WiGig Alliance issues 1.1 update for next-generation wireless

The first of these is the WiGig Bus Extension specification, available to WiGig adopter members today, which extends the computer's PCI Express (PCIe) bus out over WiGig to nearby peripherals.

"Pretty much anything you could normally plug into PCIe, from a full-blown GPU to a Sata controller, you can now do wirelessly," explained Grodzinsky.

The beauty of this approach is that peripherals can now be taken out of the PC or tablet and connected wirelessly, but will not require special drivers since the device appears to the operating system as if it were connected directly to the computer's PCIe bus.

Due to be published later this year is the WiGig Serial Extension, which extends the USB bus over wireless in the same way.

The WiGig Alliance also announced that it has become a licensee of HDMI technology, and will support HDMI over the WiGig Display Extension protocol in addition to DisplayPort, enabling users to stream video to DisplayPort monitors and HDMI TV over WiGig.

WiGig is set to use frequencies in the 60GHz band and support data transmission rates up to 7Gbit/s over relatively short distances. However, the standard is being designed to be backwards compatible with IEEE 802 Wi-Fi kit using the 2.4GHz and 5GHz bands.