A group of journalists got their first look at the power of next-generation Wi-Fi, or 802.11ac, during a demo event in San Francisco this week. Based on the early reports, it appears that they agree with us that 5G WiFi is ready for prime time and that the market is ready for 5G WiFi.

The event, which was held in a hip art gallery in San Francisco’s SOMA district, kicked off with a welcome by Broadcom Senior Vice President Michael Hurlston, who took some time to explain how we got to this point in Wi-Fi’s evolution. We live in an age where devices galore – from PCs and smartphones to living room set-top boxes and gaming consoles – are all tapping into the Wi-Fi networks, he said.

Consumers are uploading videos to YouTube, streaming high-def video from Netflix, sharing photos over Facebook and streaming music from Pandora, among many other things. For those experiences – and new ones we’ve yet to hear about – to continue to prosper, the wireless pipeline to the Internet needs to be faster, stronger and more reliable. That’s where 5G WiFi comes in.

Also see: 5G WiFi: Introducing a Wi-Fi Powerful Enough to Handle Next-Gen Devices and Demands

See photos from the event on Broadcom’s Facebook Page

The event featured some comments by NETGEAR CEO Patrick Lo and some product demonstrations by David Henry, NETGEAR’s Vice President of Product Management, who offered some real-time demonstrations of files being transferred over the existing Wi-Fi – 802.11n – and the new 5G WiFi. When it comes to speed, there was no contest, 5G WiFi transferred large files in a fraction of the time it took for the transfers over 802.11n.

The opening lines of a blog post on laptopmag.com pretty much summed it up: “Unless you want to be wedded to 802.11n’s megabit pace forever, you might want to consider switching over to 802.11ac-enabled tech to suit that gigabit pipe you plan on installing in your home…”

The time is now.

Check out the full event presentation here:

Industry Buzz:

• CNET: Netgear demos Broadcom-based 802.11ac Wi-Fi devices
• PC Magazine: Netgear Unveils 802.11ac USB Adapter, Cheaper Router
• Electronista: Netgear ships first 802.11ac router, intros USB adapter

Related Reading:

• 5GWiFi Grows: Belkin Adds to Lineup of Next-Gen Wireless Products
• 5GWiFi, NetXtreme Ethernet win top awards at Interop
• 5G WiFi Gets Vote of Confidence

The future of automotive technology arrived in Southern California this week — at Broadcom’s Irvine, Calif. headquarters, to be exact.

The Drive for Innovation roving media project is a year-long journey being conducted by EE Times Editorial Director Brian Fuller in a Chevy Volt as a way of promoting automotive innovation, via a blog. His journey led him to Broadcom to talk to a panel of resident experts about the current breakthroughs in automotive technology and explore what the future could bring. The panel consisted of Yong Kim, Senior Technical Director; Tim Lau, PHY Senior Product Line Manager; Richard Barrett, Director of Product Marketing for Broadcom’s Mobile and Wireless Group; and Ali Abaye, PHY Senior Director of Product Marketing.

From left: Brian Fuller, Ali Abaye, Richard Barrett, Tim Lau and Yong Kim

The discussion kicked off by looking at ways that Broadcom is modernizing both car building and the driver and passenger experience through Ethernet, Bluetooth and wireless LAN technologies. Ethernet has become a low-cost and light-weight way to wire the connected car for in-demand features, such as infotainment, safety cameras and sensors, as well as maintenance and repair diagnostics. Hands-free Bluetooth capabilities are now part of 70 percent of the cars that ship in the U.S. today, in part as a response to safety legislation by a number of states. Wi-Fi is delivering the latest in car personalization, pushing the home screen experience of a smartphone or tablet to the in-car touchscreen, whether it be your own car, a second car or even a rental car. The introduction of 5G WiFi will only help make Wi-Fi auto technology more efficient and capable.

Then the conversation turned to the truly futuristic.

First up was a discussion stemming from last week’s announcement by Google that its self-driving car is licensed in Nevada. Some major automakers are working on driver-less cars that will be ready around 2020.

