Marvell unveils 'first' WLAN plus Bluetooth solution

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Marvell has announced the 88W8688, said to be world's first 90nm CMOS, WLAN plus Bluetooth single-chip solution targeting cellular handsets, battery-powered media players, portable gaming consoles, smartphones, PDAs and ultralow-power computing platforms. Marvell said this WLAN plus Bluetooth solution offers leading-edge integration, extensive host offload capability and advanced coexistence and power save modes—with a footprint of less than 80mm3. The device promises to extend the battery life of consumer electronics devices, enabling a new level of mobile consumer broadband experience.
"The Marvell 88W8688 represents five years of interaction with our customers and partners. We are very pleased to deliver a new, fully customizable, software-compatible platform that will allow them to launch products that are varied in scope and application ranging from gaming to cameras to smartphones up to emerging converged products," said Dr. Paramesh Gopi, VP and general manager of the embedded and emerging business unit, communications and consumer business group at Marvell. "The Marvell 88W8688 marks our fourth generation complimentary wireless solution and offers an extremely competitive cost structure, thereby enabling mass adoption of both technologies into all tiers of consumer electronics."
Marvell said the new device builds on the company's embedded Layer 2 (MAC) and Layer 3 software that has powered numerous consumer wireless platforms. The integration of Bluetooth 2.0 EDR—which is firmware upgradeable to Bluetooth 2.1 features—and WLAN subsystems on a single die allows fully optimized simultaneous dual radio operation and cooperative coexistence, said the company.
The 88W8688 is said to be the first device to deliver a fully integrated Bluetooth 2.0 EDR baseband/RF and Marvell's 802.11a/b/g WLAN technology for next-generation consumer electronic devices. The device enables a converged WLAN plus Bluetooth subsystem implementation that is up to 50 percent smaller than discrete implementations. The integrated multiprotocol security engine includes hardware acceleration for UMA, IMS and other network access methods requiring extensible end-to-end security. The device also incorporates voice and audio codecs that can be used in a wide variety of media applications and platforms.
The solution supports all Bluetooth profiles with an industry standard HCI interface. It runs Bluetooth profiles natively, offloading the host CPU. The device can be connected to a host processor using either a unified host interface or independent host interfaces for WLAN and Bluetooth connections.
The Marvell 88W8688 is currently being sampled to key, tier-one OEM partners. To shorten design cycles and accelerate time-to-market, Marvell is providing development kits with complete hardware reference designs, development boards and a complete suite of software.