5G can be unleashed through chip innovation

The arrival of 5G has brought with it an unprecedented wave of innovation. It is clear that operators build and invest in communications infrastructure, device OEMs manufacture devices that can take advantage of this new bandwidth and low-latency capabilities, and the semiconductor industry pushes the boundaries of individual components and solutions that play a key role in making 5G a living, breathing reality. However, to unlock the full potential of 5G and accelerate the pace of innovation from applications to solutions to infrastructure, close collaboration between the intelligent edge, cloud, device manufacturers, and operator ecosystems is imperative.

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5G opens the way for more connections by providing fast, high-capacity connections. However, 5G is more than just speed – it also allows for ultra-low latency, which means the network can achieve faster response times. This can help your car become more autonomous or merge reality with the virtual world. 5G also promises massive machine-to-machine communications, which will unlock 5G benefits and promote the growth of connected devices for areas such as the Internet of Things.

Consumers will benefit most from the rich, insight-driven experiences that 5G will enable. With AI, we can gain insights from data to make our world more predictive, optimized, and efficient—in many areas, including healthcare, automotive, and smart cities.

Through the possibilities of 5G and the power of AI, situational awareness will come to life. With countless smart devices connected to 5G networks, data is constantly being created, collected, and analyzed, and the output is a tangible response that can predict and provide customized responses.

Imagine, for example, your alarm goes off during your morning commute, and your coffee maker knows as you enter the kitchen how long it will take you to get up and prepare a cup of coffee. From there, your phone tells you when it’s time to leave work based on your calendar for the day, and notifies your car to power on, park in your driveway, and navigate your way through other cars, city cameras, and traffic lights. Inside the car, your watch monitors your emotions and mood and plays music tailored to you until you arrive. This is just a glimpse into the everyday reality of 5G impacting your every move, and personalized experiences powered by data-driven insights affecting every moment of your life.

As 5G and AI converge at the intelligent edge, innovation around data storage, transmission, and processing continues to advance. To take advantage of the benefits of 5G and AI, we need to continue to innovate faster, think big, and use data wisely.

One area where we will see 5G improve our daily lives is in smart cities. Through enhanced bandwidth, low latency, and the ability to communicate at scale with machines, 5G will lay the foundation for improved urban infrastructure, transportation, energy efficiency and sustainable living, and social and sharing economy interactions in ways we can’t even imagine. Cities will be able to optimize electricity use by investing in smart sensors and smart grids to track electricity demand and optimize electricity use in specific locations to reduce pressure on the grid where blackouts are more likely.

Traffic management and efficiency is another important component of smart cities. AI-enabled traffic management can combine smart sensors on sidewalks and city cameras with AI to send you real-time alerts and offer alternative routes. 5G will enable the sharing and transmission of massive data from smart vehicle sensors such as 4D radar and CV-2X, allowing your car to better see and communicate with other cars and infrastructure and travel safely.

This is just one example of how 5G-enabled data will be used to enrich and personalize experiences—we’ll also see powerful innovations in healthcare, shopping, nutrition, fitness, and more. At the heart of all of these innovations is memory and storage. Data is the untapped resource that will power these data-intensive innovations and experiences, and semiconductor innovation is critical to unlocking this potential.

The innovations enabled by 5G availability will require innovation across devices and the underlying infrastructure from edge to cloud, which means infrastructure must be re-architected from the ground up to optimize data-centricity. This requires memory and storage solutions and semiconductor innovations that span the edge-to-cloud continuum.

DRAM and NAND are experiencing rapid growth as the semiconductor industry embraces the demands created by 5G and the new data economy. Customers are demanding a larger platform footprint and more advanced memory and storage technologies. For memory and storage in particular, data capacity for flash is expected to grow 3x and DRAM to grow 2x from 2021 to 2025, according to Gartner. We see this explosive growth continuing as 5G and other data-rich innovations increasingly require a high-performance computing foundation for memory and storage to power the next wave of experiences. 5G will ultimately drive demand in many areas and impact every sector of the semiconductor industry.

Application-optimized DRAM will power the growing demands of 5G today and in the future—including DDR for traditional computing applications, LPDDR for battery-powered devices, and GDDR for ultra-bandwidth solutions for high-performance gaming and AI. CXL, a new industry-standard interconnect, and embedded storage leveraging eMMC and UFS interfaces will also support these demands.

To realize the full potential of 5G, the cloud, edge, and device ecosystems must also work together to push the envelope. This requires a new, holistic approach to designing end-user experiences and applications. Starting with the hardware architecture (processing, memory, storage, sensors, displays), the software must be tightly coupled, and semiconductor vendors must collaborate with each other and the rest of the ecosystem (cloud service providers, OEMs, OSVs, CSVs, operators, and application developers) to create a seamless environment in which 5G devices can thrive, applications developed, services deployed, and data can be used in ways we have not yet imagined.

Through close collaboration, focus, and tenacity, we can accelerate innovation in every aspect of the semiconductor industry and truly push the boundaries of what is possible at the convergence of 5G, AI, and edge computing. Imagine what the next killer app might be, or think bigger and imagine how data and AI can be used to solve the world’s biggest challenges.

The opportunities are endless, right there in the data — now let’s discover them.