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• Qualcomm unveils new features in Snapdragon X70 Modem-RF system
  in 5G
  By Chris Coughlan

  Qualcomm Technologies announced at the Qualcomm 5G Summit event new capabilities and milestones for the Snapdragon X70 5G Modem-RF System.

  Qualcomm says that this builds on the fifth-generation 5G modem-to-antenna solution announced in February at MWC Barcelona.

  Harnessing the power of AI for breakthrough 5G performance with 10 Gigabit 5G downloads, incredible upload speeds, low latency, coverage, and power efficiency, Snapdragon X70 offers ultimate flexibility to global 5G operators to maximise spectrum resources for the best possible 5G connectivity.

  Snapdragon X70 provides advanced capabilities such as Qualcomm 5G AI Suite, Qualcomm® 5G Ultra-Low Latency Suite, Qualcomm® 5G PowerSave Gen 3, uplink carrier aggregation, standalone mmWave and 4X sub-6 carrier aggregation to achieve unmatched 5G performance.

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  New features and achievements facilitated by the upgradable architecture of Snapdragon X70 include:

  Qualcomm Smart Transmit 3.0 technology, the company says this is an upgraded system-level feature licensed by Qualcomm Technologies that now extends support to Wi-Fi and Bluetooth transmit power management. It enables real-time averaging of transmit power across 2G-5G, mmWave, Wi-Fi (2.4GHz 6/6E/7), and Bluetooth (2.4) radios to superior radio performance.

  

  Qualcomm advises that Smart Transmit 3.0 extends 5G coverage and improve uplink speeds, optimising transmissions across cellular, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth antennas. Smart Transmit 3.0 helps devices smartly manage transmit power, allowing users to enjoy faster, more reliable connectivity.

  5G standalone mmWave connection <<bold>> , with peak speeds of more than 8 Gbps achieved using Keysight’s 5G Protocol R&D Toolset with a test 5G device powered by Snapdragon X70. Qualcomm stated that 5G standalone mmWave allows for the deployment of 5G mmWave networks and devices without using an anchor on sub-6 GHz spectrum. This gives operators more flexibility to deliver wireless fibre broadband access with multi-Gigabit speeds and ultra-low latency to residential and commercial customers. Through this product demonstration, Qualcomm says it illustrates its commitment to new and world-class 5G advancements for devices and networks.

  

  “Snapdragon X70 gives operators the ability to deliver extreme 5G capacity, multi-Gigabit data speeds, and new use cases across devices from smartphones to laptops, fixed wireless access equipment, industrial machines, and more,” said Qualcomm Technologies senior vice president and general manager cellular modems and infrastructure Durga Malladi. “We look forward to working with industry leaders to advance 5G to power best-in-class connectivity experiences at the connected intelligent edge and transform industries across consumer, enterprise and industrial settings.”

  At the Qualcomm 5G Summit event, the company also demonstrated other Snapdragon X70 capabilities, such as AI-enhanced 5G performance, and 5G sub-6 GHz carrier aggregation across three TDD channels – delivering up to 6 Gbps peak download speeds. 5G carrier aggregation enables enhanced average speeds and more robust connections in challenging conditions, such as cell-edge far from the cellular base stations.

  

  Snapdragon X70 is currently sampling to customers. Commercial mobile devices based on Snapdragon X70 are expected to launch by late 2022. For technical details, please visit the Snapdragon X70 webpage here.
• Qualcomm a catalyst for smarter and safer autonomous robots
  in 5G
  By Chris Coughlan

  As 5G proliferates beyond the smartphone, Qualcomm Technologies is acting as a catalyst in enabling 5G to scale and revolutionise the robotics industry.

  At the annual Qualcomm 5G Summit event, the company unveiled an expanded roadmap of cutting-edge 5G and edge-AI robotics solutions with the introduction of the Qualcomm Robotics RB6 Platform and the Qualcomm RB5 AMR Reference Design.

  Qualcomm says its latest advanced edge-AI and robotics solutions will support the creation of more productive, autonomous, and advanced robots.

  The solutions will help unlock new commercial realities including AMRs, delivery robots, highly automated manufacturing robots, collaborative robots, UAM aircrafts, industrial drone infrastructure, autonomous defense solutions, and beyond, the company claims.

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  The company says that bringing together its Qualcomm AI Engine and 5G capabilities will unleash cutting-edge applications and possibilities including the following examples to create smarter and safer robots and environments:

  • Enhanced autonomy for delivery robots roaming the streets.
  • Seamless fleet management coordination across AMRs in industrial spaces.
  • Real-time data and insights that empower critical decision making across manufacturing and logistics.
  • Next-generation intelligence to support safe and autonomous urban air mobility transportation.

