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SyChip Adds Wireless Options to PDAs

New card will allow any handheld with a Secure Digital slot to access the Internet wirelessly.

Tom Krazit, IDG News Service

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Intersil and SyChip announced Tuesday that Intersil's PRISM 3 chipset will power a wireless LAN card from SyChip, allowing Internet access for handheld users.

SyChip's forthcoming card will allow any handheld device that includes a Secure Digital slot to connect to public Internet access points or corporate networks using the 802.11b standard, also known as WiFi. PDAs such as Hewlett-Packard's Compaq iPaq or several models from Palm come with an SD slot.

Samples of the card are expected to be ready by the end of 2002. The company didn't say when the card will begin appearing in commercially available products.

Intersil and SyChip's design is based on the SDIO, or SD input/output, standard, which was endorsed in January 2002 by the SD Card Association, an industry trade group.

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SD cards have been mostly used as memory expansion cards for handhelds, but with the endorsement, companies are now developing other peripheral products, like WLAN cards, based on the SDIO standard.

One benefit of SDIO cards are their small size, measuring 1.25 inches by 1 inch by .1 inch. This makes them a lightweight alternative to other external hardware options for WLAN connectivity, the companies say.

As more products are developed that use the SD standard, Intersil, based in Irvine, California, and SyChip, based in Plano, Texas, expect the interface to become common on other devices, such as cell phones and digital cameras.

Pricing information was not disclosed. Palm sells a Bluetooth WLAN card also based on the SDIO standard for $129 in the U.S.

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