After too many years in the industry, I generally approach a trade show/industry event with a certain amount of reluctance. But my three days at the Freescale Technology Forum (FTF 2014) last week were perhaps the most productive in recent memory.

The show officially opened with a keynote presentation from Greg Lowe, President and CEO of Freescale Semiconductor. Appropriately, the presentation started with a moving tribute to the 20 missing Freescale employees on Malaysia flight MH370.

In addition to scheduled meetings with Freescale executives, we had the opportunity to talk with a number of Freescale customers looking to implement Wi-Fi, along with ecosystems partners that were also participating at FTF.

While Silex Technology is best known in the Freescale community as being the “Freescale-Recommended Providers of Wi-Fi connectivity for i.MX6,” we had the opportunity to discuss some of our new Wi-Fi solutions that will be launched in the near future.

First, in addition to the SX-SDCAN (802.11n SDIO radio module), we’ll soon be offering the SX-PCEAC (802.11ac PCIe radio module). This new radio module implements the latest Wi-Fi standard and is the ideal solution for high bandwidth applications. We already have a mutual customer engagement with Freescale for an in-flight entertainment application using this new module.

Equally significant is the introduction of the SX-ULPAN (802.11n Ultra Low Power SPI radio module). This radio module (which is still under development) is targeted at providing Wi-Fi connectivity to MCU class processors like the Kinetis family. There was great interest in this new solution as many Freesscale customers are looking for a way to participate in the “Internet of Things” revolution.

Speaking of the Internet of Things, I was pleasantly surprised to see a demonstration by Mentor Graphics that included Silex Technology Wi-Fi. Mentor Graphics had a i.MX6 with a Silex Technology SX-SDCAN radio module that allowed a cell phone to wirelessly control a virtual washing machine.

Silex Technology also had the opportunity to host a one-hour technical discussion on “Power Save Issues for WLAN.” Andy Ross, Embedded Wireless FAE for Silex Technology America, did a fantastic job in making this technical topic easy to understand. The Thursday morning session was well-attended and there seemed to be strong interest in the material based on the many questions from the attendees.

One of the highlights for me was getting a chance to interview with Andy Frame, from ARM, about how Silex Technology’s partnership with Freescale can provide our mutual customers with a highly reliable and easy-to-implement Wi-Fi solution. Check out our conversation below: