New wireless chip promises to kick Wi-Fi's butt in data transmission

If you're waiting for the technology that will make Wi-Fi seem as quaint as a black-and-white TV, you'll be excited by the news from National Taiwan University, where a team of researchers have developed a wireless chip that can transmit data at up to 100 times the rate that Wi-Fi devices. Just how fast is that? At its maximum rate—5GBps—the chip can download a 4GB video file in about 10 seconds, compared to the two hours it would take over Wi-Fi.

Remarkably, the team also claims that the system-on-a-chip they've developed is just a tenth of the size of other wireless chips and could cost just a tenth of the amount to produce (eventually about $1). Of course, since this breakthrough hasn't yet left the lab, it's hard to dispute the researchers' claims. Nonetheless, according to the Taiwan News, research on a similar solution has been going on at IBM and Cal-Berkeley's labs, so these results aren't completely out of the blue.

As much as Wi-Fi is starting to be integrated into any and all products these days (as regular readers of this blog will already know), you could imagine how far-reaching the impact would be if this chip could be successfully manufactured with this performance, size, and cost. I guess the fitting name for it would be 5G.

Photo credit: Central News Agency (Taiwan)