Qualcomm Atheros
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|
| Type | Subsidiary |
|---|---|
| Founded | May 1998 |
| Headquarters | San Jose, California, USA |
| Key people | Teresa H. Meng, founder and director Craig H. Barratt, President |
| Products |
Ethernet WLAN Bluetooth GPS Powerline communications Hybrid Wired/Wireless Location |
| Parent | Qualcomm |
| Website | www.qca.qualcomm.com |
Qualcomm Atheros is a developer of semiconductors for network communications, particularly wireless chipsets. Founded under the name Atheros in 1998 by experts in signal processing from Stanford University, the University of California, Berkeley and the private industry, the company went public in 2004. The current President is Craig H. Barratt.
On January 5, 2011, it was announced that Qualcomm had agreed to a takeover of the company for an enterprise valuation of US$3.1 billion. When the acquisition was completed on May 24, 2011, Atheros became a subsidiary of Qualcomm operating under the name Qualcomm Atheros.[1]
Atheros chipsets for the IEEE 802.11 standard of wireless networking are used by over 30 different wireless device manufacturers, including Netgear, D-Link and TRENDnet.[2]
Contents |
History [edit]
Atheros was co-founded in 1998[3] by Dr. Teresa Meng, Professor of Engineering at Stanford University and a leading expert in digital signal processing and radio frequency technology, and Dr. John Hennessy, then provost and now President of Stanford University. The following year, Atheros named Rich Redelfs as president and CEO. In 2000, Atheros publicly demonstrated its inaugural chipset, the world's first WLAN implemented in CMOS technology and the industry's first high-speed 802.11a 5 GHz solution.
In 2002, Atheros launched the first dual-band wireless solution,[4] the AR5001X 802.11a/b.
In 2003, Atheros named Dr. Craig Barratt president and CEO. That year the company shipped its 10-millionth wireless chip.[5]
IPO [edit]
In 2004, Atheros completed its IPO on the NASDAQ exchange[6] and unveiled a number of products, including the first video chipset for mainstream HDTV-quality wireless connectivity.
In 2005, Atheros introduced the industry's first MIMO-enabled WLAN chip,[7] as well as the ROCm family of high-performance, low-power WLAN solutions for mobile handsets and portable consumer electronics.
In 2006 Atheros launched its XSPAN solutions,[8] which featured a single-chip, triple-radio solution for 802.11n. In this same year, they began to collaborate with Qualcomm on a 3G/Wi-Fi solution for CDMA and WCDMA-enabled handsets.
In 2008, Atheros launched the Align™ 1-stream 802.11n solutions for PCs and networking equipment.[9]
In 2010, Atheros shipped its 500-millionth WLAN chipset[10] and 100-millionth Align 1-stream chipset. They released the first HomePlug AV chipset with a 500Mbps PHY rate.
Acquired by Qualcomm [edit]
In January 2011, Qualcomm entered into a Material Definitive Agreement to acquire Atheros at $45 per share in an all in cash merger agreement. This agreement was subject to shareholder approval and other customary regulatory approvals.[11] In May 2011, Qualcomm completed its acquisition of Atheros Communications for a total of US$3.1 billion. Atheros is now a subsidiary of Qualcomm under the name Qualcomm Atheros. Under Qualcomm Atheros, the division unveiled the WCN3660 Combo Chip, which integrated dual-band Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and FM into Qualcomm Snapdragon mobile processors. Qualcomm Atheros launched the Skifta media shifting application for Android[12] and released the first HomePlug Green PHY solution at the end of the year.
Qualcomm Atheros began 2012 by announcing the first generation of Wi-Fi Display-enabled solutions at CES 2012,[13] along with a new chip for HomePlug AV powerline. At Mobile World Congress 2012, Qualcomm Atheros demonstrated a suite of 802.11ac enabled products.[14] This included the WCN3680, the industry’s first mobile 802.11ac combo chip targeting smartphones and tablets. In June 2012 at Computex, Qualcomm Atheros added several new 802.11ac solutions to its portfolio.[15]
Products[16] [edit]
WLAN – Qualcomm Atheros offers a variety of wireless connectivity solutions, including their Align 1-stream 802.11n chips, and the XSPAN 2-stream with SST2 and 3-stream with SST3 chips for 802.11n. The Align 1 also supports WLAN for mobile with up to 150Mbps PHY rates for smartphones and portable consumer electronics. Qualcomm Atheros also offers legacy WLAN designs for 802.11a/g.
Power line communication (PLC) – Qualcomm Atheros is a member of the HomePlug Powerline Alliance. Its AMP brand of powerline chips support the IEEE 1901 global powerline standard that supports high-definition multimedia and real-time gaming at a 500Mbps PHY rate. Low powered chips, such as those built for HomePlug Green PHY, are targeted toward smart grid and smart home applications.
Ethernet – Qualcomm Atheros offers the ETHOS line of Ethernet solutions, as well as the low-energy EDGE line, which supports the IEEE 802.3az-2010 Energy Efficient standard.
