Fostering the 5G Innovation Economy for the European Auto Industry

5G is about vertical industries. It promises to connect things beyond the smartphone in new ways and at a scale that was not possible with previous generations of mobile wireless technology. The auto industry has long been considered one of the frontier industries ripe for 5G reinvention. On May 19th, France Brevets hosted a virtual conference to discuss the importance of incubating a healthy regional innovation economy. The goal? To foster technological leadership in transformative technologies such as 5G to help secure a competitive future for the European auto industry.

Continue reading

Tech Insight: RISC-V – Ready or Not?

The semiconductor industry has never faced a more tumultuous and exciting time than now. Competition, innovations, and geopolitics are forcing tectonic shifts in the industry landscape. These shifts have put a spotlight on RISC-V from multiple vantage points that highlight its emerging importance. While it is still early days, SiFive has been at the forefront of advancing the RISC-V agenda and bringing it to the mainstream. The company’s founders are the founders of the open semiconductor standard. How are they approaching an incredibly dynamic market and fast-changing industry?

Continue reading

Qualcomm Tech Summit 2020: Key Takeaways

neXt Curve attended Qualcomm’s premiere event which typically takes places in Maui, Hawaii. Unfortunately, due to the pandemic, the event was virtual but we got the scoop on everything to get excited about the newest edition of Qualcomm’s Snapdragon platform. The new chip set continues to integrate best-in class 5G technologies with powerful mobile compute enhancements that will provide Android smartphone OEMs a wide palette of feature differentiation to pursue in 2021.

Continue reading

Industry Insight: When Apple Goes 5G, It Matters

“Hi, Speed”. There couldn’t have been a more glaring hint than the splash page for the special iPhone event held on October 13, 2020. As we all suspected, Apple unveiled the 5G iPhone. But it wasn’t just one phone. It was the entire iPhone 12 line up configured with what can only be the latest 5G modem and RF module. If anything, this line up is a shot in the arm for 5G that has suffered a lackluster start and growing doubt about its value to the average consumer. This is what operators around the globe have been waiting for, the 5G iPhone.

Continue reading

Tech Insight: RISC-V

In November of 2019, the RISC-V Foundation moved their base to Switzerland as the US government continued its increasingly aggressive protectionist policies impacting tech trade globally. Flash forward to today. The US Department of Commerce continues to press its campaign against China’s tech industry. RISC-V presents a possible neutral zone in what is a global semiconductor industry divided by geopolitics. Growing interesting in RISC-V have been further fueled by Nvidia’s recent announcement that it would be purchasing Arm for $40 billion. Are the stars aligning for RISC-V?

Continue reading

Tech Insight: Heterogenous Computing

The semiconductor industry is the foundation of our digital world. Everything runs on semiconductor products and continues to advance with each new process node. As we reach the physical limits of Moore’s Law, what comes next? Heterogenous computing and heterogenous packaging are opening up new possibilities for progressing Moore’s Law through advancements in the way that we design, integrate semiconductor devices and systems.

Continue reading

Industry Insight: Qualcomm/Huawei Settlement

An unexpected but pleasant surprise was announced at Qualcomm’s recent earnings call. Huawei had settled its $1.8 billion dispute with Qualcomm regarding the licensing of essential technologies. It represents another important win for Qualcomm in its long and hard fought battle with OEMs including Apple to preserve the integrity and vitality of its technology business. It can be considered a win for innovation. But what does the settlement mean in the grand scheme of things and the rising tensions between the US government and Huawei?

Continue reading

Tech Insight: Apple Silicon

At Apple’s 2020 Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC), Tim Cook delivered the headline that we long anticipated – Macs will transition away from Intel’s x86 processors and adopt Apple’s own proprietary silicon. Why not? After all, Apple has been designing industry-leading processors for its iPhone and Apple Watch which have also powered the iPad, iPod and Apple TV. The writing was on the wall that Apple would bring the Mac into the Apple silicon fold.

Continue reading

Tech Insight: Qualcomm Ushers in the Year of Standalone 5G NR and 5nm with Snapdragon X60

With Release 16 of the 3GPP 5G standards slated to be frozen next month and completed in June of 2020, the mobile industry is poised to embrace Standalone (SA) 5G this year. Qualcomm, a leader in 5G technology, introduced yesterday their third-generation modem-RF system, Snapdragon X60 which comes at an opportune time in the evolutionary timeline of 5G standards and marks a thoughtful pivot in Qualcomm’s RFFE (Radio Frequency Front End) strategy.

Continue reading

Crossing the 5G and IoT Connectivity Chasm with SDR and SDN

The 5G promise is broad and ambitious, but business leaders need to recognize that we are at the very beginning of this journey, and emerging technologies under the 5G umbrella are creating new opportunities for new entrants to fill the gaps as the world moves toward the promise of 5G such as 5G-enabled IoT, new shared spectrum resources, hybrid multi-cloud services brokering, network slicing on demand within mobile computing nano-data centers at the carrier edge.

Continue reading