Meng Pu, Chairman of Qualcomm China: The integration of 5G and AI will accelerate the digital transformation of various industries, become a dual engine driving the growth of the digital economy, and open up the digital future

Author: Pu ZixuOn November 6, 2023, the "Data Symbiosis Intelligent Future 2023 Global Digital Conference" jointly organized by NetEase and the Qingpu District Government of Shanghai officially kicked off at the National Convention and Exhibition Center (the main venue of the CIIE). The conference brought together Chinese and foreign scientists, entrepreneurs, scholars, and other pioneers to explore the future trends of the digital industry, capture new drivers of China's economy, and strive to answer the pain points and difficulties related to the digital economy

Author: Pu Zixu

On November 6, 2023, the "Data Symbiosis Intelligent Future 2023 Global Digital Conference" jointly organized by NetEase and the Qingpu District Government of Shanghai officially kicked off at the National Convention and Exhibition Center (the main venue of the CIIE). The conference brought together Chinese and foreign scientists, entrepreneurs, scholars, and other pioneers to explore the future trends of the digital industry, capture new drivers of China's economy, and strive to answer the pain points and difficulties related to the digital economy. Together, we will explore the opportunities and challenges of digital China.

On site, Meng Pu, Chairman of Qualcomm China, delivered a keynote speech titled "Innovation, Collaboration, 5G+AI Empowering the Digital Future". Meng Pu pointed out that innovation and cooperation are key elements for Qualcomm and many companies facing digital transformation. The "5G+AI" will usher in a new wave of digital economy transformation in the future, and its opportunities and possibilities will accelerate the digital transformation of various industries.

Meng Pu emphasized that the integration of 5G and AI will accelerate the digital transformation of various industries, become a dual engine driving the growth of the digital economy, and open up the digital future. He stated that 5G and AI empower thousands of industries, bringing a new innovation cycle and development opportunities for intelligent connected terminals and the terminal industry.

Meng Pu stated that empowering intelligent connected vehicles with 5G and AI has become a symbol of the new era. In addition, the integration of 5G+AI can also bring a leap in intelligence to the manufacturing industry. The high-speed connection of 5G supports the expansion of AI to the edge side, promoting the expansion of intelligent scale, and achieving real-time sharing of scenario data and cloud.

Finally, Meng Pu talked about the key technologies represented by 5G and AI, which are becoming the fundamental capabilities to promote digital transformation in various industries. In the future, Qualcomm hopes to work with more partners to promote industry integration and innovation, and make the digital future a reality.

The following is an excerpt from the keynote speech by Meng Pu, Chairman of Qualcomm China:

Hello everyone, I am very happy to have the opportunity to come here.

In 2018, the first CIIE was successfully held and Qualcomm participated for the first time. At that time, 5G had not yet been commercially available globally, so at the Qualcomm booth of the first CIIE, we were showcasing pre commercial 5G products, such as the connectivity testing engineering machines developed by Qualcomm for global mobile communication industry operators, system manufacturers, and terminal manufacturers. In 2019, Qualcomm once again participated in the exhibition and demonstrated to everyone at the 2nd CIIE the 5G smartphone developed by Chinese manufacturers in collaboration with Qualcomm for 5G commercial use in China and globally - this is the world's first generation 5G commercial product. Another year later, at the third CIIE, Qualcomm was still absent. Since the commercialization of 5G, 5G technology has been continuously developing. Influenced by its technological characteristics, 5G has become a universal connection platform, and there is gradually a trend of 5G+AI integration development. Therefore, at the CIIE that year, we presented a case of 5G empowering a thousand industries - a humanoid table tennis robot driven by 5G+AI. With the development in recent years, 5G and AI technologies have brought us numerous applications, making our lives more convenient, and also driving the digital development process in various aspects of society. Therefore, the theme of the speech I would like to share with you today is "Innovation, Collaboration, 5G+AI Empowering the Digital Future".

Digital transformation has been one of the most important development trends in the past few years, with many companies accelerating the adoption of digital tools and platforms globally to compete and collaborate in the rapidly changing business environment.