Some cars already have what are called “passive controls” that warn drivers when they’re veering into another lane, and camera and sensor technologies that serve as an extra set of eyes for potential hazards. One day, these will be replaced by “active controls” that will be able to brake, steer and regulate speeds.

Broadcom employees kick the tires of the Chevy Volt

Also in the works are car-to-car communications that utilize Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, allowing vehicles to share their actions and positioning thus decreasing the possibility of collisions.

The downside of all of this? Kim says he enjoys driving and fears that having his driving mandated someday will make driving less fun.

The real challenge for automakers is to find ways to implement the technologies faster and to be more flexible about it, the panelists said.

Today, it takes about 5 to 7 years for new technologies to appear in vehicles, which means that today’s 2012 models contain 2007 technologies. The industry is working on ways to update cars as new technologies come to market and the panelists agreed that cars should be more adaptable for new technology than other products, including feature phones.

How many of us remember a time before electricity? Or the telephone? Or cable TV?

How about Wi-Fi? Like many other technology breakthroughs, Wi-Fi is well on its way to becoming as mainstream as the electrical outlet. And just like the outlet changed through the years to become safer and more energy efficient, Wi-Fi is turning a corner into a next-generation version that’s faster, more reliable and better equipped to handle not only today’s demands but the wave of future demands that will come from more users, more devices and more data.

Click to see the evolution of Wi-Fi

The number of Wi-Fi-enabled devices has already grown exponentially in the last decade or so, as has the number of places where Wi-Fi is accessible. A recent survey found that free Wi-Fi was the most wanted amenity among hotel guests, beating out free breakfast and free parking. Today, the number of new devices connecting to Wi-Fi is growing far beyond the traditional PC. Smartphones, tablet computers, game consoles and the TV are among the latest to tap into the network. Next up are home appliances like thermostats, washing machines and refrigerators. The growth is so fast that researchers predict that there will be 5 billion Wi-Fi connected devices worldwide by 2014.

The onslaught of new ways to use Wi-Fi calls for something that’s faster and more reliable, powerful enough to cover a broader range and robust enough to handle more devices transmitting data-heavy content, including high-definition video.

Meet 5G WiFi — officially known as IEEE 802.11ac. At CES 2012, Broadcom introduced the world’s first 802.11ac chips, enabling gigabit connectivity where previously only megabit speeds had existed. This is a major turning point for Wi-Fi because it not only meets the growing demands of today but also helps fuel a new ecosystem of communication, entertainment and productivity for the future. Broadcom has also introduced 802.11ac chips for enterprise and wireless cloud networks, the world’s first 5G WiFi system-on-a-chip for use in the enterprise by the new generation of “unwired” workers.

Wi-Fi has certainly come a long way since being one of those “nice-to-have” technologies of the late 1990s to being a “must have” today. As such, Wi-Fi needs innovative thinkers developing technology that will allow it to grow, prosper and evolve.

While others are still just talking about development of their 802.11ac, Broadcom is accelerating the push to 5G WiFi by partnering with companies including NETGEAR and Belkin to develop products that run on 5G WiFi. Already, just a few months after the debut of Broadcom’s 5G WiFi chips, NETGEAR is selling the first 5G WiFi router and Belkin has just announced a new line of wireless routers supporting the new 802.11ac wireless networking standard. Today, Buffalo Technology announced the availability of a router and media bridge powered by 5G WiFi.

5G WiFi’s time is now and Broadcom is leading the evolution of wireless technology, ensuring that Broadcom’s next-generation Wi-Fi will enable the next generation of mobile computing.

Industry Buzz:

• EE Times: Broadcom Promotes New 802.11ac Wi-Fi Standard
• ComputerWorld: Broadcom Pushes 802.11ac for Faster Wi-Fi
• PC Magazine: Netgear to Ship Next-Gen 802.11ac Wi-Fi Router in May
• Engadget: Netgear’s R6300 Router is First to Use Broadcom 802.11ac Chipset

Earlier Posts:

• 5G WiFi: The Next Big Thing
• 5G WiFi Gets Vote of Confidence
• 5G WiFi, NetXtreme Ethernet win top awards at Interop

A special interest group established by Broadcom just six months ago to drive wide scale adoption of Ethernet-based automotive connectivity has seen a 7x growth in members, jumping to 45 with the addition of Bosch, Continental, Jaguar-Land Rover and Renesas Electronics.

