Atheros unveils AR2417 chip for home gateways.

Worldwide Computer Products News-10 April 2007-Atheros unveils AR2417 chip for home gateways(C)1995-2007 M2 COMMUNICATIONS LTD http://www.m2.com

The AR2417 chip, which is claimed to be the most highly-integrated, cost-effective 802.11g solution for home gateways, has been unveiled by Atheros Communications Inc (Nasdaq:ATHR), a developer of advanced wireless solutions, as part of its AR5007 family.

Atheros said the AR2417 chip, a Wi-Fi add-on for existing DSL and xDSL gateway products, enhances its AR5005G solution, with increased integration and WLAN performance, and provides a single-chip solution for mini-PCI and cardbus designs. The chip integrates the media access controller, baseband processor and 2.4GHz radio and is expected to advance the adoption of low-cost WLAN in home deployments.

The AR2417 also integrates the low noise amplifier (LNA) and power amplifier (PA) onto the digital CMOS system-on-chip and reduces the printed circuit board (PCB) cost by 50% and RBOM component count by over 40% compared to the 4-layer design, Atheros claims.

The AR2417 supports the 802.11e QoS standard and includes a development kit with a 2-layer mini-PCI design for WLAN gateway applications and a second development kit with a 2-layer, single-side cardbus for aftermarket wireless PC cards. It supports WPA/WPA2 Personal security, EAP 802.1x authentication and an AES encryption engine, and offers support for Windows XP, 2000 and Vista for cardbus clients and Linux for APs.

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