As we all know, Wi-Fi has been a boon. Local area networks are so familiar we often forget that we do sacrifice performance for long-range convenience. As nice as it is, we still can’t watch high-definition video wirelessly, and sometimes data transfer is abysmally slow.

Big companies haven’t forgotten, and for them, Wi-Fi’s 5.8 GHz is just a starting point. At 60 GHz, the spectrum widens, allowing hugely fast data rates, but at wavelengths easily contained in a small room. A competition is shaping up over these new RF chips, which, until recently, were stifled by high production costs.

Instead of silicon, developers are using metals sandwiched around an insulating layer, such as glass. This diode arrangement is great for high data rates. In the fall of 2007, IBM partnered with MediaTek to bring its new wireless chipset to market. A hybrid, the chip combines standard CMOS architecture with a silicon germanium metal-insulator. Millimeter-size wavelengths at 60 GHz allow gigabit transfer rates up to 6 meters, creating a lightning-fast wireless network for a small room. They have competition from Motorola Inc., which joined Phiar to develop a metal-insulator diodes for a multigigabit local network, also running at 60 GHz. Phiar is mum about the type of metal they’re using except to say that it’s amorphous, which means it can be layered on top of standard CMOS circuitry.

These chips will start hitting the market this year, but will likely take years to make a big impact. Even so, researchers are talking about terahertz-level data transmission using materials such as graphene.

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