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Qualcomm Atheros is a developer of
semiconductor A semiconductor is a material which has an electrical conductivity value falling between that of a conductor, such as copper, and an insulator, such as glass. Its resistivity falls as its temperature rises; metals behave in the opposite way. ...
chips ''CHiPs'' is an American crime drama television series created by Rick Rosner and originally aired on NBC from September 15, 1977, to May 1, 1983. It follows the lives of two motorcycle officers of the California Highway Patrol (CHP). The seri ...
for network communications, particularly wireless chipsets. Founded under the name T-Span Systems in 1998 by experts in signal processing and VLSI design from Stanford University, the
University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant u ...
and private industry. The company was renamed Atheros Communications in 2000 and it completed an
initial public offering An initial public offering (IPO) or stock launch is a public offering in which shares of a company are sold to institutional investors and usually also to retail (individual) investors. An IPO is typically underwritten by one or more investme ...
in February 2004 trading on NASDAQ under the symbol ATHR. On January 5, 2011, it was announced that Qualcomm had agreed to a takeover of the company for a valuation of US$3.7 billion. When the acquisition was completed on May 24, 2011, Atheros became a subsidiary of Qualcomm operating under the name Qualcomm Atheros. Qualcomm Atheros chipsets for the IEEE 802.11 standard of wireless networking are used by over 30 different wireless device manufacturers.


History

T-Span Systems was co-founded in 1998 by Teresa Meng, professor of engineering at Stanford University and John L. Hennessy, provost at the time and then president of Stanford University through 2016. The company's first office was a converted house on Encina Avenue, Palo Alto, adjacent to a car wash and Town & Country Village. In September 1999, the company moved to an office at 3145 Porter Drive, Building A, Palo Alto. In 2000, T-Span Systems was renamed Atheros Communications and the company moved to a larger office at 529 Almanor Avenue, Sunnyvale. Atheros publicly demonstrated its inaugural chipset, the world's first
WLAN A wireless LAN (WLAN) is a wireless computer network that links two or more devices using wireless communication to form a local area network (LAN) within a limited area such as a home, school, computer laboratory, campus, or office buildin ...
implemented in CMOS technology and the first high-speed
802.11a IEEE 802.11a-1999 or 802.11a was an amendment to the IEEE 802.11 wireless local network specifications that defined requirements for an orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM) communication system. It was originally designed to support ...
5 GHz technology. In 2002, Atheros announced a dual-band wireless product, the AR5001X 802.11a/b. In 2002, Craig H. Barratt joined Atheros as vice president and in March 2003 became CEO. In 2003, the company shipped its 10-millionth wireless chip. In 2004, Atheros unveiled a number of products, including the first video chipset for mainstream HDTV-quality wireless connectivity. In 2005, Atheros introduced the industry's first
MIMO In radio, multiple-input and multiple-output, or MIMO (), is a method for multiplying the capacity of a radio link using multiple transmission and receiving antennas to exploit multipath propagation. MIMO has become an essential element of wi ...
-enabled WLAN chip, as well as the ROCm family for mobile handsets and portable consumer electronics. In 2006, Atheros announced its XSPAN product line, which featured a single-chip, triple-radio for 802.11n. In this same year, they began to collaborate with Qualcomm on a product for
CDMA Code-division multiple access (CDMA) is a channel access method used by various radio communication technologies. CDMA is an example of multiple access, where several transmitters can send information simultaneously over a single communicatio ...
and WCDMA-enabled handsets. In 2008, Atheros announced the Align 1-stream 802.11n product line for PCs and networking equipment. In 2010, Atheros shipped its 500-millionth WLAN chipset and 100-millionth Align 1-stream chipset. They released the first
HomePlug HomePlug is the family name for various power line communications specifications under the HomePlug designation, each with unique capabilities and compatibility with other HomePlug specifications. Some HomePlug specifications target broadband a ...
AV chipset with a 500 Mbit/s PHY rate.


