Atheros has two new chipsets aimed at bringing down the cost of new N routers.
According to Atheros, the new Align AR933x and XSPAN AR934x system-on-chip (SoC) "highly integrated" chipsets "include all of the major components required to build 1-stream or 2-stream 802.11n routers, respectively.
The AR934x SoC can also be paired with Atheros’ AR9380/81 3-stream 802.11n chipset, to make the "most cost-effective 2-chip solution for simultaneous dual-band 3×3 routers". Both the AR933X and AR934X are sampling now. Since TRENDnet’s just-announced TEW-692GR doesn’t ship until April and TP-Link’s TL-WR2843ND doesn’t ship until May, both could have this new Atheros silicon inside.
Now if we can just get some more three-stream adapters for those who want to try to see what three-stream "450 Mbps" N can do for them.