Atheros – A Leader in Wireless Technology
Atheros is a company that manufactures many different wireless products, and this includes Bluetooth network devices, GPS solutions and chipsets, wireless network adapters, ethernet products, and Personal Access Systems technologies, also known as PAS. The company started in 1998, with a focus on the 5GHz technology. In ten years, Atheros has become a technological leader in the wireless systems space.
Atheros products are popular with wireless home users because of superior throughput and range, plus the fact that the products are extremely easy to use. JumpStart for Wireless can be purchased by users, and this program can set up an Atheros-based network with one easy button. After the JumpStart for Wireless network has been created, the user has the ability to add any certified Wi-Fi Protected Setup device to the network, including cell phones, digital cameras, digital media players, VoIP phones, MP3 players, set-top boxes, and gaming devices. The Microsoft operating system Windows Vista uses the Atheros WLAN technology.
As the WiFi standards evolve, Atheros drivers and products continue to be at the front lines of innovation. Because newer devices require greater bandwidth, the requirements for enhanced wireless technology has risen. VoIP, which is the Microsoft Media Center standard TV stream, and the format MPEG 2 HDTV are quickly becoming more desired. The bandwidth requirements can really add up, with VoIP adding a minimum of 1Mbps requirement, Microsoft Media Center TV stream adding between 8-10 Mbps required, and MPEG 2 HDTV adding around 20 Mbps per channel. Products like the Atheros XSPAN have the ability to provide up to 300 Mbps of actual data throughput.
Atheros introduced the Radio-On-Chip Mobile (ROCm) technology, and the result is a new generation of smart phones that are just like a multimedia computer. The solutions provided by Atheros ROCm feature high performance, and low power Wi-Fi connectivity. ROCm products from Atheros use seventy percent less power in their active mode and almost no power in Standby mode than other products from competitors. This power efficiency is done without sacrificing throughput. Atheros continues to be an innovator in products that combine hardware, software, and GPS technology.
Yep, Your PC Probably Has an ASUS Motherboard Inside!
ASUS is one of the biggest computer motherboard manufacturers, and a leader in the industry. In the year 2006, almost sixty million motherboards made by ASUS were shipped out. In this year, one third of the computers manufactured in the world had an ASUS motherboard installed. The impressive array of ASUS motherboards available meet all needs and purposes, including the mainstream, high end, and low end value markets. Manufacturers who have chipsets incorporated into ASUS motherboards include Intel, SIS, ULI, VIA, ATI, and NVIDIA.
Asus Makes things Easier, Faster, and ‘Cooler’ for You
One of the newest products introduced by ASUS on their motherboards are Energy Processing Units, or EPUs. These motherboards allow system startups to happen much more quickly, and they use less power. The ASUS Express Gate only needs five seconds to complete the startup process. EPUs allow a user to access the Internet in a fraction of the time, because it does not need to access the hard disk or wait for the Windows loading process. ASUS also introduced CPU coolers and other thermal inventions. CPU heat can be reduced by as much as thirty percent with the ASUS Lion Square CPU cooler.
Motherboards are not the only products manufactured by ASUS, they also have a full line of electronics available, such as graphics cards, LCD monitors, networking devices,computers, notebook computers, audio cards, the “Eee PC,” storage devices,PDAs, servers, mobile phones, and webcams. Notebook PCs manufactured by ASUS were the first ever to receive TCO’99 certification, which requires certain criteria including battery consumption, ergonomics, radiation emission control, and ecology.
ASUS has more than eight thousand employees around the world, with offices located in the USA, Canada, Taiwan, India, Hong Kong, the Czech Republic, Indonesia, Bangladesh, United Kingdom, Spain, Poland, Malaysia, South America, Turkey, UAE, Vietnam, Singapore, Italy, the Netherlands, and Hungary. ASUS is a company which has won a number of awards. These prestigious awards won include a listing in Business Week’s list of the InfoTech 100, and the Wall Street Journal giving ASUS a number one spot for the quality products and services offered.
Even though the primary focus of ASUS is motherboards and PC devices, including ASUS drivers, the company also offers other high tech and innovative products, like an Internet radio that allows the user to connect wirelessly, so that thousands of global Internet radio stations can be received and listened to. The product needs no PC and stands alone. And there are also MP3 player ports allow the user to perform MP3 playback from a connected device.
The mission of ASUS is to provide solutions for IT that are innovative and modern. The strong foundation of ASUS rests on innovation, service, quality, speed, and cost efficiency. The company core is a passion for both quality and technology, and that is why it is so successful.
One of the newer products from ASUS is the ASUS EN8600GTS, and it has a 675 MHz clock speed, a 2.0 GHz memory, and a 1.45 GHz Shader clock. The bus is only 128 bits wide, but can transfer 32Gb per second and includes 256Mb megabytes of memory on the bus.
What are ASIO Drivers?
The acronym ASIO stands for Audio Stream Input/Output. The ASIO is a sound card driver standard that is used for digital audio which is aimed towards the music professional instead of the home PC user. ASIO standards are used by musicians and sound engineers for processing audio files with PC software instead of using an external drive.
ASIO offers a high appeal to the professional music market because of the properties integrated, including high fidelity and low latency. ASIO goes right past the many layers of OS software and processing and instead goes straight from the application being run to the sound card. Because the various layers are bypassed, delays are minimized and the latency is reduced. Because there is a direct path that is high speed, there is a higher fidelity sound involved.
ASIO – How It All Began…
ASIO is the pet project of a leading personal computer third party developer named Steinberg. During the mid 1980s, ASIO was first started with a passionate interest in music and a Commodore 64 machine. As technology relating to computers evolved, Steinberg was a moving force to bringing PCs and music together. The Cubase software program allows music production to be brought to the personal computer and rapidly rose to a major competitor to analog tape equipment. In 1995, WaveLab was introduced by Steinberg, and is an essential online editing tool for audio files that is used by numerous professional musicians.
ASIO was released in 1997, and was an open standard combined with Virtual Studio Technology. ASIO is the core of the Virtual Studio technology, and it supports both variable bit depths and sample rates,multi-channel operation,and synchronization. Many hardware manufacturers besides Steinberg have adopted ASIO. This standard offers high fidelity, low latency, easy use, and stable audio capabilities.
Pinnacle Systems acquired Steinberg, then Yamaha acquired Pinnacle systems, but the Steinberg name still lives on, just as the ASIO standard does. There was a product introduced in 2007 called Sequel that allows entry level PC users to use professional level audio technology.
Not All ASIO Drivers are Created Equal
When downloading and installing ASIO drivers, make sure that the driver and the operating system or application is compatible. This is not always the case, such as with the Digidesign ASIO Driver 6.1.1 and the application Pro Tools TDM 6.2 or lower, or if Pro Tools LE version 6.1 or lower is installed on the system. If the Pro Tools LE 6.1 or a lower version is installed on the system, remove it with the Add or Remove Programs Control Panel, then install the latest version to prevent problems with some ASIO drivers.