| Wilocity | |
| Foundation: | 2007 |
| Type: | Subsidiary |
| Parent: | Qualcomm/Qualcomm Atheros |
| Homepage: | www.wilocity.com |
Wilocity was a fabless semiconductor company based in California founded in 2007 developing 60 GHz multi-gigabit wireless chipsets for both the mobile computing platform and peripheral markets. Wilocity was founded in March 2007 by executives and engineers from Intel's Wi-Fi Centrino group. While Wilocity is based in California, most of its employees are in Israel. Based on the WiGig specification, Wilocity's Wireless PCI Express technology enables multi-gigabit wireless for applications including I/O, networking and video.
The company is involved in 60 GHz multi-gigabit wireless industry organizations. Wilocity was a founding member of the Wireless Gigabit Alliance (WiGig) and serves on its board of directors and chairs the Marketing Work Group.[1] Wilocity initiated the creation of the IEEE 802.11 ad Task Group, which enhances the 802.11n wireless LAN standard to multi-gigabit-per-second speeds in the 60 GHz band. In addition, Wilocity led the creation of the Wi-Fi Alliance 60 GHz Gigabit Wireless Marketing Task Group and serves as its chair.[2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7]
On July 14, 2010 Wilocity and Atheros, a developer of semiconductors for network communications, announced a technology partnership to build a "tri-band wireless solution." Tri-band devices will leverage the 2.4, 5 and 60 GHz bands, delivering multi-gigabit data transfer speeds while maintaining compatibility with legacy Wi-Fi products.[8]
On May 12, 2014, ZDNet reported that Qualcomm was on the brink of acquiring Wilocity. According to financial website TheMarker, Qualcomm's potential acquisition could cost the company up to $400 million.[9]
On 3 July 2014 the successful purchase was announced, Wilocity now being part of Qualcomm Atheros. The triple-band-WLAN-chip Snapdragon 810 was also announced.[10]