The Wi-Fi 8, aka 802.11bn, specification awaits final ratification, but that hasn’t stopped networking vendors from rolling out new and potentially cheaper wireless chipsets. Broadcom on Wednesday became the latest vendor to reveal Wi-Fi 8 products, including three Wi-Fi 8 compatible system-on-chips aimed at high-end wireless routers and mesh devices. Unlike past chips, Broadcom is integrating application processing, network processing, 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz radios, and Ethernet PHY into a single die, a design that reduces power consumption and heat production. Recent generations of Wi-Fi have seen available bandwidth exceed gigabit speeds, so the chips are designed to support both multi-gigabit WAN and LAN ports. Wi-Fi 7 bumped the max channel width from 160 to 320 MHz, effectively doubling the per-stream bandwidth to end devices. Peak bandwidth of 46 Gbps is technically possible but most consumer devices are likely to top out at less than 5 Gbps.…