Intel had a dominant position on various motherboards for many years, dominating Wi-Fi and Bluetooth controllers. On the one hand, this is a reasonable circumstance for Rocket Lake / Alder Lake solutions, while on the other hand, it is discordant for Ryzen. Insofar as an AMD/Mediatek alliance is concerned, it has been discussed for a little over a year. We even “had fun” with this connection at the time, even though AMD had previously sued Mediatek for patent infringement.
There have even been more direct mentions of Wi-Fi thanks to the Aya Neo portable console’s IndieGogo campaign. The technical data sheet for said console went a bit too far when it included a chip called “RZ608” from AMD, which was supposed to deliver Wi-Fi 6E.
Today, the event is more formally publicized. The debut of AMD’s RZ600 series, based on Mediatek’s Filogic 330P, has been confirmed by AMD and Mediatek. Currently, two components are planned: the RZ608, a “basic” model, and the RZ616, a more ambitious model.
The RZ608 controller will be supplied on a 3 centimeter long M.2 2230 style PCB. Wi-Fi 6 (2.4 / 5 GHz) 2×2 and 6E are being discussed (from 6 GHz to 7.125 GHz). There’s also Bluetooth 5.2 (BT/BLE) on the options.
The RZ616 controller is touted as being more comprehensive. M.2 2230 and M.2 1216 are the two formats offered. While the RZ608 is satisfied with an 80 Hz channel width and a 1.2 Gb/s PHY rate, we go to 160 Hz and 2.4 Gb/s here.It’s now up to the parts to be judged when the first motherboards with these new controllers arrive.