Linksys, the first to sell 100 million routers globally and a leader in networking solutions for the home and business, today announced the availability of the first MU-MIMO enabled Wireless AC router - the Linksys Max-Stream AC2600 MU-MIMO Gigabit Router (EA8500). The new Linksys router leverages the 802.11ac Wave 2 MU-MIMO (Multi-User, Multiple-Input, Multiple Output) technology, which helps ensure uninterrupted Wi-Fi connectivity to all the devices in the home and function as if multiple devices have their own dedicated router. With MU-MIMO, the whole household can play video games, listen to music, check email, shop, stream movies, and more - all at the same time.

The Linksys EA8500 router incorporates Qualcomm MU | EFX MU-MIMO technology, which helps to provide up to 3x faster speeds compared to current Wi-Fi. The combined 2.53 Gbps Wi-Fi speeds (up to 1733 Mbps for 5 GHz and 800 Mbps for 2.4 GHz) help minimize buffering and enable faster downloads. A supercharged 1.4 GHz dual-core CPU and four Gigabit ports offer blazing-fast speeds perfect for heavy-bandwidth wired gaming. Users can attach devices to the USB 3.0 port and a combo USB 2.0/eSATA port for uninterrupted personal cloud content streaming or to share data across their network. The four removable external antennas are adjustable for maximum coverage, while beamforming technology concentrates the Wi-Fi signal to each device for stronger, better performance and increased mobile speed and range.

TP-LINK, a global provider of consumer and SMB networking products, today announced the Archer C2600 and Archer C3200 Wi-Fi routers utilizing advanced technologies to help meet the heavy networking demands of today's homes and small businesses. The Archer C2600 is ideal for supporting a large number of wireless devices simultaneously, while the Archer C3200 delivers the highest combined Wi-Fi speeds with two 5GHz bands for an optimized entertainment experience when gaming online or streaming 4K videos.

"There is a limit on what a simple increase in bandwidth can do to improve the performance of Wi-Fi routers in the home," said Lewis Wu, executive vice president of TP-LINK U.S. "To continue improving the speed, reliability, and overall quality of our routers we are utilizing advanced technologies that allow them to serve connected devices with far greater efficiency."

TP-LINK today launched the 802.11a/n Wi-Fi compatible TP-LINK Pharos CPE510 outdoor wireless access point - a 5GHz 300Mbps 13dBi CPE (Customer Premises Equipment) - for point-to-point, point-to-multipoint and outdoor Wi-Fi coverage applications. Outdoor wireless access points can provide WLAN (Wireless Local Area Network) coverage over great distances to homes or cottages without cable/DSL services; campus and multiple buildings; point-to-point links between office buildings; and at remote job sites in industries such as oil and gas, mining, and construction.

The CPE510 will greatly appeal to Wireless Internet Service Providers (WISPs) for point-to-multipoint link communications, when extending coverage across a wide geographic area to customers. The new outdoor wireless access point also offers remote surveillance capabilities via an available second Ethernet port with software enabled PoE (Power over Ethernet) output for seamless IP camera connectivity. The CPE510 can operate in multiple modes: Wireless Access Point (AP), AP Client Router, AP Repeater, AP Router, Multi-Bridge, and AP Client Router WISPs.

ASrock has this week rolled out a new board equipped with Intel's Celeron J1900 (Bay Trail-D) quad-core SoC, a thin Mini-ITX model named Q1900TM-ITX. This mini PC/all-in-one motherboard has a fanless design and features two DDR3/DDR3L memory slots (for up to 16 GB of RAM), dual SATA 3.0 Gbps ports, one PCIe x1 and one mini PCIe slot, Qualcomm Atheros Gigabit Ethernet, one USB 3.0 and three USB 2.0 ports, one LVDS connector, and D-Sub and HDMI video outputs.

ASRock's Q1900TM-ITX can be found on sale for as low as €111.55.

DisplayLink, the leading provider of USB Graphics technology, today demonstrated support for 4K Ultra HD displays over both USB and WiGig connections at the Intel Developer Forum (IDF 13) at the Moscone Center, San Francisco. DisplayLink's 4K demo comes as 4K monitors and televisions are rapidly becoming available from industry leaders such as Samsung, LG, and ASUS. Using DisplayLink based USB adaptors, users can easily add 4K monitors to PC or Macs that don't have native 4K outputs. Further, multiple 4K monitors can be supported. This vastly increases the available attachable market for 4K monitors.

"Many thought 4K over USB wouldn't be achievable" said John Cummins, VP Sales and Marketing at DisplayLink, "So we pushed the bar further, enabling Ultra HD 4K for both wired and wireless connections. DisplayLink's latest chipset enables users to easily add 4K displays with a single USB adapter or via new wireless technologies such as WiGig (80.211ad). The resolution increase is staggering when used in a business setting for data graphing, spreadsheets, and finance. Upcoming 4K chips will be completely backward compatible with the DisplayLink installed base, enabling business users to easily expand their notebook, tablet, or existing DisplayLink enabled solution to 4K Ultra HD."

