Qualcomm Wi-Fi 7 Networking Pro Series SoCs support up to 33 Gbps PHY rate, up to 2,000 clients

Qualcomm has announced the Wi-Fi 7 capable Qualcomm Networking Pro Series Gen 3 family designed for routers and access points with a PHY rate up to 33 Gbps with the quad-band 16-stream Networking Pro 1620 platform and offers some competition to the recently announced Broadcom WiFi 7 access point chips.

The company will also offer the tri-band 12-stream Networking Pro 1220 with up to 21.6 Gbps aggregated link rate, the quad-band 8-stream Networking Pro 820 capable of 16.5 Gbps PHY rate, and at the low-end of the scale, the Networking Pro 620 limited to 10.8 Gbps with three bands and six streams.

Qualcomm Networking Pro 1620 (IPQ9574) platform specifications:

CPU – Quad-core Arm Cortex-A73 @ 2.2 GHz
System Memory – DDR3L, DDR4 16/32-bit
Storage – eMMC, NAND, Serial NOR, SD/eMMC
Networking
- Wired – 6 Port Integrated Ethernet Switch 4 x 2.5 GbE + 5 GbE + 10 GbE
- Wireless
  - Wi-Fi Standards
    - Wi-Fi 7 (802.11be), Wi-Fi 6E, Wi-Fi 6 (802.11ax),
    - Wi-Fi 5 (802.11ac), Wi-Fi 4 (802.11n), 802.11a/b/g
  - Wi-Fi Spectral Bands – 6GHz, 5GHz, 2.4GHz
  - Spatial Streams – 16 streams
  - Channel Support – 320MHz, 249MHz, 160MHz, 80MHz, 40MHz, 20MHz
  - Peak Speed – 33 Gbps PHY rate, up to 10+ Gbps PHY rate per channel
  - Wi-Fi Features
    - Simultaneous & Alternating Multi Link Puncturing for wideband operation in presence of 5G/DFS & 6G/AFC interferers
    - 4K QAM
    - UL/DL OFDMA up to 37 users per channel
    - UL/DL MU-MIMO, up to 8 users per channel
    - Sustained throughput for up to 2000 users
    - TxBF, 802.11be QoS
  - Wi-Fi Security Suite
    - WPA3 Personal, WPA3 Enterprise, WPA3 Enhanced Open, WPA3 Easy Connect, WPA2, WPS, 802.11i security
    - AES-CCMP, AES-GCMP, PRNG, TKIP, WAPI2, WAPI1, WEP
  - Platform Extensions – Bluetooth, 802.15.4 (Zigbee/Thread), 4G/5G FWA
- Packet Processing – WAN tunnel offload engine, integrated Ethernet switch, enhanced security processor, high-performance QoS/TM
Peripherals
- Audio – I2S
- USB – USB 3.0
- I2C, SDIO, SPI, UART
- 4x PCIe 3.0 controllers
- 2x USXGMII (Universal Serial 10GE Media Independent Interface), 1x USXGMII-M
Process Technology – 14nm

Qualcomm says the new WiFi 7 Networking Pro SoCs can run Openwrt with Linux Kernel 5.4. With up to 2000 clients, the Networking Pro 1620 is designed for highly-congested venues (e.g. stadiums), enterprise, small-to-medium business, and prosumer home environments. The Networking Pro 1220 and 820 both target enterprise, SMB, prosumer, and premium home mesh systems, while the Networking Pro 620 is better suited for enterprise, SMB, gaming, and home mesh systems.

Qualcomm Technologies is currently sampling their Wi-Fi 7 networking SoC, and commercial products should become available in the next couple of quarters from companies like eero. Additional information can be found on the product page and press release.

Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft)

Jean-Luc started CNX Software in 2010 as a part-time endeavor, before quitting his job as a software engineering manager, and starting to write daily news, and reviews full time later in 2011.