MediaTek Filogic 360 and Filogic 860 Wi-Fi 7 chips now official

MediaTek showed off its Wi-Fi 7 chips at an inaugural event and then at CES 2023. The company has since remained mum about offering. It has finally broken its silence and unveiled two new chips, the MediaTek Filogic 860 and Filogic 360. Devices featuring the chips have entered mass production and will hit shelves sometime in mid-2024.

MediaTek Filogic 860

The MediaTek Filogic 860, as its name suggests, is a scaled-down version of the flagship MediaTek Filogic 880. It comes with a full stack of features, such as automatic frequency coordination, 160 MHz channel bandwidth and 4096 QAM (Quadrature Amplitude Modulation) scheme for Wi-Fi 7 connections. MediaTek claims its maximum throughput can reach up to 7.2 Gbps. For wired networking, the MediaTek Filogic 860 supports up to 1x 10 Gbps Ethernet connection, 1x 2.5 Gbps, and 4x 1 Gbps lines.

One can configure it with off-the-shelf PCIe Gen 3 host controllers for embedded usage. Wireless router makers can also add 2x USB 3.2 ports for troubleshooting. A CPU with 3x Cortex-A78 cores (peak 1.8 GHz) makes the MediaTek Filogic 860 tick. It also comes with an NPU that MediaTek claims assists the CPU with some resource-heavy tasks.

MediaTek Filogic 360

The Filogic 360 is also a cut-down version of the Filogic 380 unveiled earlier this year. It doesn't have the bells and whistles of the 860 because it is tailor-made for smartphones/tablets/laptops and not routers. It offers all the quintessential Wi-Fi 7 features, such as 4096 QAM, MU-MIMO (multi-user, multiple input, multiple output), and download speeds up to 2.9 Gbps. Dual Bluetooth 5.4 is also another key feature of the MediaTek Filogic 360. It brings LE audio support to laptops, which have historically lacked the functionality.