The OPEN Alliance (One-Pair Ether-Net) SIG was established to drive innovation for the next-generation car, with a specific focus on improving in-vehicle safety, comfort, and infotainment, while significantly reducing network complexity and cabling costs.

Key to the newly established SIG is the proliferation of Broadcom’s BroadR-Reach technology as an open standard. BroadR-Reach is designed specifically to address the stringent requirements of the automotive industry while delivering high-performance bandwidth of 100Mbps over an unshielded single twisted pair cable. By eliminating the need for expensive, cumbersome shielded cabling, automotive manufacturers can reduce connectivity costs by up to 80 percent and cabling weight by up to 30 percent.

At its initial meeting earlier this year, the OPEN Alliance established technical committees to address interoperability requirements, third party testing platforms, certification procedures and higher data rate specification requirements. The group members met again this month at the Embedded Systems Expo in Tokyo.

Separately, the members recently voted to appoint Dr. Kirsten Matheus, Ethernet Project Manager at BMW, as Chair of the OPEN Alliance.

Related Reading:

• Broadcom BroadR-Reach Ethernet Portfolio Brings Autos into Digital Age
• In-Car Ethernet Paves the Way for New Features, Increased Efficiency [Video]
• The Case for Ethernet in Cars

The lineup of products powered by Broadcom’s 5G WiFi technology continues to grow, with Belkin being the latest to adopt the technology for a new portfolio of products.

Today, Belkin is announcing the June availability of its line of wireless routers supporting the new 802.11ac wireless networking standard. Broadcom was the first company to release a chip powered by the technology, a more powerful and robust successor to the current 802.11n technology. Broadcom’s 5G WiFi chips deliver Ethernet-quality speeds that are three times faster and six times more power efficient than previous generations of Wi-Fi.

Server architecture has come a long way since the days when each server was assigned to a specific application or task. Because many tasks don’t play well with others, each task required its own dedicated machine. It was a very basic, albeit not too efficient, approach to architect a data center network.

With today’s mega data centers and cloud-based services on the rise, computer networks are becoming larger and more complex, rendering the dedicated servers of yesteryear obsolete.  As the sheer number of servers continues to increase, one can imagine the amount of physical space required by a data center that’s not only overcrowded with racks of servers but also consuming massive amounts of power and generating heat.

To move past traditional data center architecture, networking professionals often face a labor-intensive and time-consuming process of reconfiguring workloads. Server virtualization attempts to address both of these issues in one fell swoop while creating more flexibility and greater efficiencies.  Utilizing specially designed software, an administrator can convert one physical server into multiple virtual machines. Each virtual server acts like a unique physical device that is capable of running its own operating system (OS). Virtualization presents many advantages, enabling users to consolidate computing hardware resources and allowing them to run multiple virtual machines concurrently on consolidated hardware.

Now, IT and data center administrators are leveraging encapsulation and “tunneling” strategies to address the networking problems created by complex virtual environments and the difficulties created by extending network segments long-distance between data centers. In essence, tunneling fully abstracts the physical network, extending the VLAN construct to offer multi-data center network scalability.

Broadcom’s NetXtreme II™ has perfected the art of tunneling. Like most network protocol processing, the bulk of the intelligence is done in the NIC in order to ensure low CPU utilization and maximum performance. By eliminating islands and taking advantage of NIC partitioning, Broadcom’s 57810 allows servers to support Network Virtualization Offload (NVO) services with the various Layer 2 over Layer 3  encapsulation formats that not only reduce system power and cut cooling costs but also minimizes overall system complexity. Most importantly, NVO creates better performance with a lower total cost of ownership — the poster child for fast, fat and flat networks in saving time and money.

