AMD Betting on Extra-Fast Wi-Fi to Open Up Virtual Reality

Semiconductor maker AMD is betting that their purchase of a chipmaker Nitero will help drive the adoption of more portable virtual reality headsets, according to Bloomberg. Nitero has developed a 60 gigahertz wireless chip that it says can transmit high-resolution video without delays or lags.

Roy Taylor, AMD’s vice president of alliances, said at an industry conference in Bristol, England, that virtual reality’s growth has been held back by VR headsets’ need to be tethered to a personal computer or gaming device with a thick cord.

The Nitero acquisition gives AMD the ability to offer an end-to-end solution for virtual reality and augmented reality, encompassing everything from the computerized brains that process the video, layer it with other digital content, control memory storage and now enable that video to be transmitted wireless, Taylor said in an interview.

Pat Kelly, Nitero’s CEO, said that his company, originally spun out of an Australian government-sponsored research center, was targeting the next generation of virtual reality headgear makers. He wouldn’t say when these new types of headsets might come to market.

Taylor rebutted the idea that lower-than-projected sales of headsets, like Facebook’s Oculus or HTC’s Vive, mean that virtual reality is overhyped and wouldn’t become a mainstream technology. Such criticism, he said, was like Time magazine saying in 1994 that the internet would never amount to anything.

AMD expects that the growth of virtual reality and augmented reality will lead to higher demand for the company’s high-end graphics processing units and central processing units. To promote these technologies, the company has helped sponsor virtual reality films, games and stand-alone experiences. AMD sees location-based virtual reality experiences, where people pay to view VR content in places like shopping malls, are also going to be a key business model and will help spread the technology.