Marvell is a recognized leader in the data center chipsets market. However, when it comes to cellular space, despite being a valuable silicon provider to major network vendors, Marvell has largely remained away from the limelight. But that is set to change with the industry pivoting toward virtual, open, and cloud-native RAN architectures. The company, capitalizing on its technology expertise, end-to-end portfolio, and strong partnerships, is set to play a key role in 5G, as networks with these new architectures are starting to get rolled out.

Silent partner to leading cellular infra players

For the last few years, much before the virtual and Open RAN frenzy, Marvell…

Undoubtedly, our future is being driven by technology. The pervasive smartphone experience has programmed many in the “mobile-first” generation to expect almost everything to be untethered, mobile and in many cases autonomous, be it augmented reality/virtual reality headsets, vacuum cleaners, vehicles or machines in factories. I believe all of these will be powered by the same technologies and solutions that drove the spectacular growth of the mobile industry — connectivity, processors (SoCs), touchscreens, cameras and more.

That means battery life — and in turn, power consumption — becomes the fundamental consideration for creating that future. …

by Prakash Sangam, Founder and Principal, Tantra Analyst

The twin events of 3GPP RAN Plenary #92e and Rel. 18 workshops are starting to shape the future of 5G. The plenary substantially advanced Rel.17 development and the workshop kick-started the Rel 18 work. Amidst these two, 3GPP also approved the “5G Advanced” as the marketing name for releases 18 and beyond. Being a 3GPP member, I had the front row seats to witness all the interesting discussions and decisions.

With close to 200 global operators already live with the first phase of 5G, and almost every cellular operator either planning, trialing…

The floodgate of Mobile World Congress 2021 announcements has opened! 5G Open RAN will undoubtedly be the biggest theme among them. On the first day of the event, the 5G behemoth Qualcomm announced the world’s first 3GPP Rel. 16 Small Cell platform FSM200xx as well as a new 5G Distributed Unit (DU) X100 Accelerator Card. Both are set to give the ecosystem a big boost and accelerate the move toward 5G virtual / Open RAN while positioning Qualcomm as a strong infrastructure player.

Rel. 16 Small cells increase capacity and kickstart Industry 4.0

FSM 200xx improves upon its predecessor-the first-gen FSM 100xx-in many ways to further enhance its use in…

On the inauguration day of China Tech day, Qualcomm announced the first 5G-NR IoT modem Qualcomm 315. This is a purpose-built modem for gigabit-class, high-performance Industrial IoT (IIoT) use cases, directly addressing the immediate market need for higher speeds, capacity, and efficiency.

Many often wrongly equate 5G IoT to much-publicized, and over-used applications such as remote-controlled surgeries. Those use cases, called “Mission Critical Services” are the holy grail of 5G IoT, and efforts are on in terms of standardization, prototyping, etc., to make them a reality. …

Founder & Principal of Tantra Analyst, a tech industry consulting firm, with 20+ years of experience working for Qualcomm, Ericsson & AT&T.

5G is the hottest trend now, so much so that even the Covid-19 pandemic, which has badly ravaged the global economy, could not stop its meteoritic rise. Apple’s announcement to support 5G across its portfolio cemented 5G’s market success. With 5G device shipments expected to grow substantially in 2021, naturally, the industry’s focus is on ensuring expanded coverage and delivering on the promise of gigabit speeds and extreme capacity.

However, it is easier said than done, especially for…

Open RAN and virtual RAN have gotten so much media attention lately that some even call it just “hype.” But there is no denying the fact that there has been tremendous commercial traction and meaningful progress in making these concepts mainstream. There was another excellent step in that direction today- a collaboration between long-time Open RAN proponent Vodafone and undisputed radio technology leader Qualcomm to develop reference designs supporting Massive MIMO (MaMIMO) in Open RAN systems.

Growing pains of Open RAN

After more than a decade of discussions and development, Open RAN is marching fast toward becoming mainstream. There has already been incredible progress: launch…

Right after the last Nvidia quarterly earnings release, Jim Cramer, host of CNBC Mad Money spoke to Jensen Huang, CEO of Nvidia regarding the deal with Arm. Most of his questions were softballs, but what caught my attention was Jensen’s comment that Arm was not a must for Nvidia’s success, but a nice to have. That got me thinking and made me take a deeper dive into the rationale for the merger. Here are some of my thoughts on why Nvidia needs Arm more than vice versa.

Nvidia’s announcement of its intent to acquire Arm from Softbank has brought Arm…