Marvell today announced the world's first 90-nm CMOS, WLAN plus Bluetooth single chip solution for cellular handsets, battery-powered media players, portable gaming consoles, smartphones, PDAs and ultra-low-power computing platforms. The Marvell 88W8688 will dramatically extend the battery life of consumer electronics devices, enabling a new level of mobile consumer broadband experience.

The integration of Bluetooth 2.0 EDR–which is firmware upgradeable to Bluetooth 2.1 features–and WLAN subsystems on a single die allows fully optimized simultaneous dual radio operation and cooperative co-existence. The Marvell 88W8688 platform enables the Company to provide ecosystem solutions by offering seamless bridging between WiFi and Bluetooth.

The Marvell 88W8688 enables a converged WLAN plus Bluetooth subsystem implementation that is up to 50% smaller than discrete implementations. The integrated multi-protocol security engine includes hardware acceleration for UMA, IMS, and other network access methods requiring extensible end-to-end security. It incorporates full Layer 3 networking support (TCP/IP + UDP) and adds the ability to run supplicants natively, offloading WLAN functionality from the host CPU.

The Marvell 88W8688 supports all Bluetooth profiles with an industry standard HCI interface. The device runs Bluetooth profiles natively, offloading the host CPU. The Marvell 88W8688 can be connected to a host processor using either a unified host interface or independent host interfaces for WLAN and Bluetooth connections.