TI powers down in wireless: company banks on longer battery life in small devices as key to pushing 802.11b - News - Texas InstrumentsTNETW1100B WLAN processor - Product Announcement

Electronic News, Sept 2, 2002 by Suzanne Deffree

Texas Instruments Inc. this week will release its latest WLAN processor for embedded Wi-Fi applications, which it said is less expensive than its previous 802.11 chipsets, 44 percent smaller than its predecessor, and, most importantly, consumes one-tenth to one-twentieth of the competition's power in standby mode.

The TNETW1100B, a 12mm-by-12mm device, will sell for less than $10 in 10,000-unit volumes and less than $20 BOM, according to TI, a drop from the existing ACX's $13 mark. But the package and price aren't what some find intriguing-at least not Navin Sabharwal, director of residential and networking technologies at Allied Business Intelligence (ABI).

Sabharwal believes the 802.11b market has made its mark in the laptop arena and that small mobile devices are the next in line. And the hurdle there, he says, is battery life.

"[802.11b is] becoming a very key piece of connectivity technology," Sabharwal said. "The current .11 chipset solutions are not really optimized from the power consumption angle. If somebody can step up to the plate and really provide a nice optimized solution, they are going to get a decent amount of traction, especially from people in the embedded PDA market."

Dan Nemits, product manager for TI's wireless networking unit, has his eye sharply focused on that market and claims handhelds and their cousin, smart phones, aren't starved for power because of transmit and receive costs. It's the standby mode that eats up battery life. Estimating that only 5 percent of the average user's time is spent in transmit/receive mode, Nemits believes that 1100B's 2mW sleep consumption will put TI's Wi-Fi chip ahead of the rest.

"The early versions of 802.11 have been--I'll be honest--power pigs," he said. "They haven't taken into account the needs of these smaller devices."

Sabharwal agrees and sees the power consumption move as a smart one.

"Essentially what they are trying to do is hit an entirely new market segment and create an entirely new market segment, to some extent," Sabharwal said. "What they've done is focus on integration and chip design, but instead of looking at it from a cost perspective, they've really gone and tried to make it improved from the power consumption angle. And I think what they have struck upon is a very good idea, which is, ultimately, there is a lot of traction right now in the PDA market for wireless LANs."

In fact, 70 percent of the 34.7 million PDAs expected to be shipped in 2007 will be 802.11-enabled, according to a recent ABI study.

TI isn't putting all of its stock in the 1100B but does believe it will overcome the ACX's usefulness.