Broadcom announces new WiFi/Bluetooth Combo and NFC controller chips at CES 2016

Broadcom has now announced two new chips namely the BCM43012 and the BCM20797 at the CES 2016. Among these the BCM43012 is the company's latest and low power Wi-Fi/Bluetooth combo chip for mobile platform and accessories, whereas the BCM20797 is a NFC (Near Field Communications) controller.

LG will display its paper-thin 18-inch rollable OLED panel at CES 2016

According to the company statement the latest Wi-Fi/Bluetooth combo chip can deliver upto 3X long battery life as compared to the previous generation combo chips. In fact the BCM43012 is claimed to consume 80 percent less battery as compared to the most common Bluetooth solutions available in the market today.

Highlights of the Broadcom BCM43012 Wi-Fi/Bluetooth combo chip:

• Highly-integrated 28nm dual-band 802.11n and Bluetooth 4.2 SoC
• Integrated efficient power amplifiers (PAs), low noise amplifiers (LNAs), and power management unit (PMU) for low rest of bill of materials (RBOM) cost and small system footprint
• Architectural improvements provide unrivaled low power in sleep and active states for both Wi-Fi and BT
• Coexistence hardware and algorithms to ensure optimal Wi-Fi and BT performance
• WLAN features include enhanced proximity and location features enabled by 802.11mc and TurboQAM data rates up to 96 Mbps
• Bluetooth features include angle of arrival (AoA) and angle of departure (AoD) technology, wireless charging support for A4WP and AirFuel, and early adopter 2 Mbps Low Energy protocol capability

HP's latest Spectre x360 hybrid laptop gets an OLED display upgrade

Highlights of the Broadcom BCM20797 NFC Controller:

• Supports ISO/IEC 18092, ISO/IEC 21481, ISO/IEC 14443 Types A, B, and B', Japanese Industrial Standard (JIS) (X) 6319-4, and ISO/IEC 15693 standards
• Improved reader mode range for all tag types with a Tx drive up to 1W
• Supports Reader/Writer (R/W) mode, Active and Passive Peer (P2P) mode and Tag/Card Emulation mode
• Enhances Low-Power Target Detection (LPTD) mode and Broadcom proprietary Reverse Low-Power Target Detection (rLPTD) for extremely low average current consumption
• Supports FeliCa and MIFARE
• Supports latest NFC forum specifications, NFC Controller Interface NCI 2.0 backwards compatible with NCI 1.1

Broadcom has announced that these new Wi-Fi/Bluetooth combo chip and NFC controller chip are currently undergoing sampling to OEMs worldwide. Hence there's quite some time before these products officially make it into the consumer market.