GainsSpan has been working to make its Wi-Fi offerings that much better every year and the company thinks it might have hit a homerun with an industry first single chip solution that combines two lower power wireless technologies. The GS2000 will work to combine both Wi-Fi (802.11b/g/n) and Zigbee (802.15.4) tech in a single device. This new Zigbee and Wi-Fi IP chip will allow people to increase the development and adoption of home-networked devices.
The GS2000 chip has a dual mode IPv4/IPv6 TCP/UDP networking stack, as well as other networking services. Because of this, the device allows for a complete networking solution for embedded MCU based applications. This also allows for better use when talking about the “Internet of things.”
Greg Winner, president and CEO of GainSpan talked about what his company’s special chip would be able to do. "While other wireless technologies compete in various applications, only Wi-Fi and ZigBee IP provide for and support IP addressing and methods, extending these proven Internet protocols directly to a device or sensor," Winner said.
"To truly deliver on the vision of the Internet of Things, range, power consumption, ease of deployment and network management are often more critical than other factors. The GS2000 combining both technologies is able to address line powered as well as battery operated applications cost effectively, which are both necessary to achieve that vision."
Perhaps the best news about this new chip is that it is affordable. This device will be able to use two different kinds of transmission wavelengths without having to switch from one to the other. This means that more and more devices will be able to work with this chip and that is just one of the ways that it will become more cost effective to the network.
Edited by
Brooke Neuman 
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