  The Qualcomm Robotics RB6 Platform and the Qualcomm RB5 AMR Reference Design will support evolving applications for OEMs and robot manufacturers looking to integrate ground robots in industrial use cases across sectors including government service applications, logistics, healthcare, retail, warehousing, agriculture, construction, utilities, and more, Qualcomm claims. The new solutions will accelerate the digital transformation of industries and serve as a key enabler for Industry 4.0.

  "Building on the successful growth and traction of Qualcomm Technologies' leading robotics solutions, our expanded roadmap of solutions will help bring enhanced AI and 5G technologies to support smarter, safer, and more advanced innovations across robotics, drones and intelligent machines," said Qualcomm Technologies drones and intelligent machines senior director of business development and head of autonomous robotics Dev Singh.

  "We are fuelling robotics innovations with 5G connectivity and premium edge-AI that will transform how we think and approach challenges and ever-evolving industry expectations in the digital economy."

  Unleashing 5G robotics innovation with expanded premium features

  Built on the foundation of the company’s leading robotics platforms, the Qualcomm Robotics RB6 platform sits at the premium tier of Qualcomm's robotics solutions.

  Qualcomm say the new solution delivers state-of-the-art 5G connectivity with support for global sub-6GHz and mmWave bands in mainstream, enterprise, and private networks.

  Qualcomm advised that their robotics platforms have flexible architecture with expansion cards to support evolving connectivity features allowing Qualcomm Robotics RB6 platform to deliver support for 3GPP Release 15, and Releases 16, 17 and 18 features as cards become available in the future.

  Qualcomm goes on to claim the platform brings best-in-class, premium, edge AI and video processing capabilities through the enhanced Qualcomm AI Engine, with support for 70 – 200 Trillion-Operations-Per-Second (TOPS) (INT8).

  Qualcomm also claim that its RB5 AMR Reference design is the world’s first AMR reference design to offer tightly integrated enhanced AI and 5G-capabilities. They say that this new solution helps accelerate development for commercial, enterprise, and industrial robots, unleashing innovative possibilities for industries looking to adopt robotics solutions and realise the benefits of the solutions at the connected intelligent edge.

  Empowering developers with ease

  The Qualcomm Robotics RB6 platform is comprised of an extensive set of hardware and software development tools that are comprehensive, customisable, and easy-to-use. Developers have flexible software capabilities with a fully integrated, premium AI Software Development Kit (SDK), the Qualcomm Intelligent Multimedia SDK. This SDK brings together multimedia, AI and ML, computer vision (CV), and networking building blocks to support end to end deployment of robotic applications, the company continued.

  Global traction and ecosystem validation

  Qualcomm say it continues to collaborate with leading robotics, drones, and intelligent machines ecosystem leaders to drive innovation for premium 5G, and edge-AI enabled solutions including the likes of ADLINK, Akasha Imaging (an Alphabet company), Cyngn, ForwardX, FutureMind, Hyundai Robotics, inVia Robotics, LG Electronics, Microsoft Azure private MEC, ModalAI, Naver Labs, Pudu Robotics, Samsung Electronics, Teledyne Flir, Thundercomm, and more.

  To enable the next generation of robotics solutions and designs, Qualcomm Technologies is continuing to collaborate with TDK to further enhance the capabilities of the Qualcomm Robotics roadmap of cutting- edge solutions.

  Qualcomm says that TDK has added their enhanced sensor technologies for premium robotics applications as part of Qualcomm Technologies’ latest robotics product offerings.

  Qualcomm added that its RB5 AMR Reference Design is available for pre-sale now through ModalAI and the Qualcomm Robotics RB6 development kit is available for sale through Thundercomm.
• Hitachi Vantara dubs Knight the new ANZ MD
  in People Moves
  By Stephen Withers

  Digitalisation specialist Hitachi Vantara has appointed Nathan Knight to the role of ANZ vice president and managing director.

  "Leveraging data to create value in business and society requires deep industry experience," said Hitachi Vantara APAC digital infrastructure business unit vice president and general manager Adrian Johnson.

  "Bringing the best leadership talents to our business ensures that Hitachi Vantara can continue to expand and win in the competitive ANZ market. I believe that Nathan's enthusiasm, international work experience and successful track record will elevate our ANZ business to the next level."

  Johnson was Knight's predecessor in the ANZ role.

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  Knight joins the company from Lenovo, where he was most recently managing director of the ANZ infrastructure solutions group.

  He previously held management roles at Acer, HPE, Talkingtech, Ingram Micro, and Renaissance, in the UK and his home country New Zealand.

  Knight holds a bachelor of business degree from Auckland University of Technology, and undertook the business directors' programme at the Cranfield School of Management (UK).

  "My 20 plus years' career in technology underpins my understanding of the transformation that technology can deliver to organisations in the public and private sectors, from enterprise through to SMB," said Knight.

