This month, Intel unveiled a Wi-Fi radio almost completely made of the same sort of transistors that go into one of its microprocessors.

At the Intel Developer Forum in San Francisco, Yorgis Palaskas, research lead in radio integration at Intel and the company's chief technology officer, Justin Rattner, also showed off a system-on-a-chip that sported this digital Wi-Fi radio nestled up next to a couple of its Atom processors for mobile devices.

The announcements make it clear that Intel believes Wi-Fi radios—traditionally relatively large devices that operate mostly outside the chip—will be integrated into the chips in coming years. This could mean three things: more electronic devices will be able to network wirelessly; these devices could be more energy-efficient; and ultimately, multiple digital radios could be combined on a single chip, something that could make gadgets, including mobile phones, cheaper.