Broadcom's latest wireless combo chip is it first to integrate 802.11n Wi-Fi with the low energy variant of the Bluetooth specification.
Bluetooth 4.0, called Low Energy, is designed to offer very low power wireless links for always on monitoring and tagging applications.
The BCM4330 will support dual mode Bluetooth functions, and can be operated in low energy mode or in standard higher speed data mode.
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There is also FM radio and an ARM Cortex-M3 controller on the chip which is aimed at smartphones and tablets.
"The addition of dual mode Low Energy Bluetooth in this type of device will change the way Bluetooth is used by opening up many new low power applications such as healthcare monitoring," Richard Barrett of Broadcom told Electronics Weekly.
Barrett emphasised that the chip was compatible with the main operating system (OS) platform, from Microsoft Windows and Windows Phone to Google Chrome and Android.
The chip includes IEEE 802.11 a/b/g and single-stream 802.11n (media access controller (MAC)/baseband/radio), Bluetooth 4.0 + HS and FM radio receive and transmit functionality. It also features an integrated Power Management Unit (PMU), Power Amplifiers (PAs), and a Low Noise Amplifier (LNA).
Richard Wilson, Barcelona