IPO

On February 12, 2004, Atheros completed its
initial public offering An initial public offering (IPO) or stock launch is a public offering in which shares of a company are sold to institutional investors and usually also to retail (individual) investors. An IPO is typically underwritten by one or more investme ...
on the NASDAQ exchange trading under the symbol ATHR. Shares opened at per share with 9 million offered. Prices on the first day ranged up to and closed at per share. At the time, Atheros had approximately 170 employees.


Acquisition by Qualcomm

In January 2011, Qualcomm agreed to acquire Atheros at $45 per share cash. This agreement was subject to shareholder regulatory approvals. In May 2011, Qualcomm completed its acquisition of Atheros Communications for a total of US$3.7 billion. Atheros became a subsidiary of Qualcomm under the name Qualcomm Atheros. After the acquisition, the division unveiled the WCN3660 Combo Chip, which integrated dual-band
Wi-Fi Wi-Fi () is a family of wireless network protocols, based on the IEEE 802.11 family of standards, which are commonly used for local area networking of devices and Internet access, allowing nearby digital devices to exchange data by radio wav ...
, Bluetooth, and FM into Qualcomm Snapdragon mobile processors. Qualcomm Atheros launched the Skifta media shifting application for Android and released the first HomePlug Green PHY at the end of the year. In 2012, Qualcomm Atheros announced a Wi-Fi display product at the Consumer Electronics Show 2012, along with a new chip for HomePlug AV power line networking. At Mobile World Congress 2012, Qualcomm Atheros demonstrated a suite of 802.11ac enabled products. This included the WCN3680, a mobile 802.11ac combo chip targeting smartphones and tablets. In June 2012 at Computex, Qualcomm Atheros added new 802.11ac products.


Products

* WLAN – Qualcomm Atheros offers wireless connectivity products, including their Align 1-stream 802.11n chips, and the XSPAN 2-stream with SST2 and 3-stream with SST3 chips for 802.11n. The Align 1 also supports WLAN for mobile with up to 150Mbit/s PHY rates for smartphones and portable consumer electronics. Qualcomm Atheros also offers legacy WLAN designs for 802.11a/g. * PAS/PHS In March 2005, Atheros introduced the AR1900, the first single-chip for personal handyphone system (PHS), which was widely deployed in China, Japan and Taiwan at the time. PHS, or personal access system (PAS) as it is known in China, was a digital TDMA-TDD technology operating at 1.9 GHz providing high-quality voice, advanced data services, and long battery life. * Power line communication (PLC) – Qualcomm Atheros is a member of the HomePlug Powerline Alliance. Its AMP brand of powerline chips support the IEEE 1901 global powerline standard that supports high-definition multimedia and real-time gaming at a 500Mbit/s PHY rate. Low powered chips, such as those built for HomePlug Green PHY, are targeted toward smart grid and smart home applications. * Ethernet – Qualcomm Atheros offers the ETHOS line of Ethernet interfaces, as well as the low-energy EDGE line, which supports the IEEE 802.3az-2010 Energy Efficient standard. * Hybrid Networking – Qualcomm Atheros' hybrid networking technology, Hy-Fi, integrates WLAN, PLC, and Ethernet technologies. The technology, which complies with the IEEE 1905.1 standard for hybrid home networking, is capable of detecting the optimal path for data to be transferred at any given moment. * Location Technology – In 2012, Qualcomm Atheros announced its IZat location technology. The technology uses multiple sources, such as satellites and WLAN networks, to pinpoint the location of the user. * Bluetooth – Qualcomm Atheros offers Bluetooth chips for a variety of platforms. The company also offers integrated combo WLAN and Bluetooth chips. * PON – Qualcomm Atheros
passive optical network A passive optical network (PON) is a fiber-optic telecommunications technology for delivering broadband network access to end-customers. Its architecture implements a point-to-multipoint topology in which a single optical fiber serves multiple e ...
(PON) technologies incorporate standards such as IEEE 802.3ah, multiple-channel, software-based, digital signal processing for the G.711 and G.729 ITU standards for VoIP, and TR-156 Broadband Forum PON standard.


