Wind River Systems, Inc. today announced an agreement with Atheros Communications in which the latter will be able to license and resell Wind River’s Tornado for Home Gateways platform with Atheros 802.11a access point reference designs.
The companies stated that the combination can be used as is or as a design starting point for developers creating their own products, ranging from access points to home gateways with embedded 802.11a connectivity.
The purpose of the partnership and technology integration is to reduce cost and time to market by eliminating some of the intermediate steps to offering a complete solution, and enabling companies to concentrate resources on other innovations and additions to the product.
At this time, a reference design based on the Atheros AR5000 chipset and the Tornado for Home Gateways is available, with plans to offer a reference design including the AR5001AP chipset in the works. Atheros describes the AR5001AP Integrated Access Point Chipset as a combination high-performance microprocessor with multiple wired and wireless interfaces on two all-CMOS chips.
Atheros claims that this new design will reduce the cost and complexity of access points, wireless repeaters, outdoor wireless devices, residential gateways, and audio/video solutions.