Broadcom on Tuesday unveiled a new 802.11ac MIMO wireless chipset for home networking equipment which the company complains enables the fastest performance in home routers in the industry.

The new 5G WiFi XStream platform is the first available six-stream 802.11ac Multiple Input Multiple Output (MIMO) home router offering on the market, Broadcom said. The platform delivers data rates up to 3.2 Gbps, effectively doubling 802.11ac WiFi speed and offering "up to a 50 percent speed advantage over existing MU-MIMO solutions," according to the chip maker.

"With the booming Internet of Things ecosystem and demand to wirelessly stream simultaneous HD content on smartphones, tablets, and smart TVs, home networks today need a premium performance router that recognizes individual bandwidth requirements for an optimal experience," Rahul Patel, vice president and general manager of Broadcom's Wireless Connectivity Combos business, said in a statement.

"As the first company to introduce 802.11ac products and with our 5G WiFi technology powering routers from the top five router companies, Broadcom adds a new industry first with the 5G WiFi XStream platform."

In addition to providing double the bandwidth of current 802.11ac routers and gateways, the new platform also comes loaded with software to accelerate WiFi performance, Broadcom said.

"Broadcom's Intelligent Quality of Service (iQoS) advanced software identifies incoming traffic and allocates bandwidth so that applications like Netflix or YouTube get the highest priority while other applications, like file downloads, run at a lower priority," the company said. Additionally, the platform's automated SmartConnect software prevents devices on the 802.11ac standard from sharing airtime with WiFi devices on slower standards to effectively "double the performance of all devices in the network," according to Broadcom.

The 5G WiFi XStream solution is currently sampling to Broadcom partners and networking equipment using it are expected to go into production in the current quarter, the company said.

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