broadcom on SWiK

WifiDocs/WPAHowTo - Community Ubuntu Documentation

Sat, 06 Sep 2008 04:00:35 -0700

b43 - Linux Wireless

Wed, 03 Sep 2008 03:56:07 -0700

WifiDocs/Driver/bcm43xx/Feisty_No-Fluff - Community Ubuntu Documentation

Thu, 28 Aug 2008 18:03:36 -0700

VCs Hope to See Wi-Fi Everywhere

Fri, 15 Aug 2008 07:06:09 -0700

Many people are familiar with the coffee shop’s Wi-Fi, while others even know how to set up a simple home network. Pretty much everyone, however, knows that Wi-Fi is what makes it all possible. That ubiquity is what many venture firms are counting on as they invest in a group of startups putting Wi-Fi into cameras, televisions and even keyboards and mice.

The number of Wi-Fi chips sold is expected to top 1 billion this year, up from more than 200 million sold in 2006, according to data from ABI Research. Beyond computers, WiFi-enabled televisions, set-top boxes and cars are entering the market. That’s good news for those backing the standard, but it could pose a problem for the multiple startups betting on different wireless standards for connecting computers to peripherals, transmitting wireless video and managing home-automation networks.

Carl Showalter, founding general partner with Opus Capital, says the current and next-generation versions of Wi-Fi have the bandwidth to offer video and can do a variety of things at lower power; energy use and wireless bandwidth have been the most common stumbling blocks to using the technology in more applications. For Opus, Wi-Fi’s primacy in the market has translated into investments in Eye-Fi, which announced an $11 million Series B round this month for a card that WiFi-enables a digital camera, and in GainSpan, which raised $20 million at the end of 2007 for its ultra-low-powered Wi-Fi chipset, which could be used in sensor networks and home automation.

So where in the home might Wi-Fi work? First, it’s good to recall that Wi-Fi currently allows us to transmit a lot of data, really quickly, over distances of about 120 feet. In each generation of the technology standard, the amount of data that can be transmitted has expanded, essentially enabling the networks to carry more information, faster. Some companies are now working on ways to use the proposed 802.11n next-generation Wi-Fi standard, set by the IEEE, to transfer high-definition video to televisions.

Wi-Fi started out in the home office, linking computers to broadband connections, then to each other without cables. It could soon replace technologies such as Bluetooth or proprietary lasers in wireless keyboards and mice, thanks to a new project at Intel called Cliffside. Researchers on the project are developing technology to add short-range transmission to Wi-Fi’s capabilities. In June, Ozmo Devices came out of stealth mode with $12.5 million in funding from Intel Capital, Tallwood Venture Capital and Granite Ventures with plans to use Cliffside technology in developing a line of WiFi-enabled keyboards and mice. Products should be available later this year.

The office conquered, Wi-Fi is now making a beeline for the living room with attempts to deliver high-definition video to the television from set-top boxes, PCs or DVD players. Samsung and Philips already offer Wi-Fi chips in televisions for standard-definition content. In late July, Cisco (which has a pretty hefty stake in Wi-Fi with its Linksys-brand routers) led a $16 million round for Celeno Communications, a startup trying to make WiFi-based home entertainment networks a reality. It’s worth noting that several other technical standards are trying to win out when it comes to replacing the wires associated with televisions and their accoutrements. Those include Ultra-wideband, Wireless HD and the newly formed WHDI Special Interest Group.

Eric Zimits, a managing director with Granite Ventures, says the market for cable replacement between the TV and DVD player might end up using a specialized standard developed by the consumer electronics device makers, but he also says Wi-Fi provides more value by allowing content to move between more devices around the home. Standards such as Ultra-wideband and Wireless HD only travel distances of a few feet, making it impossible to use them to send a movie playing on the DVD player to a TV elsewhere in the home. In contrast, standards such as Wi-Fi or WHDI would make it possible to have just one set-top box that could wirelessly transmit content to all home screens.

The final potential home networking coup for Wi-Fi would be in the home-automation market, where emerging standards such as Zigbee and Z-wave are trying to succeed. As Wi-Fi sheds its power-sucking problems, it could also wirelessly control battery-powered thermostats, surveillance cameras and other sensors. As your home fills up with gadgets running on the Wi-Fi network, venture firms will need to look for startups that can set bandwidth priorities among devices so that your television signal doesn’t break up when your thermostat kicks on.

