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After five years, the World 5G Conference has become a must-attend event for the global industry. Halfway through, AI empowering 5G has become increasingly effective. At the 2023 World 5G Conference held in Zhengzhou, Henan Province, the evolution and combination of technical standards in two different fields became a hot topic.
In an interview with Science and Technology Daily, Meng Pu, chairman of Qualcomm China, said that since its official commercial use in 2019, 5G has driven the digital transformation of a large number of industries. At the same time, AI has joined the ranks of innovation with an astonishing development speed and strong potential. The combination of the two has a far-reaching impact on the future of wireless communications, economic growth, and industrial upgrading.
5G is growing in the process of continuous evolution
"We have gone through the process of 3G, 4G to 5G with many partners, and jointly promoted the rapid development of the mobile industry, forming a unique 'ten-year one G' technology evolution cycle in the field of wireless communication." Meng Pu said, "Like every generation in the past, the development of 5G is not achieved overnight. Today, many applications of 5G have emerged in various vertical fields. How to popularize these application cases and solve the pain points of network and terminal applications still depends on the joint efforts of colleagues in the industry. The development of 5G still has a long way to go."
Although the 5G-A (5G-Advanced) standard, a phased achievement of 5G, has not been finalized, like every generation of technology cycle, the industry chain represented by Qualcomm has already begun to promote the implementation of key technologies.
The key core communication module in the mobile phone is called the modem, which is used for signal connection. The Qualcomm Snapdragon X75 modem and RF system released at the beginning of this year have begun to support some features of 5G-A. At this year's World Internet Conference, the Snapdragon X75 modem and RF system were awarded the technology innovation award - "World Internet Conference Leading Technology Award".
Meng Pu believes that as of now, 5G has achieved many technical features. For example, large bandwidth, low latency, high reliability, and massive IoT connections. There are differences in the speed of implementation of these technical features. 5G is far from releasing its full potential. One of the important reasons is the limited frequency.
Meng Pu said: "The development of communication technology is gradual. In the process of continuous evolution of 5G technology, we have been calling for attention to the application of more spectrum. With the large-scale deployment of 5G and its accelerated expansion to more terminals and applications, how to fully develop and utilize higher spectrum on the existing basis will lay the foundation for promoting the application of terahertz (THz) and millimeter wave spectrum in 6G. We are also communicating with all parties in the industry and are committed to promoting the application of 5G in the millimeter wave frequency band, so as to truly give play to the technical characteristics of 5G large bandwidth."
AI drives technology upgrade
Meng Pu emphasized that 5G+AI empowers thousands of industries and needs to be implemented in specific industries one by one. Terminal-side AI is crucial. All electronic products such as cars, laptops, VR/AR glasses can be turned into smart terminals, which brings new opportunities to Qualcomm and provides more possibilities for industrial upgrading.
Meng Pu said: "We believe that the combination of terminal-side generative AI applications and cloud-based big models can accelerate the application of 5G in thousands of industries. In the coordinated development of the two basic technologies of 5G and AI, Qualcomm attaches great importance to the application of generative AI in mobile environments."
At the Mobile World Congress held in Barcelona at the end of February this year, Qualcomm demonstrated the world's first terminal-side demonstration screen of a generative AI big model for text and image running on an Android phone. The AI big model supports more than 1 billion parameters and can perform 20 steps of reasoning in 15 seconds to convert the input text into an image.
Meng Pu said: "In less than a year, the application of generative AI on the terminal side has made rapid progress. Running such a demonstration on a smartphone is just the beginning. Next year, the terminal side will support models with higher parameters. The new smart terminal will play an unprecedented role in a more diverse, convenient, connected and intelligent world."