Killer Technology Gaming Wireless
June 5, 2012, Electronic Entertainment Expo, Los Angeles—Sean McCann from Qualcomm Atheros demonstrated the latest in wireless connectivity solutions. The use of hardware acceleration for the communications stack eliminates the lag and latency of Windows and other operating systems.
Killer Technology was part of Bigfoot Networks in 2007, which was acquired by Atheros, and subsequently became part of Qualcomm. The first realization of this technology was in a PCI card, and is now updated to a PCIe card for 802.11n dual and triple antenna design (MIMO).
The key to the performance is a Windows bypass for direct access from chimneys. The card detects the various packet payloads and identifies gain packets of 100 to 200 bytes. These packets are identified and prioritized for loop latency of 100 to 200 ms. The user assigns priorities to all net traffic flows through an active management software tool.
The manager auto-prioritizes game traffic to P1 packets; video chat, VOIP, and IM to P2 packets and latency tolerant downloads and email to P3 packets. Systems utilities are assigned the lowest priorities. These can be changed dynamically so you can play a game and still do a long download if needed.
The visual bandwidth control allows easy reconfiguration and prioritization. Setting these priorities is different than determining quality of service. Service quality depends on port assignments while low latency for gaming is based upon unique characteristics of gaming packets.
Atheros Killer Wireless 3×3 Card For 802.11n
Currently, the N1202 and N1203 cards are only available as options on Alienware computers. They are also available as an OEM part inside the MSI gaming laptops and the GT70 motherboard. The 1202 is an 802.11n 2 x 2 plus Bluetooth configuration while the 1203 has been enhanced to a 3 x 3 configuration which reduces latency compared to the 2 x 2. Future updates to 802.11ac with four antennas and beamforming are being considered, but there are no specifications or product dates set for such a version.
To join in the community for high-performance, online gaming, visit killergaming.com.
