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    MediaTek combines 802.11ac Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 4.0 into a single chip, calls it the MT7650

    MediaTek combines 802.11ac Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 4.0 into a single chip, calls it the MT7650

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    MediaTek has announced its latest semiconductor design, the MT7650, which combines the new 802.11ac standard with BlueTooth 4.0 low power into one chip.

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    MediaTek Chip
    MediaTek Chip

    MediaTek has announced its new MT7650 chip design, which offers 802.11ac wireless connectivity combined with Bluetooth 4.0 Low Energy, providing an alternative for manufacturers to the similar solutions that Qualcomm announced last month. 802.11ac is poised to take over from the current 802.11n Wi-Fi standard, offering far faster transfer speeds than current wireless networks. This new chip's no slouch — MediaTek says that its new design is capable of transferring data at up to 433Mbps on both 2.4GHz and 5GHz 802.11ac networks — though that doesn't match up to the 1.3Gbps transfers offered by Qualcomm's 3-stream designs.

    MediaTek might have one advantage here, though. The MT7650 uses a proprietary algorithm that reduces interference between the Wi-Fi and Bluetooth radios, allowing them to share the same antenna and thereby lowering cost. The chip supports Windows 7, Windows 8, and Linux, though there's currently no word on when it will ship or which manufacturers are likely to pick it up.