What is the truth about the "Lenovo voting incident"?

Hello everyone, I am Xiaozaojun.

Today, I want to talk about the "Lenovo 5G standard voting incident", I believe everyone has heard of it.

In just two days, this topic became a hot topic, with many people on the Internet expressing their opinions and arguing fiercely. Many people were scolding Lenovo, saying that it had no sense of national justice, had sided with the United States, and was a "traitor".

What happened? What is the whole story? Did Lenovo sell out its country? Did it lie?

I believe that many people have not fully understood it. Although there are many articles about this incident on the Internet, I think that many of them are hyped up by laymen who do not understand communications, and they are taken out of context and are extremely misleading.

This incident is very special and very different from previous incidents. Because it has a deep technical background, to truly understand it, you need a certain level of communication knowledge. And the people who are cursing the most and shouting the loudest are the ones who lack communication knowledge the most. . .

I would like to take this opportunity to analyze this incident and popularize relevant communication knowledge. I hope it can help everyone see the truth behind the incident and avoid being exploited by people with bad intentions.

On May 10, posts with content such as "Why didn't Lenovo vote for Huawei" and "Lenovo does not support the Polar solution" began to appear on online social platforms (Zhihu and Hupu).

The content of the post is as follows:

The general meaning of these posts is that Lenovo did not support China's Huawei in the international conference to discuss and determine the 5G standard, but instead supported Qualcomm from the United States.

Public opinion fermented very quickly. For a time, the public was excited and in an uproar. Everyone began to forward the news and launched a massive verbal and written attack on Lenovo.

Lenovo's response speed was not slow, and it quickly issued a notice to clarify and defend itself.

However, the explanation seemed to be useless, netizens did not buy it, and the incident did not subside. As the media dug deeper into the incident, they found that Lenovo seemed to be avoiding the main issue and "did not tell the whole truth."

On the evening of May 11, Huawei, one of the parties involved, also stood up and made a statement.

It can be seen that Huawei wants to help Lenovo out and it recognizes Lenovo's support for it.

However, even so, public opinion still did not let Lenovo go, various doubts and anger were still prevalent, and some people still accused Lenovo of lying and evading the main issue.

So, what are the causes and consequences of that "vote"? Did Lenovo vote for Qualcomm? What impact did Lenovo's vote have? Did Lenovo really "sell out the country"?

Let's continue reading.

As I said before, understanding this incident requires a certain amount of knowledge. Coincidentally, I have already introduced the key knowledge points of this incident in my previous articles.

First of all, this vote is a vote by 3GPP on 5G standards. What is 3GPP and why do we need to hold a meeting? Please see here:

What exactly is 3GPP?

I'm afraid you've heard of this mysterious organization...

Then, what is LDCP code, what is Polar code, what is Turbo code, you can see here:

A brief history of channel coding

For more information about Huawei and Qualcomm, please see here:

What kind of company is Huawei?

Perhaps this is the only company that the entire industry hates...

Simply put, 3GPP is an international organization whose members include most companies in the communications industry. 5G, which we often talk about now, is the fifth-generation mobile communications standard. All its technical standards are decided by 3GPP through meetings and voting. Each company will propose its own plan, and then everyone will vote. The plan with the most support will be confirmed as the standard, and all companies will implement it in the future.

Therefore, in the 3GPP meeting, the direct starting point of each company is the interests of their own company, not the interests of the country. Of course, if the interests of Chinese companies are greater, from a macro and long-term perspective, the interests of the country will be greater (taxation, employment, etc.).

Let’s continue talking about the meeting.

This incident was about the choice of channel coding, which is also a key technical detail of 5G. In order to determine which channel coding technology to use, 3GPP's RAN1 (a working group in the 3GPP organization) held a total of three meetings. They are:

First time: August 2016 (3GPP RAN1 86th time) Lisbon, Portugal

Second: October 2016 (3GPP RAN1 86th Round B) Lisbon, Portugal

Third time: November 2016 (3GPP RAN1 87th) United States

Generally speaking, 3GPP holds a meeting once a quarter. If a meeting is too controversial and no consensus is reached, or if there is too much content and the discussion is not complete or sufficient, an additional meeting will be added. So, the 86th round B mentioned above is such a situation.

