The warring camps in the Ultrawideband (UWB) wireless market made
their customary appearance at the CES show in Vegas on Wednesday — but only one announced any products.Freescale, the semiconductor company spun out of Motorola last year, said that its Cable-Free USB (CF-USB) technology would be used inside devices that Belkin and Gefen will launch later this year.
Belkin's four-port USB hub — due in "early spring" — is designed primarily for laptop use: four standard USB2 devices plug into the hub, which then links to the computer via UWB. Gefen promised a wireless USB extender which replaces a USB 2 cable between the computer and a device, with production scheduled in the first quarter of 2006. No prices were given.
Freescale's major rivals for UWB, the WiMedia Alliance backed by Intel and Texas Instruments among others, is still pushing its Certified Wireless USB standard but had no dates for shipping products. Alliance member Staccato showed off a range of components in its Ripcord series of UWB chips and announced $18m (£10m) in an additional round of venture capital funding from existing investors, including Intel Capital's Digital Home Fund.
Meanwhile, dark horse company Pulse~LINK is promising to demonstrate CWave, its own unique UWB technology, linking high definition video screens wirelessly to laptops and games consoles. Uniquely, the company also claims that it will show the same technology used to distribute low-latency 400Mbps FireWire signals over 100m of coaxial cable, creating a broadband backbone for home video content. Chip samples for both wireless and wired applications will be available for sampling in the first quarter of 2006, says Pulse~LINK.
