Marvell announced that its Avastar combo wireless solutions will be powering a wide range of wirelessly connected audio products including soundbars, speakers, AVRs and wearable audio. The 88W8887 and 88W8997 are designed to enable device manufacturers to build highly synchronized wireless audio solutions across multiple rooms and zones, delivering connected audio experience over 802.11ac. The recently announced 88W8977 wireless solution is targeted for the wearables & hearables market, addressing the need for low power and cost effective 802.11n solutions, along with Bluetooth and Bluetooth Low Energy.

Marvell's new standalone NFC chip, the NF100 is designed to be used to enable tap, pair and play use cases for wireless audio products. The Avastar 88W8887 was selected to power Frontier Silicon's Minuet connected audio modules featuring Google Cast technology for audio devices. The same wireless solution can also be found in Google's recently launched Chromecast Audio device.

The combined solution will deliver synchronization accuracy in micro seconds, to address the highly demanding multi-channel HD Audio streaming market. Marvell and Frontier Silicon will showcase time synchronized wireless audio streaming demo at Marvell's booth at CES. The recently launched Avastar 88W8977 SoC is a low-power wireless chipset designed to offer the lowest RBOM and smallest form factor for devices aimed at the dynamic wearables and hearables markets.

It offers one of the lowest power 802.11n with BLE-only modes, designed to maintain very low power BLE-only link between wearable audio devices and the corresponding soundbars streaming music. A Wi-Fi connection is triggered when music streaming is active, with very low latency. Additionally, Marvell's Wireless Audio portfolio includes the 2x2, 802.11ac combo (88W8997), as well as 1x1, 802.11ac combo (88W8887) to cover different product categories.