  "I know businesses are on a constant transformational journey to enhance relevance, competitiveness and deliver new services to their customers. I am proud to be joining a company with an exceptional legacy and pedigree in delivering the changes for their customers through continual technology innovation."
• Remotely exploitable flaws found in codec used by many Android phones
  in Security
  By Sam Varghese

  Researchers from Check Point Research, part of the Israeli firm Check Point, have released barebones details about remotely exploitable vulnerabilities in a media codec used by Android phones that are built atop SoCs from Qualcomm and MediaTek.

  In a statement, the researchers said on Thursday the vulnerabilities had been found in the ALAC format — Apple Lossless Audio Codec — and patched in December 2021 by the two chip companies.

  Check Point did not specify why it had waited so long to release the few details it did about this vulnerability. Neither Qualcomm nor MediaTek have issued public statements about these vulnerabilities.

  Qualcomm assigned CVE-2021-30351 for the vulnerabilities in its December update, while MediaTek assigned CVE-2021-0674 and CVE-2021-0675 to the ALAC flaws in the same month.

  {loadposition sam08}The Israeli firm claimed two-thirds of all Android smartphones sold in 2021 were vulnerable. Full details of the flaws will be presented at the CanSecWest security conference to be held from 18 to 20 May.

  CheckPointSW: .@_CPResearch_ discovered vulnerabilities in the #ALAC format that could have led an attacker to remotely get access to its media and audio conversations. CPR estimates that over two-thirds of the world's phones were vulnerable at some poin… pic.twitter.com/U6Uuv6o3GI

  — CheckPointNederland (@CheckPoint_NL) April 21, 2022

  The researchers said ALAC had been developed by Apple and first used in 2004 for lossless data compression.

  They said the code had been open-sourced in 2011 and, since then, had been used in non-Apple devices. No specific devices were mentioned.

  "Since then Apple has been updating the proprietary version of the decoder several times, fixing and patching security issues, but the shared code has not been patched since 2011," the researchers noted.

  "Many third-party vendors use the Apple-supplied code as the basis for their own ALAC implementations, and it’s fair to assume that many of them do not maintain the external code."

  They said the vulnerabilities could be used for a remote attack. This could "range from malware execution to an attacker gaining control over a user’s multimedia data, including streaming from a compromised machine’s camera".

  "In addition, an unprivileged Android app could use these vulnerabilities to escalate its privileges and gain access to media data and user conversations," the statement said.

  Thanks to Dan Goodin of Ars Technica for a link to the Check Point statement.
• Sales of data centre gear continue to grow thanks to surging cloud provider spending
  in Data Centres
  By Chris Coughlan

  Final 2021 data from the Synergy Research Group shows that worldwide spend on data centre IT hardware and software grew by 10% from 2020, primarily thanks to a 20% jump in spending on public cloud infrastructure, which pushed it to an all-time high.

  Synergy Research Group said that cloud providers continue to invest heavily in their data centres to satisfy the ever-increasing demand for their services. Meanwhile enterprise spending on their own data centre infrastructure bounced back a little in 2021 by growing 3%, following a 6% decline in 2020.

  The data shows that in terms of full-year 2021 market share, ODMs in aggregate account for the largest portion of the public cloud market, with Inspur, Dell and Microsoft being the leading individual vendors, all having a similar market share. The 2021 market leaders in enterprise infrastructure were Microsoft and Dell, followed at a distance by HPE, Cisco, VMware and IBM.

  Total data centre infrastructure equipment revenues, including both cloud and non-cloud hardware and software, were US$185 billion in 2021, with public cloud infrastructure now accounting for 47% of the total, Synergy added.

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  The main hardware-oriented segments of servers, storage and networking in aggregate accounted for 77% of the data centre infrastructure market. OS, virtualisation software, cloud management and network security account for the balance.

  Synergy says that by segment, Dell is the overall leader in server and storage revenues, with Inspur being a clear leader in server sales to public cloud providers. Cisco is dominant in the networking segment, while Microsoft features heavily in the rankings due to its position in server OS and virtualisation applications. Outside of these four, the other leading vendors in the market are HPE, Huawei, VMware, Lenovo and IBM.

  Synergy Research Group chief analyst John Dinsdale said, “The total data center equipment market continues to expand with overall 2021 growth rate picking up after two relatively subdued years. The biggest story is the ever-increasing share of the market that is accounted for by sales to public cloud providers, who now account for almost half of all spending on data center gear.

  “We forecast that these trends will continue over the next five years, with double-digit annual growth in sales to cloud providers helping to offset a somewhat flat enterprise market.

  "In the server segment of the market, unit shipments to public cloud providers have now far surpassed enterprise volumes, though the difference in value of the two market verticals is much less pronounced due to higher enterprise server ASPs. That gap in value will grow as public cloud server volumes continue to surge,” Dinsdale concluded.