To see Broadcom’s 10G tunnel offload technology for software-defined network environments, stop by our booth at Interop or visit our newsroom here.

Full Coverage: Broadcom at Interop 2012

• Broadcom at Interop: Power Consumption Technology Plays Important Role
• Broadcom at Interop: Energy Efficient Ethernet is Good for the Planet
• Technology Moving at the Speed of Life: Broadcom Enables Massive Network Scalability
• Enterprise 2.0: Broadcom puts Network Managers in the Fast Lane
• Broadcom at Interop: Next-Generation Data Centers Shift into High Gear
• Broadcom at Interop: Unprecedented Innovation for Next Gen Data Center, Green IT and Enterprise 2.0
• Gallery: The sights of Broadcom at Interop
• 5GWiFi, NetXtreme Ethernet win top awards at Interop

Broadcom’s technologies were honored this week as being some of the best at the Interop conference in Las Vegas. Specifically, Broadcom’s family of 802.11ac – or 5GWiFi – chips was named Best New Product at the 2012 Network Products Guide Hot Companies and Best Products Award. And Broadcom’s NetXtreme Ethernet Solutions was named winner of the IT Products and Services for Enterprise (Medium) category.

The awards are an honor for Broadcom as it continues to see momentum around these innovative technologies.

Broadcom was the first to introduce chips using the new 802.11ac wireless technology and has created some early excitement around the concept of 5GWiFi. Already, companies are rolling out products that will use the new technology – Netgear being the first – and others are excited about the potential that it will offer. The technology promises a more robust and more seamless experience around digital content, such as video, and the capabilities of sharing that content across a number of devices, including televisions, mobile phones, tablet computers and traditional PCs.

The NetXtreme Ethernet Solutions were also recognized for the innovation they bring to enterprise networks and data centers. Broadcom’s Ethernet adapter offerings are engineered to help IT managers meet new demands, such as the increasing adoption of virtualization, as well as leverage advanced features, such as Energy Efficient Ethernet, which enables up to 42 percent less power consumption and lower IT operating costs.

Broadcom’s diverse portfolio of semiconductor solutions were also name finalists in the 2012 Network Products Guide Awards in eight categories, including Access, Best IT Hardware for the Enterprise, IT Products for the Enterprise, Services for Telecom, Data Center, Green IT, Mobile & Wireless, and Best New Product.

Full Coverage: Broadcom at Interop 2012

• Broadcom at Interop: Power Consumption Technology Plays Important Role
• Broadcom at Interop: Energy Efficient Ethernet is Good for the Planet
• Technology Moving at the Speed of Life: Broadcom Enables Massive Network Scalability
• Enterprise 2.0: Broadcom puts Network Managers in the Fast Lane
• Broadcom at Interop: Next-Generation Data Centers Shift into High Gear
• Broadcom at Interop: Unprecedented Innovation for Next Gen Data Center, Green IT and Enterprise 2.0
• Broadcom at Interop: Knowledge-Base and Multi-Core Processors Complete Broadcom Portfolio
• Gallery: The sights of Broadcom at Interop

The halls of the Mandalay Bay Convention Center in Las Vegas have been bustling with activity this week as IT professionals gathered for the Interop conference. Near the center of the show expo floor, Broadcom’s booth was an attraction as folks converged to learn more about Broadcom’s innovative technologies that are transforming the data center and giving enterprise companies more flexibility, more potential for cost savings and an opportunity to operate with greater energy efficiency.

Check out the full photo gallery on Broadcom’s Facebook page.

Full Coverage: Broadcom at Interop 2012

• Broadcom at Interop: Power Consumption Technology Plays Important Role
• Broadcom at Interop: Energy Efficient Ethernet is Good for the Planet
• Technology Moving at the Speed of Life: Broadcom Enables Massive Network Scalability
• Enterprise 2.0: Broadcom puts Network Managers in the Fast Lane
• Broadcom at Interop: Next-Generation Data Centers Shift into High Gear
• Broadcom at Interop: Unprecedented Innovation for Next Gen Data Center, Green IT and Enterprise 2.0
• Broadcom at Interop: Knowledge-Base and Multi-Core Processors Complete Broadcom Portfolio

This week at Interop 2012, we’re thrilled to display products from our newly formed Processor & Wireless Infrastructure line of business, a result of our recent acquisition of NetLogic Microsystems.