5G is becoming a technology for achieving the "last mile" connection, and AI is achieving scale on the edge, helping enterprises and the public improve production and work efficiency. Based on this, the digitalization level of enterprises is continuously improving. Intelligent terminals such as smartphones, personal computers (PCs), and intelligent connected vehicles, empowered by 5G high-speed wireless connection and AI, have penetrated into our daily life and work, becoming effective tools for us. From the perspective of technology companies, we are currently in a very exciting and inspiring window period - where 5G and AI technologies are developing and alternating, transforming numerous industries, accelerating the development of the digital economy, and changing the way we experience the world to create a better life.

Qualcomm has been a technology company focused on mobile computing and connectivity since its inception. So, from 3G to 4G, and then to the 5G era, we have always had in-depth cooperation with the global mobile communication industry chain. The same applies to the Chinese mobile communication industry chain, where we work together and make progress together. Nowadays, 5G has been commercially available globally for over 4 years, and its evolution has reached the middle stage. Currently, the mobile communication industry often mentions that "5G Advanced" is a new stage of 5G evolution. With the development of technical standards, 5GAdvanced will efficiently utilize more spectrum, support faster download speeds, reduce latency, and support more industrial application scenarios. The above are the development and progress of global 5G that we are currently witnessing.

For example, in the process of continuously driving the evolution of 5G, the millimeter wave frequency band has very important value because it affects the development of wireless connection technology from multiple aspects. Compared to the frequency band below 6GHz, the millimeter wave frequency band has more spectrum, so it can not only improve 5G connection performance and provide more bandwidth, but also serve as a very important starting point when we welcome 6G in the coming years. Therefore, from an industry perspective, the application of millimeter waves is currently being discussed globally. In China, Qualcomm has reached in-depth cooperation with Chinese operators and industry partners to jointly promote the progress and maturity of 5G millimeter wave related technologies.

With the rise of the 5G technology revolution, artificial intelligence technology has also developed rapidly in various aspects, especially after the emergence of ChatGPT at the end of last year, generative AI has sparked widespread discussion. AI has penetrated into our daily lives, will it be beneficial for our future or will it bring challenges? There is a lot of discussion about this in various industries in society. However, from the perspective of technological development, AI will bring convenience to us in multiple fields and accelerate digital transformation. Especially, if technologies such as generative AI can be implemented on the terminal side and combined with cloud based large models, it will bring unprecedented convenience to our society. This will not only affect the vertical industry, but also profoundly affect our daily lives.

The rise of generative AI models has brought us a question worth considering, which is how to make it more convenient and efficient for more people to enjoy the development achievements of AI? How can generative AI not only be limited to the cloud, but also benefit more people? Intelligent terminals collaborate with the cloud in applications, redistributing the computing and processing capabilities of the entire system in the most efficient way, achieving more powerful, efficient, and highly optimized AI applications.

The key to implementing a hybrid AI architecture and expanding generative AI to a wider global scope is terminal side AI. Nowadays, terminal devices such as smartphones and PCs have become an indispensable part of people's daily lives. The continuous upgrading of these devices will further highlight the advantages of terminal side AI, which can run billions of parameter models, while more complex models will use cloud computing seamlessly perceived by users as needed. With the improvement of AI processing capacity on the terminal side, we can further reduce the load on the cloud, which helps to more efficiently utilize limited network resources and bandwidth.

How to make AI run more efficiently in a low-power environment? This is the area that Qualcomm is most concerned about in AI research and development. We have been committed to continuously driving performance and power consumption improvement by providing efficient hardware, algorithms, and software tools. In addition, Qualcomm has also released a unified Qualcomm AI software stack that enables cross category terminal operation through a single software combination, empowering the entire ecosystem. Seamless connection between edge or terminal side artificial intelligence and cloud based artificial intelligence, forming the best configuration.

In the future, generative AI will make smartphones a true digital assistant, allowing people to communicate naturally with their phones and receive appropriate responses. Cars will also become an important generative AI operating platform, providing highly personalized experiences for driving and riding. And these are just the beginning. The application prospects of terminal side AI are full of hope and vitality. We look forward to exploring new business models and innovative applications with more partners in the future, so that artificial intelligence can benefit more people and bring more convenient and enjoyable digital life.

The integration of 5G and AI will accelerate the digital transformation of various industries, become a dual engine driving the growth of the digital economy, and open up the digital future. In the past five years, Qualcomm has collaborated with Chinese industry partners in related fields and achieved some results. Below are a few specific examples that I would like to share with you.