This was originally published on BusinessWeek.com

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HOW TO: Configure wireless cards with Broadcom chipsets - Ubuntu Forums

Fri, 08 Aug 2008 22:06:44 -0700

[ubuntu] Howto: Getting your Broadcom 43xx wireless Card working in Hardy (step by step) - Ubuntu Forums

Fri, 08 Aug 2008 10:07:05 -0700

WifiDocs/Device/Broadcom_BCM4311_rev_01_(ndiswrapper) - Community Ubuntu Documentation

Thu, 07 Aug 2008 13:10:59 -0700

More Radios, Fewer Chips: Why Wireless Integration is Hot

Mon, 21 Jul 2008 21:55:45 -0700

Without a radio, your cell phone is a small computer that can’t show web pages, check email or even make phone calls. In a sense it’s BrickBreaker playing brick. While it may come as a surprise to learn that it’s radios that do the heavy lifting to keep us connected to GPS satellites, cellular networks, nearby Wi-Fi and in some cases network television, so it is with laptops as well, especially those aiming to be Netbooks or cloud PCs.

In fact there are too many radios, especially on high-end devices. And it’s only going to get worse in coming years as 4G networks using LTE or WiMAX proliferate. Sure WiMAX will begin as a data card inserted into a laptop much like my beloved 3G modem, but in time it will find itself in handheld devices including mobile phones (or so vendors tell me). Meanwhile current 3G and 2G networks will still have to be supported because carriers roll out new networks slowly. Add in radios for other wireless devices, and problems start to emerge.

That’s why chip vendors, from established players like Broadcom and NXP to startups like Wavesat and Altair, are hoping to put multiple radios onto one chip. And many of them are turning to software to do it. NXP, for example, has created a software-defined modem that can toggle among LTE, HSPA, UMTS, EDGE, GPRS and GSM networks.

Carsten Schimanke, marketing manager for business line cellular systems with NXP, says that company’s decision to build multiple modems onto one chip was an attempt to do three things: to make it easier for carriers to support old and new networks; to make it possible for a phone to operate on multiple networks around the world; and to make it easier for handset makers to use one type of network for certain applications, such as offloading voice onto a 2G network while data goes over a faster 3.5G network.

Outside of the cell phone market, there’s an emerging class of Internet-connected devices, such as the Dash Express and the Kindle from Amazon, that also can take advantage of multiple radios on a chip. Raj Singh, CEO and president of Wavesat, a startup company pushing a chip that combines Wi-Fi and WiMAX (and next year will add LTE), points out that these devices need connectivity everywhere in order for them to work. For example in places where a cell network is unavailable but a Wi-Fi network is, such as inside an office building, an Internet-connected device could use that signal.

Obviously the world is moving to ubiquitous broadband with consumer-oriented products, but once the radios are small enough and cheap enough to work anywhere, the different layers of wireless broadband networks could be used in everything — from getting more real-time traffic information to controlling a city’s watering schedule. No single network covers the world, a country or in many cases even a metropolitan area, so multiple radios on one chip might be the future of the chip industry.

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How-To: Wi-fi Broadcom bcm43xx en Ubuntu 8.04

Sun, 20 Jul 2008 10:46:42 -0700

Dell PE1950 NIC Firmware Workaround - MyWiki

Fri, 18 Jul 2008 04:13:28 -0700

Re: AW: [SPAM] Re: [Xen-users] network bridge problem - xen 3.1 - Xen Source

Fri, 18 Jul 2008 04:13:25 -0700

Usare ndiswrapper con le schede Broadcom BCM43xx su Ubuntu | [ TuxMind ]

Tue, 15 Jul 2008 01:47:30 -0700

Il driver bcm43xx che Ubuntu Gutsy propone come driver standard sui nuovi kernel non è ancora il massimo della stabilità. A dire il vero mi ha causato (ora

