Broadcom introduces second generation Wi-Fi 7 chips for routers and smartphones

Broadcom has announced its second generation of Wi-Fi 7 chips. These chips are intended for routers, access points and smartphones, among other things. The company is currently delivering samples to customers. Broadcom is not saying when the chips will appear in consumer products.

Broadcom comes with three new Wi-Fi 7 chips. The manufacturer shows, among other things, a BCM6765 and BCM47722, which are intended for home and enterprise WiFi routers and access points respectively. Both chips have a quad-core processor based on the Arm instruction set architecture. The chips support 2×2 antennas and can simultaneously use the 2.4, 5 and 6GHz bands with channel bandwidths up to 320MHz. The BCM47722 enterprise variant also supports Thread, Zigbee, Bluetooth Low-Energy and Bluetooth 5.4.

The manufacturer also shows a BCM4390. This chipset combines Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 5.4 and is intended for use in smartphones and tablets. The chip supports two Wi-Fi 7 streams with channel bandwidths of up to 160MHz, the manufacturer says. The dual-band SoC also supports simultaneous use of the 2.4GHz band and the 5 or 6GHz frequency bands.

The Wi-Fi 7 standard, also known as 802.11be, is currently being developed by the IEEE organization. This WiFi version builds on Wi-Fi 6E with support for the 6GHz band, but this time also supports 320MHz channels and 4kqam for higher throughput speeds. Wi-Fi 7 also supports up to sixteen mu-mimo streams, twice as many as Wi-Fi 6. The Wi-Fi 7 standard is not yet fully finalized. The final specifications are expected early next year.