

Qualcomm Buys Atheros For $3.1 Billion - sandipc
http://ces.crunchgear.com/2011/01/qualcomm-buys-atheros-for-3-1-billion/

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calloc
The real question is, what is this going to do for future Atheros chipsets and
open source drivers? Atheros has always been the chipset to use for Wifi on
open source operating systems because it was generally well supported, and
provided features the competition couldn't.

I really hope that Qualcomm doesn't change anything in that regard.

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adestefan
Atheros never supported the development of the open source drivers until
ath9k/802.11n. The reason they are so robust is because Atheros chipsets are
one of, if not the, most common WiFi chipset in use. Atheros was also one of
the first to market with 802.11G chips and madwifi was one of the first to
support 802.11G on Linux.

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calloc
But they could also make it immensely harder to do so, look at prism 54, which
require binary blobs to work right, and even then have random failures, or the
ralink stuff. It is nowhere near as good as the Atheros stuff.

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anonymous246
I thought Wifi was a commodity market now. So I'm a little surprised to see
Qualcomm buying into a commodity market. What does Atheros have that Qualcomm
can't license cheaply from elsewhere and use it's own relationships to sell?
This seems like Atheros quitting when they're at the top (smart move by them).

Is Qualcomm _really_ interested in supplying to the smallish market for $30
wifi routers and network cards? I haven't ever seen an Atheros-powered laptop,
which is a much larger market.

I used always looked for Atheros-powered wifi desktop cards because of their
Linux support, but nowadays it seems like several chipsets are well-supported.

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blinkingled
Wouldn't it be better for Qualcomm to supply its own WiFi/Bluetooh integrated
SoC like say TI? With Atheros they can do that, no?

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preview
But if that is the main (or only) goal, why spend $3 billion to buy the
company when you could license or buy IP for much less?

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blinkingled
I am not certain it is more beneficial to buy/license IP in all cases. Plus
they are getting IP/Human Resources/Revenues from Atheros perpetually - they
do sell fair amount.

