Happy Birthday, Wi-Fi n!

One year ago the Wi-Fi Alliance launched its Wi-Fi CERTIFIED n compliance program, creating a certification process and logo for the IEEE 802.11n standard. Within that time frame, more than 1,100 products – from cellphones to TVs to enterprise-grade infrastructure devices – have been certified, and consumers have drastically changed the way they interact with electronics.

As we celebrate the anniversary of the certification, here are a few of the landmarks Wi-Fi CERTIFIED n has made in the last year:

• 127 phones have passed certification testing, reportedly accounting for 20 percent of handsets certified in the last 12 months.
• 251 consumer electronics products have been certified, including digital audio systems, gaming devices and displays.
• 441 of these certified products are dual-band products – capable of operating in both 2.4GHz and 5GHz frequency bands – and 143 products can support 2.4 GHz and 5GHz operation concurrently.157 enterprise-grade infrastructure devices and 115 enterprise-grade access points have been certified as enterprise networking vendors respond to growing demand for networking solutions.

This increase in connectivity has made a huge impact on the indus

try in short period of time. As a recent In-Stat report stated, Wi-Fi has achieved “ubiquity, a term often used but seldom realized in technology market-speak.” At Allion, we’ve seen this growth take place first hand, with our Wi-Fi Logo Testing Program – which includes 802.11n testing –

allowing us to support the Certified Wi-Fi rollout for both consumer and enterprise devices alike.

“It’s clear that Wi-Fi’s integration into virtually all areas of the consumer electronics spectrum continues to expand,” said Phil Solis, research

director, ABI Research in a recent Wi-Fi Alliance release. “At the heart of this growth is Wi-Fi CERTIFIED n, which will continue to deliver the

advanced performance these devices require, now and well into the future.”

So happy birthday, Wi-Fi CERTIFIED n! We’re excited to see what the next 12 months may bring.

PCIe 3.0 Here at Last: Welcome to the Future of PCI Testing

The long-awaited PCI Express (PCIe) 3.0 specification standard is set to arrive in November, opening the doors for a new wave of products featuring faster interconnect speeds. Consumer products using the PCIe 3.0 are expected to arrive as early as the second half of next year.

The PCI Express 3.0 specification will define

operating speeds of up to 8 gigatransfers per second (GTps), delivering a significant boost from the 5 GTbps defined by PCIe 2.0. It also offers 128- and 130-bit encoding schemes, improving efficiency from the current 8- and 10-bit format and leaving nearly the entire bandwidth free for signal processing. Other new features include Dynamic Feedback Equalization (DFE), a sophisticated technique in electrical signaling designed to maintain signal integrity. The updated specification is expected to aid the growth of faster PCIe switches, 40Gbit Ethernet chips, high-end graphics cards, and solid-state drives (SSDs). PCIe 3.0 is fully backward compatible with previous generations of PCI technology. The chart below shows how the new standard compares to older PCI testing specifications.

PCI-SIG, the industry organization chartered to develop and manage the PCI standard, will issue tools to validate designs and start will launch interoperability testing workshops in mid-2011, with specification testing for PCIe 3.0 expected to be completed late next year. We will keep you posted on developments about this exciting specification update as they become available.