SANTA CLARA, CA, Nov. 2, 2009 (Marketwire) --

SANTA CLARA, CA -- (Marketwire) -- 11/02/09 -- Atheros Communications, Inc. (NASDAQ: ATHR), a global leader in innovative technologies for wireless and wired communications, today announced the launch of the industry's highest performance mobile WLAN technology, the ROCm® single-chip 11n AR6003 family. The AR6003 builds on the success of the industry-leading AR6002, combining the superior mobile WLAN throughput, range and energy efficiency of the ROCm technology with Atheros' Align(TM) 1-stream 11n market leadership and expertise. The result is a Wi-Fi® solution capable of up to 85Mbps of actual throughput, ideally suited to support demanding multimedia applications on smartphones, mobile gaming devices and other portable consumer electronics products.

With its tiny footprint, energy-saving qualities and robust performance, the AR6003 is well-positioned to drive broad adoption of Wi-Fi in mobile handheld devices and is the perfect mobile complement to the comprehensive Atheros ecosystem of Align-based 1-stream 11n solutions. Atheros Align technology is already featured in a wide array of netbooks, notebooks and desktop PCs from seven of the top 10 PC manufacturers and in routers from the top five home networking equipment vendors. The rapid expansion and success of Align-based products, which now number over 10 million computers and AP/routers, provide a growing ecosystem that will enhance the performance of portable devices connected with Atheros 1-stream 11n for the mobile WLAN segment.

Industry-Leading Throughput for Mobile WLANs

The AR6003 delivers actual end-user throughput up to four times that of mobile WLAN solutions based on 11g. With its 11n capabilities, the AR6003 achieves up to 48Mbps TCP/IP in the 2.4 GHz band in 20 MHz mode, and an unprecedented 85Mbps TCP/IP in 5 GHz in 40 MHz mode.

The new ROCm AR6003 enhances its rate-over-range performance above the coverage improvements inherent in the 802.11n MAC and PHY, by leveraging advanced optional 11n features such as Space Time Block Coding (STBC) and Low Density Parity Check (LDPC). STBC improves downlink performance to the mobile device, while LDPC encoding improves uplink performance of mobile clients to Atheros XSPAN- and Align-based wireless access points (APs). Together, these features increase actual throughput levels over longer distances.

"Wi-Fi isn't just a nice-to-have in handsets and other highly-mobile devices -- it's essential," said Craig Mathias, a Principal with the wireless and mobile advisory firm Farpoint Group (Ashland, MA). "Single-stream 802.11n is the ideal solution in this use case enabling high-performance multimedia applications, and we expect to see hundreds of millions of single-stream products -- from handsets to netbooks, gaming devices, cameras, and eBooks, just to name a few -- ship over the next few years.