Qualcomm Atheros

Qualcomm Atheros is a developer of semiconductor chips for network communications, particularly wireless chipsets. Founded under the name T-Span Systems in 1998 by experts in signal processing and VLSI design from Stanford University, the University of California, Berkeley and private industry. The company was renamed Atheros Communications in 2000 and it completed an initial public offering in February 2004 trading on NASDAQ under the symbol ATHR.
On January 5, 2011, it was announced that Qualcomm had agreed to a takeover of the company for a valuation of US$3.7 billion. When the acquisition was completed on May 24, 2011, Atheros became a subsidiary of Qualcomm operating under the name Qualcomm Atheros.
Qualcomm Atheros chipsets for the IEEE 802.11 standard of wireless networking are used by over 30 different wireless device manufacturers.
History.
T-Span Systems was co-founded in 1998 by Teresa Meng, professor of engineering at Stanford University and John L. Hennessy, provost at the time and then president of Stanford University through 2016.
The company's first office was a converted house on Encina Avenue, Palo Alto, adjacent to a car wash and Town & Country Village.
In September 1999, the company moved to an office at 3145 Porter Drive, Building A, Palo Alto.
In 2000, T-Span Systems was renamed Atheros Communications and the company moved to a larger office at 529 Almanor Avenue, Sunnyvale. Atheros publicly demonstrated its inaugural chipset, the world's first WLAN implemented in CMOS technology and the industry's first high-speed 802.11a 5 GHz solution.
In 2002, Atheros launched the first dual-band wireless solution, the AR5001X 802.11a/b.
In 2002, Dr. Craig H. Barratt joined Atheros as VP Technology. Craig was promoted to CEO of Atheros in March 2003, a position he retained until Atheros' acquisition by Qualcomm.
In 2003, the company shipped its 10-millionth wireless chip.
In 2004, Atheros unveiled a number of products, including the first video chipset for mainstream HDTV-quality wireless connectivity.
In 2005, Atheros introduced the industry's first MIMO-enabled WLAN chip, as well as the ROCm family of high-performance, low-power WLAN solutions for mobile handsets and portable consumer electronics.
In 2006, Atheros launched its XSPAN solutions, which featured a single-chip, triple-radio solution for 802.11n. In this same year, they began to collaborate with Qualcomm on a 3G/Wi-Fi solution for CDMA and WCDMA-enabled handsets.
In 2008, Atheros launched the Align 1-stream 802.11n solutions for PCs and networking equipment.
In 2010, Atheros shipped its 500-millionth WLAN chipset and 100-millionth Align 1-stream chipset. They released the first HomePlug AV chipset with a 500 Mbit/s PHY rate.
IPO.
On February 12, 2004, Atheros completed its initial public offering on the NASDAQ exchange trading under the symbol ATHR. Shares opened at $14 per share with 9 million offered. Prices on the first day ranged up to $18.45 and closed at $17.60 per share. At the time, Atheros had approximately 170 employees.
Acquisition by Qualcomm.
In January 2011, Qualcomm agreed to acquire Atheros at $45 per share cash. This agreement was subject to shareholder regulatory approvals. In May 2011, Qualcomm completed its acquisition of Atheros Communications for a total of US$3.7 billion. Atheros became a subsidiary of Qualcomm under the name Qualcomm Atheros.
After the acquisition, the division unveiled the WCN3660 Combo Chip, which integrated dual-band Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and FM into Qualcomm Snapdragon mobile processors. Qualcomm Atheros launched the Skifta media shifting application for Android and released the first HomePlug Green PHY solution at the end of the year.
In 2012, Qualcomm Atheros announced a Wi-Fi Display product at CES 2012, along with a new chip for HomePlug AV power line networking. At Mobile World Congress 2012, Qualcomm Atheros demonstrated a suite of 802.11ac enabled products. This included the WCN3680, a mobile 802.11ac combo chip targeting smartphones and tablets. In June 2012 at Computex, Qualcomm Atheros added new 802.11ac products.
Free and open-source software support.
Support for Atheros devices on Linux and FreeBSD once relied on the hobbyist project MadWifi, originally created by Sam Leffler and later supported by Greg Chesson. MadWifi later evolved into ath5k. In July 2008, Atheros released an open-source Linux driver called ath9k for their 802.11n devices. Atheros also released some source from their binary HAL under ISC license to add support for their abg chips. Atheros has since been actively contributing towards the ath9k driver in Linux. Atheros has also been providing documentation and assistance to the FreeBSD community to enable updated support for 802.11n chipsets in FreeBSD-9.0 and up.
The flexibility and openness of ath9k makes it a prime candidate for experiments around improving Wi-Fi. It is the first subject of a FQ-CoDel-based radio fairness improvement experiment by Make-Wifi-Fast. The driver has also been modified by radio hobbists to broadcast in licensed frequency bands.
The article comparison of open-source wireless drivers lists free and open-source software drivers available for all Qualcomm Atheros IEEE 802.11 chipsets, except for current generation (802.11ac) wireless cards using the ath10k driver that require non-free binary firmware to work.
Atheros was featured in OpenBSD's songs that relate to the ongoing efforts of freeing non-free devices.