Intersil ships volumes of four-chip Prism chipset

Edited by the Electronicstalk editorial team Mar 20, 2001

Prism/work, Intersil's new enterprise networking product business, has begun volume shipments of PRISM 2.5, its latest wireless chipset optimised for smaller form factor applications.

Prism/work, Intersil's new enterprise networking product business, has begun volume shipments of Prism 2.5, its latest wireless chipset optimised for smaller form factor applications.

These include embedded applications using mini-PCI cards and single-sided PCMCIA cards especially small handheld computing devices, laptop PCs, PDAs and next generation "Web Pad" Internet appliances.

Prism 2.5 is the most highly integrated WLAN chipset solution available.

It features the world's first combined baseband processor (BBP) and medium access controller (MAC) to reduce total chip count to just four ICs.

The new single-chip BBP/MAC also incorporates both PCMCIA and USB interfaces allowing OEMs to easily integrate 11Mbit/s IEEE 802.11 wireless capability into their next-generation USB-based wireless networking products for the office and home.

A version with a mini-PCI interface for embedded applications is also available.

The Prism/work solution includes ICs, software, firmware and a companion voltage-controlled oscillator.

It provides systems manufacturers with a highly integrated, full-featured solution for designing high data rate 802.11b-compliant wireless networking for fast and efficient transmission of data, video and VoIP services.

According to Intersil, "embedded" WLAN chip technology will accelerate the introduction of wireless LAN capability into ever-smaller computing devices, thanks to smaller designs using mini-PCI, Compact Flash and USB.

Most WLAN cards on the market today are relatively large PCMCIA cards (approx 2 x 5in) for use with laptops and other mobile computing products.

Embedded designs in mini-PCI, USB or Compact Flash are much smaller and are typically installed directly onto the motherboard during product assembly.

This reduces overall system size, requires no user installation, and is less prone to problems.

The higher integration also opens the door for designers to incorporate dual-mode networking capabilities with IEEE 802.11, Bluetooth, v.90 modems or Ethernet chipsets all on the same embedded WLAN card.