A Gigevolution: Thunderbolt, WiGig, 802.11ac

"I feel the need...the need for speed!" Top Gun, 1986

In a world of cloud computing and video viewing, a trio of new technologies is just what the doctor ordered for mobile devices, ultrabooks, and PCs. CES 2012 underlined the advance of higher speed technologies to move data at gigabit speeds from local storage to networked devices. It's the first part of a larger gig-evolution where people will be able to backup off-site as easily as they can instantly download movies today.

Our tour begins at the Apple and Intel collaboration called Thunderbolt, a high-speed display and data interface able to blast away at 10 Gbps bidirectional speeds. In practical terms, you can sync 64GB of data to a portable device in about a minute through Thunderbolt.   Apple was the first to introduce the technology in its Macs and a number of companies demonstrated both SSD and high-speed multi-TB RAID drives.  Acer and Lenovo have demonstrated laptop/ultrabooks with Thunderbolt, and Asus has announced plans to ship product with the high-speed standard; Apple has had the technology available on its high-end laptops for a while.

Thunderbolt, however, requires a two to three meter (max) cable. What if you want to go farther or just don't like wires? Enter WiGig, a wireless standard using 60 GHz and coming to devices mid-year.  

Wilocity was conducting live and jaw-dropping demos of its WiGig implementation in a suite over at the Las Vegas Hotel (formerly the Las Vegas Hilton). You may be familiar with WiGig from an initial "spin" where it was being touted as an in-room home theatre solution where you could blast away 1080p movies out of a server to the TV, but its combination of low-power usage, high-speed, and signal-processing intelligence make it the perfect drop between any storage device and any computing device - hard drive, SSD, desktop, tablet, ultrabook.

I was convinced when I saw a 1080p movie transferred from a battery-powered SSD "box" to a tablet in around three minutes – a move that would have taken over an hour over 802.11n. Wilocity has worked with Qualcomm Atheros to design a drop-in solution featuring a 2.4/5GHz on one side of an existing board with a WiGig chip on the back. Antenna size for the 60 GHz radio is smaller and thinner than one of those anti-theft strips you find stuck in a newly purchased hardcover book, so you can easily drop it into a tablet, ultrabook, whatever.

Due to the frequency it works in, WiGig is an in-room solution; 60 GHz won't penetrate plasterboard or still. But it is a very smart in-room solution; you don't need direct line-of-sight between devices. Instead, it will bounce signals and beamform using the 25 antennas crammed into its' little strip antenna to make a connection with other devices.

To go beyond the room, you need to 802.11ac – what the Broadcom marketing wonks have unfortunately dubbed "5G WiFi." The 802.11ac is still a standard in the making; if you are having flashbacks about pre-802.11n at this point, I'm with you. Working exclusively in the 5 GHz range, Broadcom says it will be able to do anywhere between 433 Mbps (max PHY rate) with one spatial stream all the way up to 1.3 Gbps with three spatial streams available. If you want more speed, you need more antennas connected to your device.   Range for 802.11ac is defined as "whole home" without being overly specific. Hardware expected to ship on a "pre" level sometime this year.

There are three interesting takeaways from the 2012 gig-evolution. First, the shift to Gigabit level data speeds in wireless and wired devices fits nicely with the larger trending move into a hosted and client-server world where our big/important things are kept and backed up in the cloud.   Secondly, higher home hardware speeds are likely to push higher consumer network speeds down the road as people want to backup and download data faster.   Verizon has done a 10 GigE mumble-PON demo, but currently only sells 150 Mbps because people (supposedly) don't want anything faster. Finally, when you start moving data at GigE speeds, solid-state storage becomes a lot more important for the best response time.

Want to learn more about 4G wireless technologies? Then be sure to attend the 4GWE Conference, collocated with TMC’s ITEXPO East 2012taking place Jan. 31-Feb. 3 2012, in Miami, FL. Co-sponsored by TMC Partner Crossfire Media the 4GWE Conference provides unmatched networking opportunities and a robust conference program representing the wireless ecosystem. The conference not only brings together the best and brightest in the wireless industry, it actually spans the communications and technology industry. For more information on registering for the 4GWE Conference click here.

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