Broadcom gets early start on WiFi 8 with new routing kit

Jump to main content

Search

REG AD

Broadcom gets early start on WiFi 8 with next-gen wireless routing kit

Better, more reliable, and cheaper? Isn't that the story every generation?

Tobias Mann

Tobias<br>Mann

Systems editor

Published<br>wed 27 May 2026 // 14:00 UTC

The Wi-Fi 8, aka 802.11bn, specification awaits final ratification, but that hasn’t stopped networking vendors from rolling out new and potentially cheaper wireless chipsets.<br>Broadcom on Wednesday became the latest vendor to reveal Wi-Fi 8 products, including three Wi-Fi 8 compatible system-on-chips aimed at high-end wireless routers and mesh devices.<br>Unlike past chips, Broadcom is integrating application processing, network processing, 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz radios, and Ethernet PHY into a single die, a design that reduces power consumption and heat production.

REG AD

Recent generations of Wi-Fi have seen available bandwidth exceed gigabit speeds, so the chips are designed to support both multi-gigabit WAN and LAN ports.

REG AD

Wi-Fi 7 bumped the max channel width from 160 to 320 MHz, effectively doubling the per-stream bandwidth to end devices. Peak bandwidth of 46 Gbps is technically possible but most consumer devices are likely to top out at less than 5 Gbps.<br>That’s because the wider channel widths that enabled the speedier connectivity also introduced a few headaches in the process. The wider the channel, the higher the bandwidth, but also the greater the potential for interference. Wi-Fi 8 aims to address some of these issues.<br>Notable improvements include support for Coordinated Spatial Reuse (Co-SR), which is designed to help mesh devices or campus access points adjust their signal strengths to minimize noise and improve signal integrity.<br>Similarly, coordinated beamforming (Co-BF) will allow devices to direct their signal toward the intended receiver while minimizing interference with other devices. Meanwhile, a technology called Dynamic Sub-channel Operation (DSO) promises to boost throughput by more than 20 percent by enabling routers and access points to assign devices to individual sub channels.<br>Combined, the improvements in the Wi-Fi 8 spec aim to make more of the peak theoretical bandwidth promised by Wi-Fi 7 accessible to users.<br>Broadcom’s new wireless routing chipsets come in three flavors.<br>The BCM6772 is an entry level model aimed at mass-market wireless routers that’s equipped with 2x2 radios on both the 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz bands.<br>For mid-market devices, Broadcom’s BCM6774 offers a higher capacity 4x4 radio for the 5 GHz band. And finally at the high-end is the BCM6776, which adds a pair of PCIe 3.0 controllers and support for speedier LPDDR memory.

REG AD

MORE CONTEXT

Coming Wi-Fi 8 will bring reliability rather than greater speed

Apple’s AirDrop makes weird latency spikes for Wi-Fi wonks, researcher finds

Slow Wi-Fi? Add houseplants to the list of suspects

Australian university used Wi-Fi location data to identify student protestors

The first of these chips are already rolling out to customers for evaluation and integration into future products. While Broadcom hasn’t announced specific devices powered by the chips, its partners include TP-Link, NetGear, Asus, and a slew of other wireless device makers.<br>But before you get too excited, it’s going to be a bit before you start seeing Wi-Fi 8 compatible devices hit the market. According to a Dell’Oro Group report from earlier this year, the new spec isn’t expected to take off until 2028. So, if you just upgraded to Wi-Fi 7, you aren’t missing anything, yet. ®

networks<br>broadcom<br>router<br>wi-fi 8<br>wi-fi

REG AD

off-Prem

Snowflake to burn $6B on AWS Graviton CPUs and AI accelerators

Dataware house gambles cloud conveniences, AI accelerated insights will justify the cost.

offbeat

FAA grounds SpaceX’s Starship after another launch mishap

IPO? More like IP-uh-oh

THE REGISTER EXPLAINER

Explainer: Edge AI

You can run AI at the edge, if your infrastructure supports it

cyber-crime

Malware dev tries to steal Claude users' secrets, writes npm slop, leaks own GitHub private token

Script kiddies these days

Systems

EU's digital sovereignty boo-boo may be the best thing to ever happen to the project

DIY or die. Just don't let the CIA buy it

Networks

ICANN again intervenes to defend AFRINIC

Africa’s regional internet registry and its longtime antagonist are fighting on old and new fronts

MOST POPULAR

Security

America's top cyber-defense agency left a GitHub repo open with passwords, keys, tokens – and incredibly obvious filenames

AI + ML

Google has seriously leaned into AI enshittification lately

Security

Anthropic to release Mythos-class models to the public

Systems

Intel's CEO reveals early hiring challenges as bankruptcy concerns deterred top talent

Off-Prem

Google Cloud suspended major customer Railway.com without cause, causing outage

EVENTS

The Hardware Crunch: How Supply Chain Turbulence Is Forcing a...