Qualcomm Atheros Expands Networking Infrastructure Portfolio

By Raju Shanbhag, TMCnet Contributor

Offering the industry's first unified wired and wireless switch feature to small- and medium-business users, Qualcomm Atheros (News - Alert) has introduced the QCA871x series of high port-count Gigabit Ethernet switch solutions.

Atheros provides connectivity solutions for networking the home and enterprise. The company also offers various high-performance options for networking the digital home’s consumer electronics, retail routers, carrier-class gateways, and connecting the enterprise’s access points. Qualcomm (News - Alert) Atheros also connects the home’s smart meters, thermostats and appliances to the utilities’ smart grid. And, with high-performance PON, the company offers next-generation broadband access to homes and multi-dwelling units.

According to Qualcomm, the new portfolio facilitates simple, automated, end-to-end switch and access point solutions. These switches are offered at prices that will assist SMB customers all over the world to get state of the art cloud management usually associated with enterprise-class switch solutions.

With the QCA871x series, Qualcomm Atheros becomes the first company to bring together wireless controller functions and the switch silicon, the company has stated.

“Qualcomm Atheros' R&D and engineering teams worldwide have proven experience in multiple Ethernet segments," said George Chu, general manager and vice president of the Ethernet group, infrastructure business unit, Qualcomm Atheros. "With the convergence of wired and wireless networks, this is the ideal time for us to enter the high port switching market and to accelerate the momentum of unified wired and wireless networks.”

Recently, the company unveiled a new ultra-low power near field communication solution. When combined with Qualcomm Atheros' WCN3680 1-stream, dual-band 802.11ac Wi-Fi/Bluetooth 4.0/FM chip, QCA1990 will allow seamless user experiences in the mobile, computing and consumer electronics markets. To seamlessly facilitate NFC on Qualcomm's OEM partner smartphones and tablets, the QCA1990 provides platform-level combination with the Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 and next-generation processors and modems. Completely integrated, the QCA1990 software stack complies with the NFC Forum (News - Alert) Controller Interface.

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