MSI, the world-leading manufacturer of graphics cards and motherboards, is happy to announce an extensive partnership with Qualcomm Atheros to implement Killer Networking technology in not only MSI's gaming notebooks, but also a new lineup of MSI gaming motherboards. With this implementation gamers and professionals alike can now utilize Killer technology to enhance their gaming and video streaming experience. By adding a healthy dose of intelligence to the networking part of MSI motherboards a lot of work is taken out of the hands of the users who can focus better at the task at hand, be it fragging competitors or professional network services.

Qualcomm Incorporated today announced that its subsidiary, Qualcomm Atheros, Inc., introduced StreamBoost technology for Wi-Fi routers and gateways. By intelligently managing a home's broadband connection, Qualcomm StreamBoost gives each device and each application the bandwidth it needs to ensure the best possible experiences in the connected home.

In conjunction with this introduction, Alienware and D-Link Systems, Inc. will be demonstrating StreamBoost routers based on Qualcomm VIVE 802.11ac technology for Gigabit-class Wi-Fi at International CES. StreamBoost routers will be available to consumers this spring at e-commerce and retail outlets in North America, Europe and Asia.

Qualcomm Atheros, Inc., a subsidiary of Qualcomm Technologies, Inc. (QTI), today announced the availability of its Killer DoubleShot offering on high performance gaming laptops from MSI Computer. Killer DoubleShot encompasses a melding of Killer's Ethernet and wireless networking solutions that features a newly designed unified user interface for streamlined user control. Designed to provide the lowest-latency, highest-performance Wi-Fi and Ethernet connections for online games, video and voice, the MSI GT70 is the first product equipped with Killer Technology's award-winning Wi-Fi and Ethernet hardware with unified Killer Network Manager software.

"The industry has come to know Killer technology as the choice solution to intelligently manage network traffic and optimize a user's online experience," said Michael Cubbage, director of business development for the networking business unit of Qualcomm Atheros. "With MSI's integration of our new Killer DoubleShot Wi-Fi and Ethernet solution, we are able to offer laptop gamers the chance to have the highest-performance connection to their online games, regardless of what type of Internet connection they use."

NETGEAR, Inc., a global networking company that delivers innovative products to consumers, businesses and service providers, today announced the new NETGEAR Developer Program, a revolutionary, simple way for developers to create new apps to help customers get more out of the millions of NETGEAR devices purchased every month. In an industry first, NETGEAR has created a huge opportunity for developers to produce apps by leveraging the NETGEAR Smart Network architecture built into an increasing number of its consumer and small-business devices, including a selection of routers, gateways and network-attached storage (NAS) devices.

Developers simply register at the NETGEAR Smart Network website (here), where they can access all the Java-based building blocks they need to create apps. NETGEAR makes it easy for developers to share or sell their apps through the NETGEAR genie+ marketplace. For the first time, home and small business customers can remotely download apps directly to their connected NETGEAR devices just as they would to a smartphone or tablet - to expand functionality. No other network vendor offers an app development platform or app store for these types of devices.

Qualcomm Atheros Inc., the networking and connectivity subsidiary of Qualcomm Incorporated, today at COMPUTEX TAIPEI demonstrated the industry's first solutions that integrate 802.11ac Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 4.0 connectivity for tablets and notebook computers. Qualcomm Atheros' 1-, 2- and 3-stream solutions are part of the company's end-to-end 802.11ac ecosystem, which is driving Gigabit-class wireless connectivity in mobile, computing, consumer electronics and networking products.

As consumers use tablets and notebooks to create, download and stream media files over wireless networks, Qualcomm Atheros' 802.11ac solutions are designed to deliver connectivity with the speed and reliability essential to today's mobile computing environments. Qualcomm Atheros' 802.11ac offers more than three times the Wi-Fi performance of 802.11n per stream and is capable of delivering up to 1.3 Gbps PHY rates with the company's 3-stream solutions. The new solutions also feature Bluetooth 4.0 with low-power mode for connecting mobile computers to wireless keyboards, headsets, speakers, printers and other peripherals while also conserving battery power.

Qualcomm Atheros Inc., the networking and connectivity subsidiary of Qualcomm Incorporated, today announced that Alienware will be the first to launch the Killer Wireless-N 1202 high-performance Wi-Fi module with Bluetooth on the Alienware line of high-performance gaming laptop computers. The high-performance 2x2 802.11n MIMO Wi-Fi module with Bluetooth is designed to provide improved performance and advanced control by automatically classifying and prioritizing gaming, video and audio network data to provide a superior, uninterrupted online entertainment experience.

