Atheros, Marvell weigh in on draft 11n

As expected, it didn’t take long for wireless chipmakers Atheros and Marvell to issue their own announcements to ride the press wave from yesterday’s IEEE task group acceptance of the first 802.11n draft.

Marvell this morning said its 88W836X family, which was first announced in October 2005, "complies 100% with the IEEE 802.11n draft specification". The announcement went on to say that "key customers" will be able to launch products based on the chipset in "Q106". It was not clear, however, whether these launches would be end-user retail products, or OEM / ODM designs.

Atheros took a more conservative approach in its announcement, which did not claim draft 11n compliance for the chipset that it privately demonstrated earlier this month at the Consumer Electronics Show. Instead Atheros simply "announced support for the approved IEEE 802.11n draft" and patted itself on the back for helping bring about this happy event, in its role as a founding member of the Enhanced Wireless Consortium (EWC).

One group not heard from yet is the Enhanced Wireless Consortium (EWC) itself. Now that its work is done, it would make sense for the group to disband. But at least so far, the EWC still appears to be in business.