Firstly, 5G and AI empower thousands of industries, driving changes in productivity and bringing a new innovation cycle and development opportunities to the intelligent connected terminals and terminal industry. This year, we have launched a mobile platform specifically designed for generative AI, including the third-generation Snapdragon 8 flagship platform and the all-new Snapdragon XElite platform specifically designed for the next generation PC experience. These platforms' leading AI processing capabilities and the world's fastest connectivity enable seamless multitasking and a new intuitive interactive experience. In the upcoming top tier computing era, providing an accelerated end-user experience. Over the past 30 years, Qualcomm has been closely collaborating with Chinese partners to support their business development both domestically and globally. As of now, more than half of Qualcomm's flagship platforms have been launched globally by Chinese mobile phone manufacturers.

5G and AI are also important cornerstones for building an intelligent interconnected world for all things, and the metaverse that has been hotly discussed in recent years is one of the important application scenarios that showcase the potential of 5G and AI. We believe that XR - the collective term for virtual reality, augmented reality, and hybrid reality - can become an entry point into the metaverse and a promising new generation of mobile computing platforms. At present, the Snapdragon technology platform has enabled over 80 XR devices to be launched globally, with approximately 40% of these devices being built by Chinese manufacturers through joint cooperation between Qualcomm and Chinese partners.

In the automotive industry, Qualcomm showcased an electric vehicle under Geely at the 4th China Import Expo in 2021. Driven by the new energy vehicle revolution and intelligent networking technology, the automotive industry has undergone tremendous changes, with technology rapidly advancing and overlapping. Therefore, we believe that empowering intelligent connected vehicles with 5G and AI has become a symbol of the new era. Qualcomm has also collaborated with numerous global automotive manufacturers and industry chains, making the automotive industry one of our rapidly growing areas of cooperation. In the past two years, Qualcomm's "circle of friends" in China has become increasingly large with the development of intelligent connected vehicles. We have collaborated with more than 40 Chinese car brands to release over 100 new models using Qualcomm Snapdragon digital chassis technology, fully demonstrating the application of intelligent connected technology in the field of new energy vehicles.

When it comes to empowering thousands of industries with 5G+AI, the important role of 5G+industrial manufacturing cannot be ignored. The integration of 5G and AI has brought a leap in intelligence to the manufacturing industry. The high-speed connection of 5G supports AI extension to edge terminals, promoting the expansion of intelligent scale and achieving real-time sharing of scenario data and cloud. In 2022, Qualcomm collaborated with partners such as China Industrial Internet Research Institute, China Telecom, and China Mobile Communications to carry out the 5G fully connected factory project at Tongli Elevator Jiangsu Kunshan Industrial Park. Qualcomm has provided comprehensive technical support, using China Telecom's 5G private network and China Mobile's 5G module, to create a 5G technology private network based on Qualcomm solutions for the needs of Tongli Elevator Factory. With the help of 5G transmission technology, multiple industrial internet applications have been successfully implemented. This project was rated as a "demonstration case of technological innovation services" at the 2023 Trade Fair.

5G and AI also provide innovative ways to support sustainable development. For example, in the energy sector, 5G and AI have promoted the development of renewable energy and distributed power generation, achieving energy conservation and efficiency improvement. It is expected that gas and electricity consumption will be reduced by 12%. In the field of agriculture, intelligent and interconnected drones can patrol and determine areas that need to be sprayed with insecticides, and it is expected that the use of insecticides will be reduced by 50%. In the field of intelligent transportation, the application of intelligent connected vehicles can help optimize traffic flow, improve fuel efficiency, and reduce traffic accidents. According to predictions, the lanes and traffic management systems enabled by cellular connected intelligent connected vehicles can reduce fuel consumption by up to 20%.

Nowadays, key technologies represented by 5G and AI are becoming the fundamental capabilities to promote digital transformation in various industries. In the future, we hope to work with more partners to promote industry integration and innovation, expand and deepen cooperation with numerous industry partners, and promote the digital future to become a reality.

Thank you again and look forward to more opportunities for communication and cooperation with you in the future. Thank you all!

-End-