The Hindu : Business : Intel crafting tomorrow's wireless chips

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Thursday, Oct 14, 2004

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Intel crafting tomorrow's wireless chips

By Anand Parthasarathy

BANGALORE, OCT. 13. Chip sets crafted in India will fuel the next incremental jump in the reach of the Internet. Engineers at the Bangalore-based development centre of Intel are already working on the devices that will help `Wi-fi' become `Wi-Max', extending the range of today's wireless access to the Net, from a few metres, to dozens of kilometres.

Intel-India President, Ketan Sampat, announced at the Intel Developer Forum (IDF) which ended here today, that the made-in-India chip set, together with the core processor and the wireless subsystem, would go into the making of next generation of the company's Centrino wireless technology for portable computers. While today's Centrino-fuelled notebook PCs worked in the wireless region defined by the 802.11 (b or g) standard, a shift was expected by end 2005, to the longer range 802.16 standard, popularly known as WiMax.

And in a dramatic demonstration that the technology was almost half way there, Intel's Chief Technology Officer, Pat Gelsinger, held up a large chapathi-sized wafer containing hundreds of processors — the first realisation in the industry of a single-chip WiMax solution in silicon. Usable chips would be made available to the developer community in 2005, Mr. Gelsinger announced, adding: "India could be a WiMax nation — with the technology providing a huge wireless ukmbrella over this vast nation".

This year's IDF has brought nearly 1500 of India's young hardware and software `geeks', for an annual interaction with the top technologists of the U.S.-based chip-making leader.

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