MediaTek and Intel Collaborate to Bring 5G Connectivity to PCs

With the much-anticipated 5G rollout expected to begin in earnest in the new year, multinational tech conglomerates are positioning themselves to get a foothold in the burgeoning market by acquiring intellectual property from rivals and forging alliances with would-be competitors, like a high-tech version of Game of Thrones.  In August, Apple agreed to pay approximately 1 billion dollars for Intel’s smartphone modem business, a move industry experts believe could point to Apple designing its own chips for 5G-enabled smartphones and laptops rather than partnering with other developers.  For its part, Intel wants to gain purchase in the 5G modem market, leading the tech giant to form a partnership with Taiwan-based semiconductor MediaTek to design 5G modems for laptops.

MediaTek, in conjunction with the announcement of its affiliation with Intel, also announced the debut of the Dimensity series, a family of 5G SoCs for smartphones and other connected devices. The first in the chipset, the Dimensity 1000, is a 7nm chip that includes an integrated 5G modem (unlike competitor Qualcomm’s latest offering for the highest tier of the upcoming generation, which requires a discrete modem).  The Dimensity 1000 is the first chip to feature dual 5G SIM technology and delivers the fastest throughput on the market (4.7 Gbps downlink and 2.5 uplink speeds over sub-6GHz networks). Additionally, the chip can provide more than 1Gbps wireless uplink/downlink speeds by integrating the latest WiFi 6 and Bluetooth 5.1+ standards for local wireless connectivity, according to the company.  The chip features four Arm Cortex-A77 and four Arm Cortex-A55 cores, each operating at up to 2.6 GHz (A77) and up to 2.0 GHz (A55), respectively. The chipset also features an Arm Mali-G77 GPU for streaming video and gaming at 5G speeds, and features multi-mode support for previous connectivity generations all the way back to 2G.

You might be asking yourself: why would Intel sell Apple it’s phone modem business, only to turn right around and immediately partner with another chip designer to develop 5G modems for laptops? The answer lies in the potential for 5G to expand the cellular-enabled laptop market, which currently makes up only 5% of total notebook and laptop sales. In the pre-5G world, PC designers and manufacturers didn’t want to bother with the inclusion of different modems for each individual service provider, while the service providers were concerned that the increased data throughput PCs can deliver would slow down their cellular networks.  As a result, PC developers and cellular providers have yet to agree on how to provide cellular connectivity to notebooks and laptops.  Now, with the faster speeds that 5G promises to provide and the growing frequency with which cellular customers are using their smartphones to create WiFi hotspots, Intel is betting that the dam will eventually break, and more likely sooner rather than later. The Intel/MediaTek alliance already has an agreement in place with Dell to manufacture 5G-enabled laptops – they’re expected to hit the market in Q1 2021. “5G is poised to unleash a new level of computing and connectivity that will transform the way we interact with the world,” according to Gregory Bryant, Executive VP and GM of Intel’s Client Computing Group. “Intel’s partnership with MediaTek brings together industry leaders with deep engineering, system integration and connectivity expertise to deliver 5G experiences on the next generation of the world’s best PCs.”

The MediaTek/Intel collaboration runs along the same lines as a similar collaboration between Qualcomm and Microsoft, which are working together on a 5G SoC for laptops using Windows on Arm. Given Apple’s recent investment in 5G connectivity and their status as relative neophytes in the design of 5G modems, it wouldn’t be surprising to see them exploring new partnerships in the field either.The race to be first into the deep end of the 5G pool has begun, and it’s making strange bedfellows.We’ll continue to follow the impending rollout of 5G in this space and the way in which it’s shaping relationships in related industries.