Eventually, though, markets mature. Features stabilize, so you no longer need a programmable product. At this stage, the winning chip set performs at the lowest cost. That's hard-wired.

This is a well-known, oft-repeated phenomenon in chip set life cycles. Programmable chip sets for MP3 players gave way in the last few years to optimized, low-cost solutions. And in the early '90s, programmable graphics processors lost out to optimized, hardwired Windows accelerators. (Ironically, graphics accelerators are becoming programmable again as suppliers stretch into new levels of realism. But that's for another time.)

Usually, it's pretty clear when Phase II has arrived. But there's spirited disagreement right now in wireless LANs.

There are dozens of suppliers with programmable media-access controls (MACs) who say it's way too early to nail down chip sets with a state machine design. On the other side, Taiwanese suppliers like Realtek, ADMTek and ZyDAS are leading the charge. Their hardwired MACs are gaining some traction because they are the price leaders in the bloodbath formerly known as the 802.11b market. They say they'll do the same thing to 802.11g by year's end, and the a/b/g market in '04.

Myself, I think it's a little early to go hardwired. There is clearly a place for it in the value segment of the consumer market, as the Taiwanese players are demonstrating. But the many changes afoot in WiFi-the WiFi Alliance, for example, hasn't even started testing "g" hardware yet, and the "i" security standard is still in flux-means it's not time to lock down the entire market.

Not this year, anyway.

Speculation abounds, again, that Intel will buy a chip set supplier to populate the wireless LAN miniPCI slot in this fall's Centrino platform. (Recall that Centrino encompasses the Pentium M processor, Intel system logic and the wireless card.) My bet: they don't.

Watch instead for Intel to contract out for 802.11g, just like it did with 802.11b. And again in '04, for a/b/g. With so many players out there, why tie your cart to just one horse?

All of this assumes, of course, that Intel's internal WiFi team does not deliver-yet again. Another good bet.

Mike Feibus, principal analyst at Techknowledge Strategies Inc. (Scottsdale, Ariz.), is producing a report on the market for wireless LAN chip sets. See www.techknowledge-group.com to learn more.