WifiDocs/Driver/bcm43xx/Feisty_No-Fluff - Community Ubuntu Documentation

Tue, 08 Jul 2008 17:47:03 -0700

sudo apt-get install ndiswrapper-utils-1.9

WifiDocs/Driver/bcm43xx/Feisty_No-Fluff - Community Ubuntu Documentation

Sun, 06 Jul 2008 18:46:10 -0700

NDISwrapper

Tue, 01 Jul 2008 12:46:15 -0700

BCM4312

installing broadcom on fedora core 9

Thu, 26 Jun 2008 21:55:57 -0700

Dossy's Blog: Linksys WMP54GS with Broadcom BCM4306 chipset under Linux 2.6 kernel

Mon, 23 Jun 2008 14:58:09 -0700

HOWTO: Get Ndiswrapper working in Hardy Beta - Ubuntu Forums

Thu, 19 Jun 2008 06:16:50 -0700

Kubuntu Networking

Thu, 19 Jun 2008 04:11:37 -0700

NET5416 Broadcom Driver for ndiswrapper

Wed, 18 Jun 2008 10:17:05 -0700

WifiDocs/Driver/bcm43xx/Feisty No-Fluff - Community Ubuntu Documentation

Wed, 18 Jun 2008 06:16:38 -0700

Solarflare Gets $26M for 10 GigE

Tue, 17 Jun 2008 06:20:31 -0700

Solarflare Communications, a chip startup in Irvine, Calif., has raised $26 million in a third round of funding. That brings the total the company’s raised to $126 million, which is a lot of money for a chip startup, even when you consider that the amount includes money raised by Level 5 Networks, which Solarflare acquired in April 2006. But the startup is hoping to use that money to attack a big problem in the data center at prices lower than the current technology offers. And if it succeeds, it’ll make computing faster and data center operations more flexible.

Like many other communications chip companies, Solarflare is working on a way to deliver 10 Gigabit Ethernet over copper, which is cheaper than delivering it via fiber. That enables the high-speed transport technology to move outside of the telecommunications networks, where companies such as Infinera are already pursuing 100 Gigabit Ethernet over fiber, and into mass adoption in the data center. Getting the technology into servers at a reasonable cost would create a market 10 times bigger than that of networking switches.

Others chasing mass adoption of 10 GigE on the server side are Intel and Broadcom, which like Solarflare, have controller chips. Broadcom and Solarflare also have PHY chips sampling with customers. Solarflare CEO Russell Stern plans to integrate the PHY with the controller chip in 2009, beating Broadcom to the market. He will use some of the funding for that purpose.

It’s likely Broadcom will end up attempting an integrated 10 GigE over copper chip as well. Broadcom doesn’t talk about its chips until they’re sampling, but the company did make a mint by cornering the market for integrated 1 Gigabit Ethernet chips for servers. However, success for Solarflare or Broadcom is probably three years out and depends on creating an energy-efficient chip at the 32 nanometer process node, according to Bob Wheeler, an analyst at The Linley Group.

Power consumption is a big challenge for these chips because unless it’s managed properly, they run too hot for servers and switches. And because technology doesn’t stand still in the data center, where virtualization and ever-increasing amounts of data are screaming for fatter pipes, hybrid forms of networking technologies that mix fiber or Fibre Channel with Ethernet are emerging to bridge the Gigabit gap between servers and networking equipment. Broadcom has several products that take advantage of such a hybrid networking environment. Startups such as Arastra and Woven Systems are also in that sector, and may see gains at the expense of a unified 10GigE world, which means Solarflare’s market opportunity could fragment if cheap, integrated 10 GigE takes too long.

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Solarflare Gets $26M for 10 GigE

Tue, 17 Jun 2008 05:20:51 -0700

If this story interests you then you should definitely check out our upcoming conference, Structure 08.

GUTSY - Broadcom Fix! [Archive] - Ubuntu Forums

Thu, 12 Jun 2008 08:16:05 -0700

Inside the 3G iPhone Money Machine

Tue, 10 Jun 2008 11:14:33 -0700

A lot has been written about the new 3G iPhone, its price and its impact. Now it’s time to shift attention to the most important question about this device: How much money will it make for Apple and its carrier partners?

