Qualcomm Teases 5G Intelligent Edge Box for Hyperscalers

LAS VEGAS — Qualcomm showcased broad advancements in 5G for the automotive sector, a new product for edge computing and data centers, and the “world’s first 5G PC” in partnership with Lenovo amid a flurry of announcements at CES 2020. LAS VEGAS — Qualcomm showcased broad advancements in 5G for the automotive sector, a new product for edge computing and data centers, and the “world’s first 5G PC” in partnership with Lenovo amid a flurry of announcements at CES 2020. More than 340 operators are investing in 5G and at least one billion 5G devices will be connected by 2023, Qualcomm President Cristiano Amon said during a press conference at the annual tech industry gathering in the desert. The total number of 5G connections will also nearly triple to 2.8 billion by 2025, he added. “2020 is the year that we expect 5G to scale and it’s really moving faster than 4G despite skepticism,” Amon said. As 5G gains momentum, Qualcomm is pushing into new markets and targeting opportunities that 5G networks will enable and rely upon. One such area of heightened focus for the company is edge computing and data centers. “5G is also changing the cloud with the appearance of the edge cloud that really gets processing done at the edge” and takes full advantage of the 5G’s bandwidth and latency characteristics, Amon said. The edge cloud enables new uses but it also has different requirements with respect to processing capabilities and total cost of ownership, he explained. The edge cloud is where Qualcomm decided to enter the data center space initially with its Cloud AI 100, a card for data centers that it revealed last year. The company took another step this week with its second product for edge computing: an intelligent edge box that Amon showed on stage “Right now you see the Qualcomm logo on this but it’s the result of a design plan with a major hyperscaler company that is actually building the first 5G intelligent edge box for 5G connectivity in artificial intelligence (AI) processing and using AI 100,” he said, adding that the product will be “deployed commercially at scale in the second half of this year.” Qualcomm plans to share more details about the intelligent edge box, including the unnamed hyperscaler, in the first half of 2020. The “big news” of the day, according to Amon, involves the company’s efforts to bring 5G connectivity to laptop computers. “We’re in the PC business to stay. This is not a one-time experience,” he said. Lenovo’s Yoga 5G, which features Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8xc processor, is the first Arm-based laptop with 5G connectivity and it is slated for release sometime this spring. 5G PCs are now a reality and many more devices will follow, Amon said. Qualcomm also announced a series of initiatives and services for autonomous driving, which is routinely referred to as a valuable use case for 5G. The vendor introduced the Snapdragon Ride Platform, which aims to lower costs and increase efficiency in the autonomous driving stack; a reference platform for vehicles and roadside units design to advance cellular vehicle-to-everything (C-V2X) connectivity; and a connected-car services suite to maintain cockpit and telematics systems. “The automotive sector is one of the most exciting new businesses for Qualcomm,” Amon said. “Technology is fundamentally changing transportation, from benefits of increasing safety on the road to increasing efficiency in the consumption of fuel, but also the transformation of the experience behind the wheel with new experiences and new services.”