5G, where is the road ahead? Computer experts look ahead to the 5G era

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Data released by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology recently showed that my country has opened 690,000 5G base stations, connecting more than 160 million users. 5G commercialization has taken solid steps. What will the 5G era look like as it accelerates? What challenges will it face?

At the 2020 China Computer Conference held in Beijing from the 22nd to the 24th, experts and entrepreneurs in the domestic computer field discussed the future development of 5G.

In addition to faster Internet speeds, how else can 5G be used?

Supermarkets can use smart cameras to understand which shelf customers spend the longest in front of and which products they are most interested in, helping them make purchasing decisions. When users walk to the door of a store and interact with AI by taking photos with their mobile phones, they can find out the store's taste, reviews, and average price.

With the popularization and application of 5G, such scenarios are becoming a reality.

"A feature of life service industries such as catering, entertainment, hotels, and tourism is that the degree of digitization is very low. Once digitized, we can use 5G networks to connect a lot of data. Use artificial intelligence to analyze and process data and make many intelligent decisions. Going further, we can use robotics technology to make more automated decisions based on intelligent decision-making." said Xia Huaxia, chief scientist of Meituan.

Wang Xiaochuan, Chairman of the CTO Club of the China Computer Society and CEO of Sogou, believes that 5G has a short wavelength and weak penetration, so it is not realistic for every household to enjoy 5G, so the combination of 5G and scenarios has become particularly important. "5G's high bandwidth is very helpful for the transmission of interactive videos, and it has great use in education, medical care, and even remote collaboration. It will also be used in scenarios such as entertainment and industrialization."

"5G is developing very fast now, but many people say that 5G is just a little faster than 4G. It is not that simple." Huang Kai, President's Chair Professor of the Chinese University of Hong Kong (Shenzhen), believes that 5G is a big leap compared to 4G and will bring about a lot of development in integration with applications.

"5G+edge computing" will have more application scenarios

With the rapid development of new-generation information technologies such as 5G and big data, the era of the Internet of Everything is accelerating. A cloud industry research report released by Cisco predicts that global cloud data center traffic will reach 19.5ZB per year by 2021. The rapid growth of data center traffic has brought challenges to centralized cloud computing, and edge computing close to the data source has emerged.

"A large amount of data is generated at the edge. If all this data is sent to the cloud, it would not be worth it and would cost a lot of money," said Huang Ying, vice president of Lenovo Group.

Some organizations believe that by 2025, more than 50% of data processing will be outside of data centers and cloud computing. "If AI computing power is placed on the edge, the latency will be basically below 10 milliseconds, which will allow AI to evolve a lot of computing power and better realize user experience or industrial scenario applications," said Huang Ying.

Huang Ying predicts that the future will be a computing model that combines 5G and cloud-edge collaboration. There will be a large number of edge devices, including both industrial and personal devices, and computing will be done wherever it happens. Only data that really needs large-scale big data and AI deep learning will be transmitted to the cloud.

Many experts at the conference said that edge computing will be widely used in smart manufacturing, ports, security, transportation, medical care, education and other fields. Cloud gaming latency has been criticized by consumers, and edge computing will greatly enhance the gaming experience.

High energy consumption problem needs to be solved urgently

"Today, many people are using 5G mobile phones, but the current 5G high-bandwidth function is only entry-level and is an extension of 4G." Niu Zhisheng, a professor at the Department of Electronic Engineering at Tsinghua University, said that the ultimate challenge facing 5G is high reliability and low latency, which requires a lot of artificial intelligence and edge computing. "The future network will definitely be full of intelligence and AI from the core network to the terminal."

Niu Zhisheng pointed out that big data processing will consume a lot of energy in the future, and eventually "5G+edge computing" will inevitably encounter energy consumption issues. "The energy consumption of global data centers is very terrible. Some people predict that in the next ten years, cloud servers will need an additional 100,000 megawatts of electricity to be deployed in edge computing."

"A big problem we face at this stage is that the power consumption of 5G base stations is 3 to 4 times that of 4G base stations. Moreover, 5G has a higher frequency and a smaller coverage area. More base stations are needed to cover the entire network," said Niu Zhisheng.

Can we "transmit more information with less power"? Niu Zhisheng suggested that we can turn off servers and other equipment when not in use, or use renewable energy to reduce energy waste. Similarly, AI should also be used in moderation.