While I don’t have any concrete financial projections, after reading some of Wall Street’s better analysis and taking clues from my own sources, I can offer some observations, which I’ve packaged in a Q&A format here:

Q: Why did Apple agree to a price subsidy?
A: Mass adoption. AT&T Mobility CEO Ralph de le Vega told the WSJ that it was all about getting the device to the mass market. “I think this is going to reach people that would otherwise never put $199 into a mobile device,” he said.

Q: Is subsidizing the handset going to cost AT&T and other carriers, like UK-based O2 (which is offering a free version with premium packages)?
A: Yes. In the WSJ interview, de la Vega says, “It’s going to impact earnings in 2008 and 2009 in a negative way, but will turn very profitable in the long term.”

Q: How much of a hit will the subsidy be to AT&T’s revenues/earnings?
A: The company says between 10 and 12 cents per share. According to Stifel Nicholas analyst Christopher King, this assumes that AT&T gets around 5.5 million incremental gross subscriber additions and a $200 subsidy per phone in both 2008 and in 2009.

Q: AT&T says the subsidy agreement with Apple will become accretive starting in 2010. Likely?
A: “For AT&T to meet its 2010 accretion goal, we believe the company will have to significantly accelerate its market share over the course of the next 12-24 months, among the most lucrative, post-pay subscriber base,” Stifel’s King writes in a notes to clients. “With the current levels of wireless penetration, we believe this implies AT&T must take subscribers from other carriers.”

I don’t see it happening either, especially since other handset makers will undoubtedly have some tricks up their sleeves with which to respond to the iPhone. The window of opportunity to sell a lot of phones for Apple is not unlimited.

Q: How many 3G iPhones does Apple hope to sell?
A: UBS Research estimates that the company is looking to push out between 10 million and 15 million 3G iPhones, based on their checks with vendors and parts suppliers. But even despite the subsidies, UBS analysts expect the final number could be closer to the lower end of that range. By way of comparison, Motorola sold about 11.3 million Razrs the first year — with subsidies, global distribution and multiple carriers in the very same regions. And that was one of the best-selling phones ever.

Q: How much money can Apple make selling 15 million units?
A: Assuming Apple gets $399 per device from the carriers (using Stifel’s math of a $200 subsidy) and most of the devices sold are the low-end model, Apple could make $5.98 billion. Of course, the numbers could be much higher if the high-end model becomes popular. So a reasonable guess would be between $6 billion and $7 billion. This will be a profitable enterprise for Apple, according to analysis of the iPhones parts by research firm Portelligent. The materials currently costs about $170, but that will soon go down to $100 as volumes scale.

Q: Will it impact Nokia and RIM?
A: I wouldn’t bet on it, despite the fact that in Nokia’s home market of Western Europe, Apple has not only addressed the lack of 3G connectivity but signed some huge distribution deals. At 15 million units, the iPhone will be marginal compared to Nokia’s offerings. Nor do I think that RIM will keel over, though I do think this puts the kibosh on RIM’s consumer play somewhat.

Q: Who loses?
A: My bet is on Motorola and Palm. Motorola is just a rudderless Titanic right now, and is especially vulnerable because it doesn’t have anything that it can use to compete with the likes of an iPhone. Similarly, Palm just doesn’t enjoy the cachet it used to, and the lower-priced iPhone makes the $99 Centro look a tad dowdy. Given how much AT&T has riding on the 3G iPhone, I am betting they will purposely promote this to the detriment of others.

Q: What about the iPhone ecosystem — who’s making what inside the 3G iPhone?
A: Infineon is making the baseband and RF transceiver, while Samsung is providing the application provider. Forward Concepts analyst Will Strauss says the GPS chip is based on Broadcom’s Global Locate technology (and not a Broadcom chip, as we had initially reported) that has been licensed by Infineon. Time to re-check that information again.

PS: I promise this is the last iPhone post till all the hoopla dies down.

The Rise & Fall of Broadcom Co-Founder Henry T. Nicholas III

Thu, 05 Jun 2008 22:54:31 -0700

Through the 1990s I watched Henry Nicholas turn Broadcom from a tiny start-up that got going making cable modem chips into a fearsome communications chip giant that has caused nightmare to most of its rivals including Intel Corp. The company 48-year-old Nicholas co-founded with Henry Samueli is doing spectacularly, having survived the turn of the century downturn by placing the right bets on market of tomorrow.

