Wayne Lam

The promise of 5G has always been to bring the advantages of mobile technology to industries that stand to benefit from it. Just as consumers have realized the upsides of ubiquitous connectivity through smartphones, that kind of transformative power can be applied to businesses using a network of devices and machines.

One of my highlights from CES 2023 was the emerging area of satellite-to-phone connectivity. At the event in Las Vegas, chipmaker Qualcomm demonstrated its Snapdragon Satellite solution designed for future Android-powered smartphones. And MediaTek, Qualcomm’s direct competitor, partnered with Bullitt, manufacturer of rugged smartphones, to show off its standards-based satellite messaging service.

RISC-V, introduced in 2010, is the first novel instruction set architecture (ISA) to gain market traction in decades. New design firms such as SiFive — founded by the credited inventors of RISC-V at the University of California, Berkeley — as well as Ventana, lowRISC and FOSSi were built around this ISA, but many Arm licensees, such as Renesas and Qualcomm, are joining them, adding RISC-V designs to their product portfolios.