Acquisitions

* CodeTelligence – SDIO software/firmware developer, acquired in 2005. * ZyDAS Technology – a USB Wireless LAN company headquartered in Hsinchu, Taiwan, acquired in 2006. * Attansic Technology – a Fast and Gigabit Ethernet chip maker headquartered in Taiwan, acquired in early 2007. * u-Nav Microelectronics – a GPS chipmaker headquartered in Irvine, CA, acquired in 2007. * Intellon Corporation – a public company with powerline communication (PLC) for home networking, networked entertainment, broadband-over-powerline (BPL) access, Ethernet-over-Coax (EoC), and smart grid management applications. They were acquired in late 2009. * Opulan Technology Corp – EPON broadband access technology developer in Shanghai, China, acquired in August 2010. * Bigfoot Networks – an Austin, Texas-based company acquired in September 2011, with application-aware networking technologies that are being marketed under the trademarked brand-name of StreamBoost. *
Ubicom Ubicom was a company which developed communications and media processor (CMP) and software platforms for real-time interactive applications and multimedia content delivery in the digital home. The company provided optimized system-level solution ...
– a company known for their processor and software designed to optimize network data, acquired in February 2012. * DesignArt – small cell chip company that combined several radio technologies on a single chip, used to provide wireless backhaul to smaller base stations. Acquired in August 2012. * Wilocity - a fabless semiconductor company focusing on IEEE 802.11ad (60 GHz) was purchased by Qualcomm in July 2014.


Free and open-source software support

Support for Atheros devices on Linux and FreeBSD once relied on the hobbyist project MadWifi, originally created by Sam Leffler and later supported by
Greg Chesson Greg is a masculine given name, and often a shortened form of the given name Gregory (given name), Gregory. Greg (more commonly spelled "Gregg (surname), Gregg") is also a surname. People with the name *Greg Abbott (disambiguation), multiple peopl ...
. MadWifi later evolved into ath5k. In July 2008, Atheros released an open-source Linux driver called ath9k for their
802.11n IEEE 802.11n-2009 or 802.11n is a wireless-networking standard that uses multiple antennas to increase data rates. The Wi-Fi Alliance has also retroactively labelled the technology for the standard as Wi-Fi 4. It standardized support for multipl ...
devices. Atheros also released some source from their binary HAL under ISC license to add support for their abg chips. Atheros has since been actively contributing towards the ath9k driver in Linux. Atheros has also been providing documentation and assistance to the FreeBSD community to enable updated support for 802.11n chipsets in FreeBSD-9.0 and up. The flexibility and openness of ath9k makes it a prime candidate for experiments around improving Wi-Fi. It is the first subject of a FQ-CoDel-based radio fairness improvement experiment by Make-Wifi-Fast.source code
The driver has also been modified by radio hobbyists to broadcast in licensed frequency bands. The article comparison of open-source wireless drivers lists free and open-source software drivers available for all Qualcomm Atheros IEEE 802.11 chipsets. The most recent generations of Atheros wireless cards (802.11ac and 802.11ax) require non-free binary blob firmware to work, whereas earlier generations generally do not require non-free firmware. Atheros was featured in OpenBSD's songs that relate to the ongoing efforts of freeing non-free devices.


References


External links

*
Atheros Madwifi support in Linux – historical
* * {{webarchive , url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110429103824/http://linuxwireless.org/en/users/Drivers/ath5k , title=Community-driven legacy Atheros chipset support in Linux , date=2011-04-29
Community-driven FreeBSD atheros chipset support, pre-802.11n and 802.11n chipsets

Open source utility package for management INT6400, AR7400 and AR7420 chipsets, known as HomePlug technology
1998 establishments in California Electronics companies established in 1998 Fabless semiconductor companies Manufacturing companies based in San Jose, California Qualcomm Semiconductor companies of the United States Technology companies based in the San Francisco Bay Area Companies formerly listed on the Nasdaq 2004 initial public offerings 2011 mergers and acquisitions