Broadcom lands Lenovo Wi-Fi n deal for notebooks

Broadcom said it has landed the supply of 802.11n advanced Wi-Fi chips to Chinese PC maker Lenovo, one of the largest PC makers in the world, which took over the IBM PC operations at the end of 2004.

The Broadcom Intensi-fi chips, which meet the n standard that is still in draft will go into Lenovo's new N100 widescreen notebook and some of the Lenovo 3000 notebooks.

The way to make inroads into the Wi-Fi market has always been to gamble and intercept the market standards, and that's what Broadcom has done once again.

The notebooks will also use Intensi-fi wireless LAN software, which provides improvements in throughput, range and interoperability compared to earlier versions. Broadcom says the chips will achieve 120Mbps throughput at a separation of one room (30 feet). In addition, the latest software was shown to deliver over 25Mbps of throughput at a point in a test house where 802.11g products failed to achieve a connection.

Broadcom says its drivers were also shown to interoperate with products based on competing chipsets at speeds greater than 100Mbps.

The chip is dual band, operating in either the 2.4GHz or 5GHz unlicensed frequency bands. This deal means that Broadcom is now supplying Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and Fast Ethernet for Lenovo.

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