Marvell and Wilocity announce partnership to produce 60GHz gigabit Wi-Fi chips

We’re just starting to see 802.11ac routers (which offer gigabit wireless performance) roll out, but Marvell’s already looking towards the next phase of Wi-Fi evolution — the company just announced a partnership with Wilocity that will bring tri-band 802.11ad chips to the market. Much like 802.11ac, this new solution offers gigabit speeds but also uses the 60GHz spectrum in addition to the standard 2.4GHz and 5GHz bands used by current Wi-Fi routers — but without chips for OEMs to put in their products, 802.11ad will have a hard time taking off.

According to Ars Technica, the fruits of this partnership will first be released in 2013, with chips available for the usual products like phones, tablets, and ultrabooks — but there’s also plans to get this technology into residential gateways (like routers and cable / DSL modems) and media center devices. However, initially these chips won’t support 802.11ac as well, a bit of fragmentation that might make it a bit harder for this protocol to catch on. That said, eventual chips will support 802.11 n, ac, and ad, making for easy compatibility with legacy devices as well as more cutting-edge products. This is definitely a future-looking initiative — Wilocity VP of Marketing Mark Grodzinsky told Ars that he doesn’t expect to see mass consumer adoption of the 60GHz spectrum until 2014.