Let’s look at them one by one.

First meeting:

August 2016 (3GPP RAN1 86 times)

In this meeting, each party only put forward its own proposals, and no voting was held. In other words, each party explained the advantages of its own proposal and provided some data to all participants so that everyone could understand its own proposal.

Anyway, it's just a discussion, no voting.

What are the specific coding schemes available for 5G? There are only three: LDPC, Polar, and Turbo.

LDPC technology: represented by some American companies including Qualcomm.

Polar Technology: Representatives include some Chinese companies including Huawei.

Turbo2.0 technology: represented by companies from some European countries including France.

Please note that the three schemes were originally proposed by scholars, not industry chain manufacturers. Qualcomm, Huawei and other manufacturers are doing industry research along the ideas of scholars. For specific background, you can see here: A brief history of channel coding .

Second meeting:

October 2016 (3GPP RAN1 86th round B)

This time it’s different. We have to start making decisions, which means voting.

Attention! Attention! Attention!

Here I would like to remind everyone that this vote is not the final decision, but is divided into several votes.

First of all, 5G is divided into three major scenarios:

• eMBB (Enhance Mobile Broadband)

This is mainly used for communication between people and for surfing the Internet.

• mMTC (Massive Machine Type Communication)

The Internet of Things mainly uses this.

• uRLLC (Ultra Reliable & Low Latency Communication)

It is mainly used for services such as intelligent unmanned driving and industrial automation that require low-latency and high-reliability connections.

For ease of understanding, you can think of the three scenarios as three types of networks. In the future, 5G will only have one network, but it will meet different needs. Just like a person, he has three personalities: he is gentle when facing his family, cruel when facing his enemies, and vigilant when facing strangers. (I don’t know if this analogy is appropriate, but many people are really confused about the names of the three scenarios.)

Now, the first 5G scenario we need to realize is eMBB, which means first meeting the communication needs of humans, that is, fast speed and large traffic. (eMBB will also be the fastest and most fully determined 5G standard.)

Therefore, all three meetings discussed the channel coding of eMBB.

On this basis, it is further subdivided into control channel and data channel .

The control channel is used to transmit some management commands and control commands. The data channel is used to transmit specific data messages, sometimes also called the business channel.

For example, if I call your name and you respond to me, this is a control message. If I hand you something, this thing is a data message.

Whether it is a control message or a data message, channel coding must be performed before transmission on the channel.

Coding is divided into long code and short code . The reason for proposing short code is to reduce code length and improve transmission efficiency.

Are you confused?

Draw a picture and you will understand.

The column to be voted is the one for eMBB

The first one to be voted is the long code scheme for the data channel, which is the one in the red box:

After discussion, the Tubor code solution was abandoned first. So, only the LDPC solution promoted by Qualcomm and the Polar code solution promoted by Huawei were left .

To be precise, there are four combinations:

1. Pure LDPC

2. Pure Polar

3、Turbo+LDPC

4、Polar+LDPC

What are the final voting results? Here are the results:

1. LDPC is selected as the long code encoding scheme for the data channel in the 5G eMBB scenario .

2. The short code scheme for the data channel in the eMBB scenario has not been determined. One of the three options, Polar, LDPC, and Turbo, will be selected for future research.

That is, as shown in the following table:

Qualcomm's LDPC won the vote at this conference

The main reasons why LDPC wins:

1. LDPC was proposed a long time ago and has been used for a long time. Some patents have expired (or are close to expiration), and the patent cost is lower.

2. LDPC takes a long time and the technology may be more mature.

In this vote, most companies supported the use of LDPC for long codes in data channel coding, and whether Lenovo supports it or not cannot change this result (it did vote for Qualcomm LDPC).