Hybrid Networking – Qualcomm Atheros' hybrid networking technology, Hy-Fi™, integrates WLAN, PLC, and Ethernet technologies. The technology, which complies with the IEEE 1905.1 standard for hybrid home networking, is capable of detecting the optimal path for data to be transferred at any given moment.
Location Technology – In 2012, Qualcomm Atheros announced its IZat location technology. The technology uses multiple sources, such as satellites and WLAN networks, to pinpoint the location of the user.
Bluetooth – Qualcomm Atheros offers Bluetooth chips for a variety of platforms. The company also offers integrated combo WLAN and Bluetooth chips.
PON – Qualcomm Atheros delivers broadband access technology in the form of passive optical network (PON) technologies. End-to-end gateway solutions incorporate standards such as IEEE 802.3ah, multiple-channel, software-based, digital signal processing for the G.711 and G.729 ITU standards for VoIP, and TR-156 Broadband Forum PON standard.
Acquisitions [edit]
ZyDAS Technology - a USB Wireless LAN company headquartered in Hsinchu, Taiwan, acquired in 2006.[17]
Attansic Technology - a Fast and Gigabit Ethernet chip maker headquartered in Taiwan, acquired in early 2007.[18]
u-Nav Microelectronics - a GPS chipmaker headquartered in Irvine, CA, acquired in 2007.[16]
Intellon Corporation - a public company with powerline communication (PLC) solutions for home networking, networked entertainment, broadband-over-powerline (BPL) access, Ethernet-over-Coax (EoC), and smart grid management applications. They were acquired in late 2009.[19]
Opulan Technology Corp - EPON broadband access technology developer in Shanghai, China, acquired in August 2010.[20]
Bigfoot Networks - an Austin, Texas based company known for their networking products targeted toward gaming markets, acquired in September 2011.[21]
Ubicom - a company known for their processor and software designed to optimize network data, acquired in February 2012.
DesignArt - small cell chip company that combined several radio technologies on a single chip, used to provide wireless backhaul to smaller base stations. Acquired in August 2012.[22]
Open Source [edit]
In the free software community, Atheros had been known for not releasing the appropriate documentation that would allow free software developers to write open-source drivers to support Atheros wireless devices without resorting to reverse-engineering.[23] As a result, OSS support for Atheros hardware was rather limited. However, there were some completely free open-source drivers written via reverse-engineering techniques. For example, Reyk Floeter of the OpenBSD project reversed-engineered the HAL-module of the ath driver found on FreeBSD and provided a completely free driver for Atheros devices. Additionally, Nick Kossifidis of the MadWiFi project based on Floeter's work started madwifi-old-openhal branch in February 2006[24] in order to create a free driver for Linux. Kossifidis performed some further reverse engineering to add support for most ar5k chips and made various code improvements. His code made it to ath5k,[25] a driver for Atheros chips that is now included in the Linux kernel.
Atheros has often been featured in OpenBSD's theme songs that relate to the ongoing efforts of freeing non-free devices.[26]
In July 2008, Atheros decided to change policy and hired two key Linux wireless developers, Jouni Malinen (of HostAP fame) and Luis Rodriguez, and released an open-source Linux driver for their 802.11n devices.[27] Atheros also released some source from their binary HAL under ISC license to help the community add support for their abg chips. Atheros has been actively contributing towards the ath9k driver in Linux, with support for all current 802.11n chipsets.[28] Atheros has also been providing documentation and assistance to the FreeBSD community to enable updated support for 802.11n chipsets in FreeBSD-9.0 and FreeBSD-HEAD.[29]
References [edit]
- ^ Qualcomm Atheros :: Corporate :: Press Releases
- ^ Companies that use Atheros wifi chips
- ^ Atheros Timeline
- ^ First dual-band wireless solution
- ^ 10-millionth wireless chip
- ^ Atheros Launches IPO
- ^ First MIMO-enabled WLAN chip
- ^ XSPAN Launched
- ^ Align Launched
- ^ 500-millionth WLAN chipset
- ^ http://investors.atheros.com/phoenix.zhtml?c=149102&p=irol-newsArticle&ID=1512964&highlight=
- ^ Skifta Launched
- ^ Wi-Fi Display announced
- ^ 802.11ac ecosystem launch
- ^ 802.11ac portfolio
- ^ a b Qualcomm Atheros product pages
- ^ Zydas Acquisition
- ^ Attansic acqusition
- ^ Intellon acquisition
- ^ Opulan acquisition
- ^ Bigfoot Networks acquired
- ^ Ubicom acquisition
- ^ OpenBSD to support more wireless chipsets
- ^ OpenHAL
- ^ About ath5k
- ^ OpenBSD release song lyrics
- ^ Atheros unveils free Linux driver for its 802.11n devices
- ^ ath9k - Linux Wireless
- ^ dev/ath(4) - FreeBSD Wiki
