Hi and welcome to another in the Arm "What is" program series. In each episode, we dive into a
tech topic to give you insight and perspective into some of today's hottest design trends. I'm
Brian Fuller, editor-in-chief at Arm and today we're going to find out, what is 5G? No doubt,
you've heard about it. It's on the lips of every technology analyst and editor, but what is it
exactly and why should you care. To help us figure that out, I want to introduce two Arm experts.
Steve Raphael manages Arm's business in the mobile phone segment.
Steve has worked for years in the mobile space starting out on 2G
phones with Nokia. Now during the lockdown, he baked a lot of sourdough bread and pizza,
and now he's had to sign up for an expensive gym membership to counter the effects.
Panch Chandrasekaran is director of segment marketing in the infrastructure group.
Over the years, Panch has worked on various technologies, ranging from high-speed signaling,
FPGAs, memories, and ML and data analytics.
When Panch isn't helping us understand what is 5G, he's out perfecting his golf swing
or hiking in exotic places like Mount Kilimanjaro or the Annapurna circuit.
Let's dive right in. Let's start with a question for both of you. What is 5G?
5G is the next generation of cellular technology, right? So if you look at history from going from
2G to 3G, 3G to 4G has provided higher bandwidth, and that has enabled different applications like
from just people talking to each other, to people texting to enabling applications. 5G
takes it to a whole level higher than that. It provides orders of magnitude, higher throughput,
but it also enables certain features to connect, not just people, but also machines.
We, as Arm, are providing a lot of IP into most of the world's
5G modems. And those 5G modems are becoming more capable. They're going to need more
capable IP and we've been working really hard to make sure we've got kind of the right set of
offerings to enable that and to enable the 5G to go even further then it does today.
And secondly, you know, 5G for me is really all about fulfilling the promise to the ideas
of a broadband speeds and latencies wherever they are on the move with that battery powered
device. Now 4G can theoretically provide the speeds that you get inside of the home,
but all too often, it's not really the case due to spectral efficiency and capacity issues.
And there are many cases where we just end up with a few megabits of data. And that's just simply not
going to be enough for the sort of the future modern use cases that we see in a mobile device
with lots of video, imaging, AR VR in the future. And we really need what 5G has to offer there.
You're both working in different areas in Arm. So tell us each how important
5G is to those segments, client and infrastructure.
So from an infrastructure perspective, 5G is a very,
very important segment for us. So if you think about how the industry itself is evolving,
there's compute that is getting distributed everywhere.
And there is connectivity that enables certain applications that were previously not possible.
Some of the things that Steven alluded to earlier in terms of like augmented experiences,
like AR VR, et cetera, but think automated industries, robotics, autonomous cars,
talking to each other, et cetera. So this requires highly reliable, low latency
communications between so that the computer itself can happen where the data is generated.
So you kind of look at 5G connectivity, highly reliable, high throughput,
communication technology in conjunction with like highly efficient, power efficient compute, where
the data is created. That creates a whole new world of possibilities in terms of applications.
We're all about being invested in bringing evermore amounts of compute to efficiently. And
that's the key word here for me, you know, battery powered device processed. All of that data,
whether that's games and graphics or images and video, virtual augmented reality,
all those things. It's all about being able to match that compute
that we're bringing with that fat pipe. And with that low latency,
which are some of those use cases that you mentioned, they're got to really rely on.
So is 5G here now or are we still in the waiting phase?
Oh, it's very much here. Right now, there are
at least 160+ operators globally that have already deployed or various stages of deployment.
And it's expected by the end of the year, we'll have more than half a billion people already
connected through 5G connectivity, right. And in another three to four years, we expect the number
in terms of 5G subscriptions to exceed three and a half billion.
Oh, it's absolutely here. The hype of 5G I would say has been phenomenal quite frankly. And I'd
go as far as to say that it's being faster actually faster than the 3G to 4G transition,
which is, which was pretty fast actually. If I look at the penetration today of
5G into the handset space and by our calculations, it looks like pretty much all new premium flagship
phones shipping in the last couple of years were 5G or 5G capable so you can kind of say that's
a hundred percent penetration in that tier. And then what you might call the mid range is seeing
some really strong shipments over the last year about 75% 5G enabled. And there's a lot of 5G
appearing in the sub $250 phones, but there's still a lot more work that can be done there.
We're working very close with partners to enable that 5G
offerings to kind of go even lower and bring 5G to the rest of the market. Very exciting.
So Panch, earlier you talked about some machine to machine potential
with 5G. Can you elaborate on some interesting use cases we might see?
Yeah, sure. I mean, think about the number of connected devices we have right now. We
generally associate that with like cell phones, right? So, but now think about
like anything that has power to it is actually connected to the internet.
So it's the whole idea of IoT with millions of connected devices talking to each other in the
network, because then that creates a whole host of possibilities think automated factories, where
the machines are constantly transmitting data and use the data to use artificial intelligence. ML,
for example, to optimize production so in terms of automated factories. Cars are getting increasingly
autonomous. That is like a lot of data generated and a lot of data processed and a lot of data
communicating between each other in a highly reliable, in the extremely low latency fashion.
And another example, that we can think of, which is very promising is remote
medicine, in terms of like even augmented reality associated medicine, including remote surgeries.
So now you're looking at what 5G offers, right? So massive throughput in terms of data throughput,
extremely reliable, low latency communication, and the ability to connect millions and millions of
devices to the network. And that these are the things that enable these different use cases.
Well, thanks gentlemen. It sounds like 5G technology is really going to transform the world.
Now, check out all our other, "What is" episodes here. Be sure to subscribe to
this channel because we'll be adding more as the year progresses. Thanks for listening!