HDMI, thy end is near: Qualcomm's Wilocity gobble will let mobes, tabs beam 4K vid to TVs

WiGig-Wi-Fi crossover to knock your SoCs off

Qualcomm has snapped up WiGig pioneer Wilocity so it combine traditional Wi-Fi and super-fast 802.11ad on a single chunk of Snapdragon silicon for mobile gadgets.

"WiGig will play an important role in Qualcomm's strategy to address consumers' increasingly sophisticated smartphone, tablet and computing requirements," said Amir Faintuch, president of Qualcomm Atheros, in a canned statement.

The terms of the takeover haven't been announced, but Qualcomm was reportedly prepared to pay $300m for the California fabless chip maker. Wilocity was one of the founding members of the 802.11ad working group and already has its chips in Dell and Cisco hardware.

"A little-known fact is that WiGig began during a meeting on Microsoft's campus with several other companies, including Wilocity," said Billy Anders, group manager for operating systems at Redmond. "It's gratifying to see the rapid evolution of this technology, and this development indicates a rapid proliferation of WiGig."

802.11ad, or WiGig is capable of shifting multiple gigabits of data per second, up to 7Gbps in fact, albeit only within a range of a few feet, thanks to the 60GHz spectrum it uses.

This makes the combination Snapdragon 810 SoC Qualcomm is touting a very handy addition – you can use regular 802.11ac Wi-Fi when you're away from the router and then get blistering speeds close up.

This is also handy for beaming hi-res video, such as 4K material, from, say, your tablet to your TV, thus dooming HDMI ports to oblivion ... perhaps.

"As the first company to launch WiGig products and co-creator of the WiGig specification, we're well acquainted with the power of 60GHz technology for both businesses and consumers," Kirk Schell, vice president of Dell's commercial PC group.

"There is a growing demand for high-speed desktop and LAN connectivity, and we know this is just the beginning for 60 GHz applications—making it that much more important that the industry is ready to deliver." ®