Unfortunately, Nicholas isn’t doing so well and today turned himself in to Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) for a variety of charges including spiking drinks of other executives with Ecstasy. (The details of the 21-count indictment of fraud, conspiracy and drug charges below the fold.) There is a whole slew of drug-related charges against the man who apparently led a colorful life in Southern California. The biggest one is that he was involved in fraudulently backdating stock options.What a comedown for a man who was the 258 richest American as recently as 2006. He had resigned from Broadcom in 2003 to attend to family matters. His wife filed for divorce in January 2003

I remember reading a profile of Nicholas back in 2000, which made me wonder if there was something seriously wrong with this guy. His assistant had to schedule sleep time for the man, who saw broadband was the single biggest tech trend of our life. “This is the single-largest revolution since the invention of the offset printing press,” he told Forbes. Rich Karlgaard of Forbes wrote about Nicholas:

He likes to call company meetings at 11 p.m., and you’d better be monitoring your Blackberry when the call comes. For sport, Nicholas cranks up his Lamborghini to 150mph along the roads near his Orange County, Calif. office. Nick’s only weakness is that he could drive himself to burnout.

There is a lot of information to digest about his legal problems. I am embedding the complaints against him in the document in case you want to check them out.

39657103 - Free Document Templates

39656932 - Free Document Templates

Broadcom Billionaire Henry Nicholas Indicted on Cocaine and Stock Back-Dating Charges

Thu, 05 Jun 2008 15:54:47 -0700

Practically everybody partied too hard during the 1990s. But Broadcom founder, and billionaire, Henry Nicholas, partied harder than most. Two indictments came down today on Nicholas. One for back-dating stock options that cost the company $2.2 billion in accounting charges last year, and the other for, well, partying too hard (the indictment mentions cocaine, Ecstacy, and prostitutes). The LA Times reports:

A federal grand jury has indicted Henry T. Nicholas III on fraud charges, according to documents unsealed today that also accuse the Orange County billionaire of supplying customers with prostitutes and drugs and slipping Ecstacy into the drinks of unwitting technology executives.

“Defendant Nicholas spiked the drinks of others with MDMA (ecstacy) without their knowledge, including . . . the drinks of technology executives and representatives who worked for Broadcom’s customers,” the indictment alleged without identifying the victims.

On a flight from Orange County to Las Vegas aboard a private plane, the government alleges, Nicholas used and distributed drugs, “causing marijuana smoke to enter the cockpit and requiring the pilot flying the plane to put on an oxygen mask.”

Nicholas, who stepped down as Broadcom’s chief executive in 2003, surrendered to the FBI this morning, said Pete Norell, a supervising FBI special agent in Santa Ana

Nicholas is alleged to have used death threats and payoffs to conceal his “unlawful conduct.” In June 2002, he reached a $1-million “settlement agreement” with an unnamed Broadcom employee who knew about his alleged illegal drug activity, according to the indictment.

It lists three properties described in previous Times reports about Nicholas’ alleged indulgences in drugs and prostitutes:

* An equestrian estate in Laguna Hills, where Nicholas had constructed a warren of tunnels and underground rooms, including one that contractors alleged was intended to become a secret “sex lair.”

* A warehouse-office complex in nearby Laguna Niguel, which contractors said was used for the same purposes and nicknamed “The Ponderosa.”

* A Newport Coast residence where Nicholas was trying to start a record company and where rock groups frequently visited.

Filling a plane with so much pot smoke that the pilot had to put on an oxygen mask? You couldn’t make this stuff up if you tried.

Back in 1999, when some of these deeds are alleged to have occurred, I wrote a story about Broadcom for Fortune. Nicholas certainly was intense. He once boasted to me that he held the record for going without sleep at the company to meet a project deadline: 78 hours. I dug up the quote of him explaining how he did that:

It’s not as bad as you might think. Once you find your circadian rhythm, you can put your head down for an hour and a half, enter into a deep REM cycle, and get most of the cognitive benefits of sleep. We learned this at the Air Force Academy.

A little Ecstacy helps too.

