wi-fi
wi-fi

Intel's New Power-Saving Chip

Called Dynamic Power Coordination, or DPC, the technology is a way to conserve energy in dual-core chips, stated Mooly Eden, vice president of the Mobility Group at Intel. When workloads are light, DPC will slow down one processor core to extend battery life. DPC will be integrated into Yonah, Intel’s first dual-core chip for notebooks, which will arrive in late 2005 or early 2006. Eden will demonstrate DPC at the Intel Developer Forum taking place in Japan April 7 and 8.

Wireless Web Access up in 2004

Japan and the advancing markets saw the largest year-on-year growth among adults who used the Internet via a wireless connection. However, wireless population growth was largely driven by the two biggest Internet markets, the U.S. and Japan, fuelling 69 percent of user increase and adding an estimated 15 million and 11.6 million new wireless Internet users, respectively. Wireless Internet also gained some popularity in Western Europe, South Korea and Urban China.

SECA Powerline Alliance

Three Japanese consumer electronics giants have created a new technology to transport Internet and media signals around the home via the electricity network, Panasonic said on Thursday. Sony, Mitsubishi and Matsushita-owned Panasonic have set up the SECA powerline alliance. They have developed a system to transfer 170 Megabits per second of data through the power lines of a home, Panasonic researcher Ingo Chmielewski told journalists at the electronics trade fair CeBIT.

Sharp's New SL-C1000 Zaurus

Last fall, Sharp released the SL-C3000, a Zaurus model with a built-in hard drive. Now they have announced a version of that device without the microdrive. It will not include Wi-Fi or Bluetooth, but the SL-C1000 will have an SD card slot and a CompactFlash Type II slot, allowing the use of wireless networking cards. Running Linux on a 416-MHz Intel XScale PXA270 processor with 64 MB of RAM, the SL-C1000 will go on sale in Japan on March 18.

Tokyo Citywide WiMAX Network

Two vendors, one American and the other Japanese, said they have plans to deploy a citywide WiMAX wireless broadband network in Tokyo. U.S. vendor Airspan and Japanese communications operator Yozan said they will start trials for the network in the second quarter of this year. They said that commercial rollout will begin in the fourth quarter, with a fuller-scale launch in December. Japanese telecom operator NTT said earlier in the week that it plans to deploy metro-scale Wi-Fi networks in a number of locations.

NetGear's 108-Mbps Wireless in Japan

NETGEAR announced their new line of MIMO G wireless products based on the True MIMO(TM) chipset from Airgo Networks. Available in Japan this month, the MIMO G Wireless Router (Model WGM124) and PC Card (Model WGM511) provide customers with the highest-performing wireless networking technology on the market with up to 8x the speed and coverage of standard 802.11g devices. “Whether in the home office, family room, or back yard, customers will enjoy a smooth, consistent connection,” said Naoki Hayashida, Japan Country Manager.