Tech company Intel has opened the race to take control of the 5G market, but their focus is less on installing 5G-capable data chips into the newest smartphones, and more on building the right infrastructure to host 5G.
The US company unveiled its latest chips under the codename Snow Ridge at CES in Las Vegas. These new chips are not designed for smartphones or tablets, but instead for wireless base stations. By 2022, Intel manager Navin Shenoy predicts the company will have conquered 40% of this market.
Intel's news was somewhat dwarfed by competitor Qualcomm, which announced its 5G technology would be installed in at least 30 devices this year, in smartphones from pretty much every relevant Android manufacturer. Intel did also announce the launch of its own 5G modems for smartphones – but they're not due to appear until late this year.
But, Intel probably has one more trick up its sleeve: Apple. Experts predict that the next generation of iPhones will have Intel's technology installed, seeing as Apple is embroiled in a bitter legal battle with Qualcomm.
Intel's 5G server chips will apparently be able to separately use different data streams for entirely different tasks with a bandwidth of 100 gigabits per second.
The company showed off how the system was able to ensure the life-saving technology of a patient was always prioritised and pushed to the front of the queue, and was not slowed down in any way by other uses of the 5G network.
Intel also announced new generations of chips for desktop PCs and server computers. The chip family called Cascade Lake, for instance, is designed to be able to cope with unimaginable amounts of data from the online Chinese retailer Alibaba. Intel's machine learning calculations meanwhile will be used by social media giant Facebook. – dpa
