Quantenna said it is sampling 10 Gigabit Wi-Fi chipsets.
Quantenna appears to be making good on its intention to have an 8×8 MU-MIMO capable chipset ready this year.
Its True 8×8 QSR10G Wi-Fi platform is aimed at home wireless access points and residential gateways. The company is pitching the devices as "10G Wave 3", the latter referring to the generation of 802.11ac technology.
Quantenna 10G Wi-Fi
The QSR10G Wave 3 product family includes four chipsets supporting different maximum PHY rates, streams and band support.
| Device | Peak PHY Rate (Gbps) | Bands | Streams |
|---|---|---|---|
| QSR10GU | 10 | Simultaneous 2.4 & 5 GHz | 12 |
| QSR10GA | 9 | Simultaneous 2.4 & 5 GHz | 10 |
| QSR10PA | 7 | Simultaneous 2.4 & 5 GHz | 8 |
| QSR10G5 | 8.6 | 5 GHz only | 8 |
Table 1: Quantenna QSR10G family
The QSR10G is said to support a "unique adaptive MIMO architecture" with support for up to four simultaneous MU-MIMO devices. Other features include 160 MHz 5 GHz channels, 1024 QAM support for both 2.4 and 5 GHz and support for PCIe Gen3/Gen2, RXAUI, RGMII and other bus types.
As usual, there is some spec gamesmanship afoot. A close reading of Quantenna’s release shows its 12 stream claim is from combining 8 stream operation in 5 GHz and 4 stream in 2.4 GHz.
Quantenna has yet to deliver working MU-MIMO code to enable MU-MIMO in the first-generation 4×4 "MU-MIMO ready" routers using its QSR1000 4×4 device. In contrast, routers using Qualcomm Atheros 4×4 chipsets have had working MU-MIMO at first ship. And Broadcom-based MU-MIMO routers are expected to also appear soon. So will consumer router manufacturers take another chance on Quantenna?
In related announcements, Cavium said its OCTEON III CN7130 processor is supporting the QSR10G and Freescale touted its QorIQ LS1043A residential gateway reference design that includes a 10GbE copper WAN port.