Intel buys Wi-Fi chip maker for $40m

Envara acquired, claims Israeli site

By Tony Smith • Get more from this author

Posted in Mobile, 26th March 2004 13:15 GMT

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Intel has bought Israeli wireless networking chip maker Envara for $40m, local business site The Market has claimed.

Envara was formed in March 2000 as a fabless chip producer, and has since launched its WiND series of multi-mode Wi-Fi chipsets. The WiND 502 is a 802.11a/b/g product, the WiND 512 an 802.11b.g product. Both are two-chip solutions. The company claims both products operate throughout the world, taking into account local spectrum requirements.

The company pitches the parts as low-power, low-cost products, claiming a very low ancillary component count for each product. ALi's Wi-Fi products are based on Envara chips, for example.

Envara is headquartered in Ra'anana, Israel, with offices in Redwood City, California, and Taipei.

Last November Intel acquired the assets of little-known wireless networking chip maker Mobilian for an undisclosed sum. Mobilian developed TrueRadio, a chipset that offers both 802.11b and Bluetooth wireless connectivity, and allows the protocols to co-exist seamlessly, despite sharing the same 2.4GHz frequency band.

The fruits of that acquisition are expected to appear later this year in a future generation of Intel's ProWireless Wi-Fi adaptor products. ®

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