Qualcomm Chief Commercial Officer Jim Cathey: 5G+AI empowers the digital future

On June 28, 2023 MWC Shanghai opened grandly. Qualcomm Chief Commercial Officer Jim Cathey delivered a speech titled "5G+AI Empowering the Digital Future" during the GTI International Industry Conference. The full text of the speech is as follows:

Good afternoon, I am very happy to be in Shanghai again and honored to participate in this year's GTI Summit. Currently, we are rapidly moving towards a world where people and everything are intelligently interconnected. The convergence of energy-efficient processing, distributed intelligence, and edge-side connectivity is driving this trend, enabling billions of smart devices to connect to the cloud and each other in real time. At the same time, this trend is empowering new services, business models and experiences, which not only contributes to the digital transformation of the industry, but also changes the way people work, live, communicate and connect.

5G is critical to the digital future. The launch of 5G comes at the right time. It appeared before the epidemic, was implemented in the early stages of AI development, and laid a solid foundation for future 6G. 5G has excellent performance, reliability and capacity and is a key infrastructure for the digital economy.

In China, facing the new opportunities brought by 5G, Qualcomm cooperates with companies in the ecosystem. In order to better seize these opportunities, we have established five 5G joint innovation centers with local governments and partners; we are also collaborating on millimeter wave technology, which is the key to realizing the full potential and value of 5G terminals, networks and services. key. Large-scale deployment of 5G is expected to have a significant impact on global economic growth. In China, it is estimated that by 2035, 5G will create a total economic output of 10 trillion yuan and support 13 million new jobs.

In order to expand 5G to more industries, Qualcomm is cooperating with industry leaders such as China Mobile to promote the evolution of 5G Advanced. 5G Advanced is the second phase of the 5G standard. It will bring enhanced functions and features that enable new industries, use cases and experiences, including AI-driven system design, new optimization for XR and lower complexity IoT terminals. NR-Light (i.e. RedCap). Qualcomm is also researching new technologies and features on the road to 6G. To ensure interoperability and scalability, we need a globally unified 6G standard, which is critical to the development and success of the mobile industry.

AI is another technology that is critical to the digital future, empowering terminals to sense, sense, and operate more autonomously. As the number of Internet-connected terminals and data traffic continues to accelerate, it is not feasible to transmit all content to the cloud for processing. In order to expand AI at scale, it is crucial to integrate AI processing on the terminal side. You may not realize it, but AI is already being applied to smartphones and touches almost every aspect of the smartphone experience—from imaging to modem and RF performance to malware detection.

Running AI on the terminal side can also bring many benefits, such as higher immediacy and reliability, a more personalized experience and better privacy protection. Currently, we are extending these functions to PCs, IoT terminals, automobiles and XR head-mounted display devices, bringing more powerful intelligence to these rich consumer products.

Large language models and generative AI are currently a major trend . As these models accelerate, running them solely in the cloud will become impractical due to the sheer scale of data generated and the costly infrastructure, power, and maintenance requirements of data centers. Based on terminal-side intelligence, Qualcomm is promoting the inevitable shift to a hybrid AI architecture, which distributes AI workloads between edge-side terminals and the cloud to support highly optimized and efficient AI processing. Qualcomm believes that hybrid AI architecture will play an important role in enabling AI large language models to realize their full potential.

The combination of 5G and AI is bringing innovation opportunities to all walks of life. In the industrial field, technologies such as stronger automation control capabilities, predictive maintenance and digital twins are driving the transformation to Industry 4.0. China’s initiatives to promote 5G industrial applications are impressive, especially its plan to build more than 10,000 5G factories in the next five years. In the automotive world, cars are now becoming “connected computers on wheels” integrating advanced processing, intelligence and connectivity capabilities. China's automakers are at the forefront of the digital transformation of automobiles, having launched mass-produced models that support 5G and C-V2X.

Qualcomm has been rooted in China for nearly 30 years. Over the years, we have been working closely with China's mobile ecosystem, including operators, terminal manufacturers, and application developers, to support their continued growth. I am very proud that Qualcomm has established strong relationships with many Chinese companies and is committed to continued cooperation to help China accelerate its digital future.

Thank you all, and you are welcome to continue to pay attention to other aspects of this conference.