"Alienware continues to be the leader in performance laptops and we appreciate that its customers are used to getting the best gaming experience possible," said Mike Cubbage, director of business development, networking business unit, Qualcomm Atheros. "The Killer Wireless-N 1202 will continue the tradition of delivering a superior gaming and real-time communication experience for Alienware laptop users by providing the best in online application performance, intelligence and control to ensure that critical online applications get the bandwidth and priority they need, when they need it."

Worldwide semiconductor revenues increased more than 3.7% year over year to $301 billion in 2011, according to the latest version of the International Data Corporation (IDC) Worldwide Semiconductor Applications Forecaster (SAF). The industry weathered the macroeconomic uncertainties in the U.S and Europe, the earthquake and tsunami in Japan, China's slow down in the second half of the year, and floods in Thailand. Meanwhile, device applications, such as smartphones, media tablets and e-readers, automotive infotainment, notebook PCs, datacenter servers, and wireless and wired communication infrastructure drove robust consumption of semiconductors.

IDC's SAF tracks more than 100 semiconductor companies. Over 40 of these companies experienced year-over-year revenue growth greater than 5%, while about the same number of companies saw their revenue decline by more than 5%.

Hackintosh (running Apple OS X on a non-Apple PC) interest group tonymacx86 discovered that GIGABYTE's 3D UEFI BIOS is most trouble-free with hackintoshing, leaving you with no risky BIOS modding to do. The BIOS tells OS X about what the hardware environment is like. If the OS doesn't have an environment that it's designed for, it crashes with a kernel panic.

GIGABYTE 3D UEFI BIOS, tonymacx86 reports, as tested on a GA-Z77-DS3H, already has power-management descriptors, so you don't have to add any power-management DSDT tables for sleep/wake or power-management functions. Most other onboard devices on the Z77-DS3H run seamlessly with Apple's native drivers. The Atheros gigabit Ethernet controller works with MultiBeast driver, Realtek ALC887 HDA codec works with ALC8xxHDA/AppleHDA, and Intel HD 3000 graphics embedded into the Core i5-2500K (used in the testing) works just fine.

Killer Technology (formerly Bigfoot Networks, before its Qualcomm buyout), launched two new network interface solutions aimed at gaming and enthusiast PCs, these include the Killer Wireless-N 1202, and Killer E2200 gigabit Ethernet, which are successors of Killer Wireless-N 1102/1103 and Killer E2100, respectively. Built in the mPCIe card form-factor, the Killer Wireless-N E1202 has quite a bit of Atheros DNA loaded into it (another subsidiary of Qualcomm), apart from Wireless-N, the E1202 also includes a Bluetooth controller. The Killer E2200 high-performance gigabit Ethernet controller will be available as both PCIe add-on card and embedded form (for motherboard manufacturers), it could be a refined, performance-optimized successor of the Killer E2100. Killer's USP is high performance using advanced offload of the network stack to a native application processor, resulting in lower pings that could help in multiplayer gaming. Both solutions will be available soon.

Here are the Z77X-UD5H and Z77X-UD3H pictured up-close. The two form Gigabyte's upper-mid range and mid range offerings based on the Intel Z77 chipset, supporting socket LGA1155 "Ivy Bridge" and "Sandy Bridge" Core processors. The Z77X-UD5H is an extremely feature-rich offering, in some aspects a more complete package than even the G1.Sniper 3. It provides a 15-phase CPU and 2-phase memory VRM. Expansion slots on this board include two PCI-Express 3.0 x16 (x16/NC or x8/x8), one PCI-Express 2.0 x16 (electrical x4), three PCIe 2.0 x1, and one legacy PCI.

Qualcomm Atheros Inc., the networking and connectivity subsidiary of Qualcomm Incorporated (NASDAQ: QCOM), announced today the launch of its 802.11ac Wi-Fi ecosystem. With the growing number of devices and bandwidth-intensive multimedia applications placing greater demands on wireless networks, 802.11ac-the newest chapter in the Wi-Fi technology evolution-expands performance and coverage to enable HD video-grade connectivity across increasingly crowded networks. Qualcomm's portfolio of 802.11ac products target mobile, home and office networking, including smartphones, tablets, PCs, laptops, televisions, home routers, gateways and enterprise access points. Qualcomm is introducing its multi-channel portfolio to enable end-to-end 802.11ac performance benefits to speed adoption of the new Gigabit-capable Wi-Fi networking technology.

"Qualcomm Atheros is enabling a client-to-infrastructure 802.11ac ecosystem by combining its Wi-Fi expertise across virtually all segments with Qualcomm's position in mobile channels," said Craig Barratt, president, Qualcomm Atheros. "By enabling client devices, such as smartphones, tablets and notebooks, with easy migration from 802.11n to 802.11ac, Qualcomm Atheros is paving the way for rapid adoption of products based on the new Wi-Fi standard. This should provide for a smooth, full-scale transition to Gigabit-capable Wi-Fi networking within the next two years."