Intel has achieved a major step toward applying the power of Moore's Law to radio technology, building a working radio chip that packs in transistors as tightly as today's most advanced production chips.

The prototype of an IEEE 802.11a wireless LAN transceiver was created using a 90-nanometer CMOS process, the same used in many of Intel's Pentium 4 microprocessors, according to the company. That's a leap of two generations ahead of most current CMOS radio chips, which typically are built at 180 nanometers, says Krishnamurthy Soumyanath, director of the communications circuits lab at Intel's Corporate Technology Group. Process technologies are named for the average size of the structures on a chip. As those spaces get smaller, processors generally get smaller, faster and less power-hungry.

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Source : PCWorld

The question is: will we see such chips on our mobiles?

(in reply to SiliconFreak)

I wish we would, but I don't expect it to come soon. When companies like Vodaphone (and others) lock down features on you mobile phone such as infrared or bluetooth port so that you can't exchange logos, ringtones etc for free and without paying for their services (sms et al), do you expect that the manufacturers will include a 802.11 chip that will totally liberate the mobile phone connection-wise?
Anyway, I read the full article@Pcworld, and as it seems Motorola is interested in incorporating this technology in their mobile phones. I just wish they pull through, and I hope that they don't come up with a solution that will be butchered afterwards by cell operators by limiting their features to make more money.

The immediate benefit I see here, is that prices for a pc integrated wireless solution will drop dramatically, and I think we will see shortly many designs by intel that have wireless capabilities built-on-chip, much like the centrino technology

(in reply to SiliconFreak)