MediaTek is expanding its portfolio with two Wi-Fi 7 chips: the Filogic 860 and Filogic 360. The new chips will appear in mid-2024 and are intended for routers and clients such as smartphones, among others.
Taiwanese MediaTek is marketing the Filogic 860 as a chip for networking devices, while the Filogic 360 is intended for use in clients such as smartphones and laptops. The Wi-Fi 7 chips were first shown at CES in 2023. They are less advanced versions of the Filogic 880 and Filogic 380.
The MediaTek Filogic 360 features dual Bluetooth 5.4 with support for Bluetooth LE Audio. The Wi-Fi 7 chip can achieve speeds of up to 2.9Gbit/s. The chip also supports a channel bandwidth of up to 160MHz.
The Filogic 860 is marketed as a more advanced Wi-Fi 7 solution on a 6nm process. The chip can serve as an access point, router or mesh node. The chip should be able to support speeds of up to 7.2Gbit/s. The triple-core Arm Cortex-A73 processor enables advanced tunneling and security features for business users and service providers.
Wi-Fi 7, also called 802.11be, has a theoretical maximum throughput of 46Gbit/s, which is much higher than the 9.6Gbit/s of Wi-Fi 6 and Wi-Fi 6E. With current solutions, however, the theoretical maximum throughput is far from being reached. Furthermore, Wi-Fi 7 supports both the 2.4GHz, 5GHz and 6GHz bands with channel bandwidths of up to 320MHz.
