New Chip Company

Ampere, a new chip company run by former Intel president
Renee James, came out of stealth today with a brand-new
highly efficient Arm-based server chip targeted at hyperscale
data centers.

The company’s first chip is a custom core Armv8-A 64-bit
server operating at up to 3.3 GHz with 1TB of memory at a
power envelope of 125 watts. Although James was not ready
to share pricing, she promised that the chip would offer
unsurpassed price/performance that would exceed any high
performance computing chip out there.

The company has a couple of other products in the works as
well, which it will unveil in the future

More Self-Driving Cars

Software maker NVIDIA and German auto parts supplier
Continental are teaming to build a self-driving vehicle
system that will hit the market in 2021.

It's the latest in a long string of tech-automaker partnerships
in the race to get autonomous vehicles on the road.

The companies said Monday that their system will be
used for driver-assist safety features all the way up to cars
with no steering wheel or pedals. NVIDIA, based in Santa
Clara, California, makes computer processing units and
artificial intelligence software that reads sensors and makes
decisions for autonomous vehicles. Continental makes auto
parts including software and cameras, radar and laser sensors.

Apple Watch news

When Apple released the cellular-capable Apple Watch Series
3 in September, it didn’t realize that a tiny component — its
next-generation embedded SIM card (eSIM) — would lead China
to quickly and abruptly cut off Apple Watch phone service within
its borders. This morning, the cellular Apple Watch belatedly
became available to order in China’s Hong Kong territory and
Singapore, spotlighting the surprising challenges eSIM faces as
it becomes critical to next-generation wearables and 5G devices,
replacing the 25-year-old traditional SIM card.

Nothing about eSIMs would appear to justify governmental
panic. Physical SIM cards spent decades shrinking from
full-sized to mini, micro, and nano cards before the GSM
Association approved eSIM, an even smaller, trayless,
permanently installed successor. The innovation enabled
Apple Watch Series 3 to gain only 0.25mm of thickness
despite integrating a complete cellular communications
system.

eSIMs benefit from 25 years of technological improvement over the original SIM. Embedded SIMs are carrier-agnostic and rewritable, capable of being activated and managed remotely using over-the-air updates. That means carriers no longer need to send cards to device makers or individual customers, and consumers don’t need to make post-purchase visits to carrier stores; devices can just join an available network after turning on. eSIMs also enable seamless network switching: You can change carriers as needed, including during international travel. Indeed, eSIMs are eventually expected to end international roaming charges.

Roadmap

If you remember the year 2010, you might recall America’s
transition from 3G to 4G wireless, which started with very few
4G devices and cities. It’s now clear that this year’s 4G to 5G
transition will repeat that experience: Leading wireless carrier
AT&T has confirmed that it will follow Verizon’s 2010 playbook
for rolling out next-generation wireless services in 2018, starting
by selling portable hotspots while high-speed phones are being
built.

AT&T’s hotspot plan brings much-needed clarity to a
fuzzy announcement last month that the company would
launch “mobile 5G” in 12 cities this year. As 5G chips and
phones are still in early stages of development, rival T-Mobile
subsequently claimed that AT&T had “no tangible path”
to launching mobile 5G this year. T-Mobile was similarly
dismissive of Verizon, which committed to a smaller-scale
rollout of “fixed 5G” in three to five cities, apparently jumping
the gun on the as-yet-unfinished 5G standard. Verizon responded
by guaranteeing that it would update its proprietary 5G hardware
to ensure 5G standards compatibility.

As both AT&T’s and Verizon’s paths forward are now
clear, we have a much better idea of what America’s 2018
5G roadmap will be, barring any unexpected government
interruptions. If you’re in one of the cities selected by these
carriers, you will be able to buy a wireless device later this
year with roughly the same speed as a wired broadband
connection. AT&T’s “mobile” 5G devices will be battery-
powered and portable pucks; Verizon’s “fixed” 5G devices
will be wall-powered and designed to be left in a home or
small business. In each case, existing computers, tablets,
and phones will likely use Wi-Fi to access the 5G cellular
connection.

Given the incredible popularity of smartphones, why aren’t t
he major carriers starting with handsets first? They aren’t likely
to be ready, at least, in the massive quantities necessary to
serve millions of customers. AT&T CEO Randall
Stephenson claims that phones would be the bottleneck
holding up a 5G rollout. “[T]hat’s why we’re going to be
deploying pucks in the first part of our deployments in these
12 markets,” Stephenson explained last night. “So, it is a mobile
solution, but it’s not going to be a handset because there
aren’t going to be that many handsets available.”

Unlimited Data Plans

Almost a year ago, the sudden pivot by AT&T and Verizon to
sell unlimited-data deals such as those offered by Sprint and T-Mobile
might have looked like a soon-to-be-regretted bout of marketing
excess.

But none of these carriers have walked back these unmetered-data
deals. And although one third-party study found that AT&T
and Verizon’s networks had slowed under the stress of new unlimited-
data subscribers, OpenSignal’s latest results show America’s two
largest carriers have rebounded.

These more generous offerings remain on the expensive side —
and most also feature fine-print restrictions on streaming video
resolution and the speed of a phone’s mobile-hot spot function.
You should still consider cheaper options that will probably leave
you with data to spare.

(You can easily check your monthly data use in Android in the S
ettings app, but Apple’s data gauge tracks your usage from when
you first got an iPhone, making it useless in practice. Check your
bill instead.)

Google HTC Deal

Google officially closed its $1.1 billion deal with HTC Corp.,
adding more than 2,000 smartphone specialists in Taiwan
to help the search giant chase Apple Inc. in the cut-throat
premium handset market.

The deal will help Google design more of its own consumer
hardware and could set it up to wade deeper into special-
purpose chips -- like Apple. Google’s most recent Pixel
model came with a new image processor to improve the
device’s camera. More of this "custom silicon" will come
in the future, Google’s hardware chief Rick Osterloh said
in an interview.

Osterloh brought in HTC engineers and designers to help
Google control more of the design and production of its
products, including working more closely with suppliers.
Google previously focused on software and let manufacturers
including Samsung Electronics Co. and HTC handle the
hardware. But modern phones offer features like augmented
reality and artificial intelligence-based services that require
close integration of software and hardware.

"You have to be vertical in some cases to really push the
envelope for consumers," Osterloh said. "Our intention is to
invest in this for the long term. You’ll see a steady increase
in investment from us."

HTC said in a separate statement that it plans to proceed
with its next flagship smartphone and will focus its efforts
in the segment. “Today marks the beginning of an exciting
new chapter at HTC as we continue to drive innovation in
our branded smartphone and VIVE virtual reality businesses,”
Cher Wang, chairwoman at HTC said in the statement.

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