The addition of leading knowledge-base and multi-core embedded processor technology to our growing Infrastructure & Networking portfolio extends Broadcom’s addressable market and provides our customer base with a complete end-to-end solution.

Combining bandwidth, connectivity and intelligence into one seamlessly integrated platform solution results in reduced integration costs, enhanced system performance and lower execution risks for our customers.

Knowledge base and multi-core processors are benefiting from the same drivers fueling growth in Ethernet switch, including LTE build outs, cloud computing, the explosive growth in mobile traffic and ever-increasing use of video. According to the Cisco Virtual Networking Index, video transport will represent 90 percent of all Internet traffic by 2015.

Transporting video from the user through the core of the network is no small task. It requires  requiring a great deal of processing power. Anytime a video crosses the Internet, chances are our latest processors are managing the heavy lifting.  In fact, we estimate that 98.99 percent of all Internet traffic now crosses a Broadcom chip.

To see exactly what NetLogic has brought to the Broadcom party, come see the complete line of NETL7™ KBP,  XLP, XLR and XLS processors in the Broadcom booth this week at Interop.

You can follow our news from the show by following us on Twitter or visiting our website.

Full Coverage: Broadcom at Interop 2012

• Broadcom at Interop: Power Consumption Technology Plays Important Role
• Broadcom at Interop: Energy Efficient Ethernet is Good for the Planet
• Technology Moving at the Speed of Life: Broadcom Enables Massive Network Scalability
• Enterprise 2.0: Broadcom puts Network Managers in the Fast Lane
• Broadcom at Interop: Next-Generation Data Centers Shift into High Gear
• Broadcom at Interop: Unprecedented Innovation for Next Gen Data Center, Green IT and Enterprise 2.0

We’re excited to be in Las Vegas this week for the Interop show, where we’ll be showcasing the full line-up of our latest innovations enabling the next generation Data Center, Green IT and Enterprise 2.0. Visitors to our booth on the main show floor will get an up close and personal demonstration of our amazing technologies in action.

Terabit Anyone? In the Data Center area of our booth you will find our new 100GbE BCM88650 switch and BCM87550 fabric, enabling terabit connectivity from the edge to the core of the network. Also on display will be our latest PHYs: our 10GBASE-T PHYs, providing up to 50 percent lower power consumption and our 100GbE Gearbox PHYs, the industry’s first to support 10GbE, 40GbE and 100GbE line interfaces.

Need to keep it green? Our newest additions to our ever-expanding Energy Efficient Ethernet (EEE) portfolio offer power reduction of up to 70 percent per port.

For those curious to see how the NetLogic portfolio fits into our overall solution post-acquisition, the complete portfolio of Broadcom knowledge based and multi-core processors will be on display.

Weary IT and network managers looking to make their lives just a bit easier should check out our Enterprise 2.0 innovations, including the recently announced BCM56545 series with App-IQ technology, which provides network managers with the tools they need to analyze and regulate web application traffic to ensure employee productivity.

And if all of that weren’t enough to keep us hopping, we’re thrilled to be a finalist in the Best of Interop awards for our 5G WiFi 802.11ac solution, providing on-the-go gigabit technology for the mobile workforce.

We look forward to seeing you in our booth at Interop Las Vegas! In the interim, you can find our full lineup of news from the show by following us on Twitter or visiting our website.

Full Coverage: Broadcom at Interop 2012

• Broadcom at Interop: Power Consumption Technology Plays Important Role
• Broadcom at Interop: Energy Efficient Ethernet is Good for the Planet
• Technology Moving at the Speed of Life: Broadcom Enables Massive Network Scalability
• Enterprise 2.0: Broadcom puts Network Managers in the Fast Lane
• Broadcom at Interop: Next-Generation Data Centers Shift into High Gear