Intel hasn’t been resting with their announcements this year. The world’s largest chipmaker has announced a family of 5G radio modems which include the introduction of the XMM 8000 series. Intel XMM 8060 is the first product of the company in the family of 5G modems.
Intel is firm to provide the fast wireless internet access through 5G technology to the world by 2019. And in order to compete against it’s rival Qualcomm, the company has sped up the process by successfully making 5G calls over 28 GHz spectrum with the Gold Ridge modem( 5G silicon). While Qualcomm has already completed its test using the X50 5G modem which was performed on the 28GHz millimeter wave frequency band. And also it revealed the first 5G smartphone which will be used to test 5G modems, radios, and networks.
Dr. Cormac Conroy, Intel corporate vice president and general manager of the Communication and Devices Group said, “Intel is committed to delivering leading 5G multi-mode modem technology and making sure the transition to 5G is smooth.”
Alex Quach, vice president and general manager of the 5G strategy and program office at Intel says, “5G will unlock things that 4G LTE networks cannot do. 5G lets you slice the network so service providers can provide different levels of service, where they can target the internet of things, phone service, or enterprise service on top of the same network infrastructure.”
The list of announcements isn’t completed yet. Until 5G is fully available, the users would be using 3G and 4G. To cover the gap until early 5G networks, Intel has announced the 4G LTE modems and new XMM 7560 which will support CDMA. You can also observe that all the 4G LTE modems are in 7000 series and the 5G modems in 8000 series like a hierarchy. However, this chip will land on mobile devices in 2019. The company says it achieved gigabit-class speeds at the Mobile World Congress 2017. While, its successor, the XMM 7660 delivers Cat-19 capabilities and supports speeds up to 1.6 gigabits per second. This LTE modem features advanced multiple-input and multiple-output (MIMO), carrier aggregation and a broad range of band support and will be land in commercial devices in 2019.
And don’t forget that Intel is in almost half of the Apple devices. And with the ongoing legal battle between Apple and Qualcomm, Apple is leaning heavily towards Intel’s 5G technology in its futures iPhones. It is a known fact that Intel lags far behind Qualcomm in modem industry and this is the best opportunity for Intel to prove its efficiency.
