New Australian broadband chip could change media distribution and home entertainment

The Sydney Morning Herald reports that NICTA – Australia’s peak national technology research and commercialization body – has developed a new chip which could have a significant impact on the technology and media field.

The key features of the chip are:
* Very fast: 5Gbps (an HD movie in seconds)
* Short range: Up to 10 meters
* Small: 5mm by 5mm chip
* Inexpensive: Less than $9 in mass production
* Low power: Uses less than 2 watts
* Uses 60Ghz spectrum: faster and less crowded
* Out soon: available in one year
* Cute name: GiFi

A few of the potential applications:
* Download an HD movie (or any other content) to a mobile phone or PDA at a kiosk on your way home, then transfer it to your home entertainment system
* Link all your home devices, including PC and home entertainment so every device has access to the Internet and content can be transferred between devices and across rooms.
* Modular PCs, with CPU, screen, keyboards, drives, mouse all separate devices.

Just two days ago GigaOM wrote about the potential of using 60GHz spectrum and some of the obstacles. It seems that the Australian team has nailed them. GigaOM now says: “I’m impressed,” and also points to similar efforts from Vubiq and SiBeam.

I’m looking forward to this technology being available. Let’s forget Megabits per second and start talking Gigabits per second.