(Photo by Richard Hartog/LA Times).

broadcom1 - Upload a doc

broadcom2 - Upload a doc

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Welcome to the Wi-Fi Home

Tue, 03 Jun 2008 08:46:39 -0700

With its new line of Wi-Fi chipsets designed to plug into a variety of consumer electronics, Broadcom is banking on Wi-Fi beating out other wireless networks for multimedia streaming. It’s not alone in its love affair with Wi-Fi; fellow chip maker Intel, for example, is pushing the standard for personal area networks as well as local area networks. Armed with faster flavors of the technology, an established consumer familiarity as well as a ready source of power from outlets, why not use Wi-Fi for everything, from attaching your keyboard to your computer wirelessly to sending HD movies to your flat screen?

True AV geeks can argue about the merits of picture quality using Wi-Fi streaming, but as a Roku user I can tell you that when the only other choice for my husband and I is to huddle in our office chairs in front of Hulu after our daughter goes to bed, Wi-Fi streamed content via television is eminently watchable. Broadcom’s banking big on the market with its 65-nanometer production plans. By pushing its chips into dongles as well as TVs, DVD players, set-top boxes and speakers, it has the ability to hurt several startups pushing alternative wireless HD technologies such as ultra-wideband, WirelessHD; and the WHDI standard. High-definition purists will gravitate toward some of the HD standards, but the big market will be in Wi-Fi for a while.

The key will be finding both manufacturer support for getting Broadcom chips inside consumer electronics equipment and finding existing equipment that has USB slots so users can easily retrofit them with Wi-Fi dongles. Wi-Fi may have its drawbacks, but for most consumers who don’t want to think interoperability, it’s easy to use. They just want something that works.

Freescale Needs to Divide to Conquer

Fri, 30 May 2008 15:50:26 -0700

Freescale should get ready for change. I visited the Austin-based chip maker yesterday to talk about wireless and networking chips as well as broad trends in the industry, and walked away realizing that the firm needs to split itself up in order to survive.

The company has some very cool technology — especially around its multicore processors for embedded systems such as printers, storage arrays and routers — and a huge base of users for its Power architecture. But it has too many areas of focus. In the next two years, it’s unlikely that the company will have the same combination of businesses it has today.

Specialization is key in the chip-making industry because it allows a company to allocate its R&D more effectively, optimize manufacturing processes and generally improve profits. Freescale, which makes chips for automobiles, RFID systems, cell phones, base stations, networking equipment and industrial applications, designs both high-volume chips at advanced process nodes and low-volume chips that require a lot of manufacturing tweaks.

It’s likely that Freescale’s private equity owners will divide the company along the lines the firm established late last year: networking and multimedia; microcontrollers; cellular; and RF, sensors and analog. Each of the divisions made more than $1 billion in 2007 and could be combined with similar divisions at other firms such as Infineon, Broadcom, STMicroelectronics or even Intersil. Earlier this year, Freescale got a new CEO (from Intersil) with M&A experience, so change is certainly in the air.

The New iPhone’s New Winner

Fri, 30 May 2008 08:48:36 -0700

Depending which iPhone rumor you believe, the 3G version of iPhone has either been delayed or already landed on U.S. shores and is on its way to being announced at Apple’s WWDC in San Francisco next month. The interest in the 3G version of the iPhone has been building since AT&T executives “accidentally” talked about it at various events.

But whether it’s a new 2G model or a super-fast 3G, there is one thing that’s for sure: The new iPhone has Global Positioning System (GPS) built into it, thanks to legal requirements put in place by the FCC. The company supplying the GPS to iPhone is going to be a big winner in this space; according to my sources, the contract has been nailed down by Broadcom, a relatively new entrant into the GPS market. The Irvine, Calif.-based chip company had acquired Global Locate in July 2007 for $143 million in cash and $80 million in incentives. In the past such a deal would have gone to someone like SIRF, which is in a bit of pain these days.

A recent report in Popular Mechanics outlines some of Apple’s GPS moves. Last year, Google’s Marissa Meyer told us that the Google Maps usage from iPhone was off the charts. Now imagine that Maps feature married to the built-in GPS; the combo could give location based services a big massive boost. Pelago, an LBS social service has already received $15 million in funding for its iPhone application.

Such applications could drive the demand for iPhones, which in turn could be a pretty good thing for Broadcom. I do wonder what impact it will have on standalone devices and if it will catalyze change and new innovation in that market.