Bringing together tech giants from the U.S. and Asia, Armonk, N.Y.-based IBM Corp. and Taiwan-based fabless design company MediaTek Inc. today launched a joint initiative to develop ultra fast chipsets that can wirelessly transmit a full-length high definition movie to and from a home PC, hand-held device, retail kiosk or television set.

According to the companies, the new technology will allow consumers to get rid of the wires needed to connect their HD-TVs to set top boxes. Financial terms of the joint initiative have not been disclosed.

In a statement made today, IBM and MediaTek said they integrate IBM's millimeter wave (mmWave) radio chips, antenna and package technology with MediaTek's digital baseband and video processing chip designs. 

In addition, the companies said they plan to "leverage MediaTek's influence in the consumer electronics market"-- capitalizing on the fact that MediaTek, which had a market cap of over $11 billion in 2006, is Taiwan's leading chip design firm. According to the companies, the large bandwidth for data transmission available at the mmWave frequency band -- which IBM said is the highest frequency portion of the radio spectrum -- allows at least 100 times higher data rates than current Wi-Fi standards.

"This collaborative effort will enable consumers to wirelessly transfer large multimedia data files around their home and/or offices in seconds," T.C. Chen, VP of science and technology for IBM Research, said in a statement.

mmWave, which is currently being discussed by the IEEE 802.15.3 Task Group 3c and is slated for standarization in May 2008, is not the only technology aspiring to help pick up the pace for in-home media transmissions. The technology's chief rival is ultra-wideband (UWB) radio technology, which claims to be capable of transferring about 480-Mbits/s at distances of about 10 meters. UWB has seen its fair share of troubles in its push toward market availability, however. Last year, the UWB Forum was withdrawn from standards consideration by the IEEE; also last year, Freescale Semiconductor, the UWB Forum's founding company, pulled out of the UWB Forum.

This marks the second wireless chipset-related deal MediaTek has cut with an American company in recent months. In September, the company signed a definitive agreement to acquire Norwood, Mass.-based Analog Devices Inc.'s (ADI) wireless chipset division for $350 million in cash.

By: DocMemory
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