AMD and MediaTek announced recently they will co-engineer Wi-Fi connectivity solutions, starting with AMD RZ600 Series Wi-Fi 6E modules. They will incorporate MediaTek’s new Filogic 330P chipset in AMD-powered laptop and desktop implementations beginning in 2022.
Wi-Fi is mission-critical in any PC these days, and especially with the major performance gains associated with Wi-Fi 6E. Not having their own solution has been an issue for AMD, especially since their primary competitor, Intel, produces its own Wi-Fi chips. This is a win for both AMD and MediaTek, but also a challenge for other Wi-Fi suppliers – particularly Qualcomm..
MediaTek has been seen primarily as a low- to mid-level provider of Wi-Fi chips and 5G modems, with Qualcomm clearly seen as the premier provider for high end devices other than those powered by Intel processors with their own Wi-Fi chipset capability. But MediaTek has been making strides in the past year and is now seen as a viable contender in the premium space as well.
MediaTek also has a large base of OEMs/ODMs to which it supplies chips for both devices and access points, so it has the volume and size of business to be able to make substantive investments in new products. And MediaTek understands it needs a viable high end Wi-Fi 6E solution to stay competitive, as does AMD in order to provide a compelling story for its PC sales which have been picking up share on Intel-powered devices, and additionally to add a new revenue-generating opportunity.
Wi-Fi 6E is becoming a defacto solution in premium machines in many parts of the world. New machines that don’t support it, especially in the mid- to high-end price range, will not be competitive. Wi-Fi 6E accesses new contiguous bandwidth at 6 GHz (compared to 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz of current generations of Wi-Fi). It enables speeds up to 1 GHz and latency as low as a millisecond.
This capability is critical to markets like gaming, video streaming and AR/VR -- all markets AMD has done well in with its combination of high performance CPU and GPU processors. And as AMD takes more market share at the premium PC level, it must have its own solution to present to its OEMs rather than point them to competitors and/or leave them to implement their own connectivity solutions.
Even with this endorsement, OEMs will still have the option of deploying their own preference in Wi-Fi modems if they chose. But the partnership and endorsement by AMD will go a long way in making MediaTek the preferred solution provider and will ease implementation burdens for AMD-based products.
AMD (and Intel) see Qualcomm as a primary competitor in the emerging always connected PC (ACPC) space, as Qualcomm has even dedicated a line of processors specifically to this task. With Microsoft creating a version of Windows 11 that runs native x86 apps on ARM architecture, there is an enhanced ability of Qualcomm (and ARM generally) to be an important player in PCs. That clearly hasn’t happened yet after a couple of years of trying, and for a variety of reasons, but Qualcomm continues to push in this space.
Given Qualcomm’s continued attempts to capture a large portion of the PC market, a market critical to AMD’s revenues, there is certainly no incentive for AMD to partner with Qualcomm even if their Wi-Fi modems were to prove superior. And while this partnership between AMD and MediaTek is centered in Wi-Fi, there is every reason to expect that a future partnership around 5G could be coming as more PCs become always connected through cellular technology, and the primary chip providers produce their own 5G solutions.
Indeed, Intel has already announced its partnership with MediTek for 5G modems, likely a direct reaction to the competitive threat posed by Qualcomm in the PC space. It’s likely AMD will make a similar move in the future as it too pursues an always connected PC future.
Bottom Line: While this announcement is a targeted and specific partnership between AMD and MediaTek for Wi-Fi 6E, it shows the dynamics at play in the chip business as companies vie for market share. While Qualcomm will continue to sell Wi-Fi modems to a variety of PC makers, there is certainly no incentive for AMD (or Intel) to make it easy for them to do so.
So as Qualcomm increasingly pushes into territory controlled by AMD and Intel, it will find that a key portion of its business (Wi-Fi chips) is negatively impacted. I certainly don’t expect this will have a major impact on Qualcomm’s overall business, but it does demonstrate that trying to compete with your partners has negative consequences.
Jack Gold is founder and principal analyst at J. Gold Associates, LLC., an information technology analyst firm based in Northborough, Massachusetts. He has more than 25 years of experience as an analyst and covers the many aspects of business and consumer computing and emerging technologies. He works with many companies, including Intel. Follow Jack on Twitter and on LinkedIn.