Third meeting:

November 2016 (3GPP RAN1 87 times) United States

At this meeting, the remaining three options for eMBB were discussed and decided. Because control channels are all control commands, and control commands are often very short (like the examples I just gave, such as "I call you" and "You promise me"), control channel coding rarely involves long codes.

In other words, the only things left to vote are the short codes of the control channel and the short codes of the data channel .

Short code for control channel:

Because Polar Code does have certain performance and efficiency advantages in control channels dominated by short message signals, it received support from most members and won the vote. (Lenovo also voted in favor of Polar Code)

Short code for data channel:

The LDPC led by Qualcomm still won and became the short code coding scheme for data channels.

That is to say, in the end, the coding scheme of the control channel is Polar, and the coding scheme of the data channel is LDPC .

So, how does Lenovo vote on the short code voting for the data channel?

Lenovo refused to say.

However, in the previous meeting minutes, it was shown that Lenovo "supports LDPC as the only coding scheme for data channels", so I personally believe that Lenovo voted in favor of LDPC.

Previous meeting minutes

Huawei's statement also indirectly expressed this meaning. Let's read Huawei's statement again:

Huawei is very precise: Polar is the coding mechanism for the control channel, Lenovo voted in favor

So, in the end, it ends like this:

In short: Polar is used for the control channel and LDPC is used for the data channel .

If you remember clearly, the success of Polar, led by Huawei, in controlling channel coding went viral on everyone’s WeChat Moments at the time, and a bunch of unscrupulous, brainless, and unethical media were boasting that “Chinese standards have become the world’s 5G standards.”

Okay, everyone should be clear about this by now.

So, the conclusion of this incident is:

1 Lenovo's statement is true, but it also hides some things. It did vote in favor of Huawei at the third meeting. However, it did vote in favor of Qualcomm before.

2 In terms of data channel coding, Polar does not win over LDPC.

In Xiaozaojun's opinion, there is a certain degree of coincidence and some special reasons why this old news from 2016 has gone viral on WeChat Moments at this time.

The first point is Lenovo’s own reasons.

Lenovo is really not doing well now. As a leader of the old Chinese IT companies and once the world's largest PC market share, Lenovo has been declining in recent years, with each year getting worse. In the past five years, Lenovo's market value has evaporated by 60%. Earlier this month, Lenovo was kicked out of the Hang Seng Index.

Lenovo's reputation among consumers is also very bad. For example, after acquiring Thinkpad, the once strongest laptop brand, Lenovo's performance has been getting worse and worse. It has turned a high-end brand into a junk brand, which has disappointed countless fans. Its mobile phone product line is also not good. It has made a ZUK brand bankrupt in just three years. Not to mention Apple, even Xiaomi, Huawei, OPPO, and VIVO can't catch up.

The most crucial point is that Lenovo's products are often sold much cheaper abroad than in China, which has led to it gaining the title of "America's conscientious enterprise."

To put it bluntly, Lenovo has accumulated deep resentment among Chinese users and they can no longer tolerate it.

The second reason is the ZTE ban by the United States and the Sino-US trade war.

The ZTE incident has not been resolved yet, and the entire public opinion is in a very sensitive stage recently. After the national sentiment of the people is aroused, they still need to find a place to vent. Unfortunately, the conscience of the United States has been hit by this.

Therefore, there are many reasons why Lenovo got hit this time, and it is not just bad luck.

Having said that, please understand that voting really cannot explain anything, and it cannot be used as a reference standard for "patriotism" or "unpatriotism". In the 3GPP vote, it is normal for domestic companies to side with Qualcomm or other foreign companies. It is really no big deal. This is related to both technology and corporate strategy, and is not simply a game of national power or an expression of national sentiment.

Whether it is this voting incident or other incidents that occur in the future, we should pay attention - first, we must find out the truth of the matter, then understand the reason behind it, and finally express our views based on our own values. We must not be used by people with ulterior motives, and even more so, we must not be used as a gun by others.

If you don't even have the ability to think independently and make rational judgments, you will definitely suffer a great loss in the future.

That’s all I want to say, thank you everyone!