Rockchip Announces RKi6000 WiFi SoC for ULP IoT
by Andrei Frumusanu on June 2, 2015 12:00 PM EST
Today at Computex in Taiwan, Rockchip announced a ultra-low-power WiFi SoC for IoT devices. The RKi6000 promises huge jumps in power efficiency, and the ability to provide WiFi connectivity at the levels of Bluetooth Low-Energy. The RKi6000 is a 802.11b WiFi combo-chip with up to 11Mbps data transfer rates. Rockchip explains that it achieves such drastic improvements in low power in the following ways:
While Rockchip has a clear advantage in power over other LP WiFi chipsets, it's the comparison with other low-power transmission technologies that Rockchip is able to show its true strength:
When comparing the RKi6000 running WiFi 802.11b at 11Mbps, the chipset is able to present an order of magnitude of improvement over other technologies such as Bluetooth with Enhanced Data Rate, Bluetooth LE or Zigbee. The fact that this is a WiFi technology simplifies deployment and development of IoT application as it is able to use connections provided by standard infrastructures. Applicable product categories include wearables, home appliances, home automation and safety. The RKi6000 starts availability in Q3 2015.
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MikhailT - Tuesday, June 2, 2015 - link
"The RKi6000 promises huge jumps in power consumption"Umm, phrasing. Jump == increase == higher. More power consumption == bad.
fteoath64 - Thursday, June 4, 2015 - link
Just look at Table 2 column 2 and 4. This 802.11b uses almost the SAME power as BT 4.0 LE!!That is an amazing feat!. So we might see BT 4 uses lowering in future as sustained high data rate is not really possible with BT but wifi b is something else, way more useful!.
mnguyen - Wednesday, July 22, 2015 - link
the actual word is '...in power efficiency' and 'power efficiency' is the opposite of 'power consumption'jonsmirl - Tuesday, June 2, 2015 - link
These announcements just go into the my garbage if they don't include some kind of price guideline. Why waste time on this if it ends up being $15?From the press release: "Allows AAA Batteries to be Used for 35 Years". What a pile of manure, AAA battery won't last 35 years without anything connected to it.
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BillyONeal - Tuesday, June 2, 2015 - link
Because for some products (e.g. Nest Protect) $15 for the WiFi is reasonable.toyotabedzrock - Tuesday, June 2, 2015 - link
The Nest Protect is a consumer product, this article is about a WiFi chip.fteoath64 - Thursday, June 4, 2015 - link
No way in hell for it to be even $2! This is a sub dollar part!. Hey, you $15 can buy two full SoC modules!.extide - Tuesday, June 2, 2015 - link
So basically what we are getting here is Wifi B @ 11mbit while using the same amount of power as Bluetooth @ 1Mbit. Not bad, but doesnt having a legacy 802.11B device on a wifi network kinda slow it down somewhat for the other clients too?BillyONeal - Tuesday, June 2, 2015 - link
Not if your router isn't terrible :). Just having the device on the network doesn't slow it down; it would only be if the device was consuming all 11Mbit that things would be an issue.wtallis - Tuesday, June 2, 2015 - link
You can gain some performance by configuring your network to completely eschew compatibility with slow devices, but you also lose compatibility with some higher-speed devices that have bugs. It's usually not worth the trouble, but if you've got a lot of devices on your network generating a lot of multicast/broadcast traffic, it eats a lot of airtime at 1Mbps.