One of the things standing in the way is just how much bandwidth pushing that many pixels demands. SES recently demonstrated an Ultra HD transmission that uses the up and coming HEVC (High Efficiency Video Coding) standard, as opposed to the more established H.264. It’s demonstrated 4K broadcasts before, as seen above at its IBC booth last year, but those were using older codecs. The 3,840 x 2,160 image was broadcast at a data rate of 20 Mbps, roughly a 50-percent improvement in encoding efficiency over H.264-based MPEG-4. The demonstration was performed with support from SES’s partners, Harmonic and Broadcom, the latter of which provided the BCM7445-based decoding box used for pulling in the video. The tech still isn’t quite ready for prime time, but we’d say a 4K House of Cards stream is probably closer than any of us realized.

Filed under: HD

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