Cristiano Amon is the CEO of Qualcomm, world-leader in 5G wireless communication and computation systems inside premium Android phones and other robots. Please support this podcast by checking out our sponsors:
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EPISODE LINKS:
Cristiano's Twitter: https://twitter.com/cristianoamon
Qualcomm's Website: https://qualcomm.com

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OUTLINE:
0:00 - Introduction
1:26 - Football/soccer
2:21 - Smartphones
4:52 - 5G
21:09 - Snapdragon
27:28 - Apple and Google
32:02 - Future of Qualcomm
43:03 - Autonomous vehicles
44:47 - Robots
47:14 - Chip shortage
51:23 - Lawsuits
54:49 - Leadership
59:08 - Advice for young people
1:03:00 - Meaning of life

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Talking about an exciting thing for an engineer.

The same Snapdragon that goes to a phone and it can go to a Galaxy phone, for example, Samsung, the same, not a special 1, went all the way to Mars.

You expect to have a full day of battery life.

But then you wanted to not be sending data into 10 or 100 megabits, you want gigabits.

You wanted to be able to have 8 core processors, you wanted to have a GPU with ray tracing, you wanted to have all of those things that you can only get into sometimes a desktop PC.

To do all of that in your phone is an incredible thing.

Some people raise concerns about there not being enough studies about the effects of 5G on the human body.

The following is a conversation with Cristiano Amon, the CEO of Qualcomm, the company that's 1 of the leaders in the world in the space of mobile communication and computation.

That's 2G, 3G, 4G, and 5G that connects billions of phones, and the Snapdragon processor and system on a chip that is the brain of most of the premium Android phones in the world.

To support it, please check out our sponsors in the description.

And now, dear friends, here's Cristiano Amon.

You are originally from Brazil, so let me ask the most important question, the most profound question, the biggest question, who's the greatest football, soccer player of all time?

Look, everybody's gonna say Pelé, and actually I was born during the game of Brazil and Italy that Pelé gave Brazil the championship.

Actually it was, my dad tells me that the doctor had a TV on at the delivery room.

But so everybody will say Pelé, but I really like Ronaldo, the first, not Ronaldinho, the first Ronaldo, I really like him.

By the way, not everybody would say Pelé.

But we shall leave that on the table and agree to disagree.

There's other countries around that region that may disagree

Qualcomm is largely responsible for 5G and some of the greatest processors in our smartphones ever built.

So we got communication and computation tech that impacts probably billions of people.

So if you zoom out, you as a human, we'll look at humans on earth in general, does it blow your mind that we have these billions of smartphones communicating and each of them have the computational power.

You know, you talk about 10 billion transistors.

That's a million times more than 50 years ago in the best computers in the world.

Look, 1 of the reasons I think I love this company is we know that the technology we develop can change the world.

And I'll tell you 1 more thing, beyond the amount of processing power that you have now in the palm of your hands and being every 1 of the world is connected with broadband technology, the smartphone is also mankind largest development platform.

So you respect both the hardware and the software?

If aliens were observing Earth over the past 50 to 70 years, how do you think they would describe this particular turmoil, fun things going on on the surface of this particular little planet?

In 1 time we see incredible development of technology for mankind, just what happened in the last century.

You know, from 1900 to 2000, it was incredible development.

How far we're coming and where we're going with technology.

So there's road networks, There's all kinds of networks.

There's lights that keep popping up, cities springing up, from an alien perspective.

Well, what I'm gonna tell you is you have this contrast of incredible development of technology, but then you see some of the things that are happening right now, which is probably you would not expect them to happen on the 21st century, just what happened in Ukraine.

So I think that that will be a more puzzling question for the aliens, I would imagine.

The new technology is kind of impressive.

Actually, that might not be so puzzling because that's just human nature revealing itself as it has throughout human history.

So Qualcomm was instrumental in developing 5G.

Now you were with Qualcomm since the early days, the good old 90s with the 2G.

But what is 5G, including sub-6 gigahertz 5G and millimeter wave 5G?

And maybe the most important question is, how will

When we set ourselves to develop 5G and, you know, we look at this, every generation of technology had a problem to be solved, right?

So you mentioned 2G, 2G challenge, the challenge of CDMA was, can we give every person on earth a cell phone?

That was, can you get to a technology that you can basically allow everyone to have a mobile phone?

3G was about the ability to connect that to the internet.

I think 4G was broadband and with 4G, it was about have the ability for you to have a computer in the palm of your hand.

5G, the challenge was a little bit different.

It's how do we build a technology for a society that is gonna be 100% connected to the cloud?

How do we provide a technology that is going to be the last mile connectivity for everything.

So 5G is basically been designed, eliminate all issues with data congestion, whether you are in stadium, we talk about soccer, you were in a stadium and everyone should be ability to have access to broadband.

So deal with congestion, deal with the fact that not only people, but billions of things need to be connected.

Create a technology that for the first time in wireless, you could deliver mission critical services.

Wireless used to, up to 4G is its best effort.

In 5G, it can guarantee that you're connected with the cloud.

And then the last point of that is provide this fabric that will allow us as a society to look at things that are not connected and say, that's the exception.

That's why we made a comparison in the early days of 5G, that that's gonna be like electricity.

Right now, you don't have a discussion about what's the use cases for electricity.

And that's how we think about have everything connected to the cloud.

That's what 5G is and that's the role of 5G.

So first of all, everything connected to the cloud is interesting because the space of everything is constantly increasing.

You know, I don't think the refrigerator over there, it looks kind of smart, but I don't think it's connected yet to the cloud, so this includes internet of things.

The full space of everything is, it's maybe going back to where you start defining Qualcomm.

Qualcomm is about communications and advanced computers for low power devices.

You know, It can range from the robot you have right now on the floor to your refrigerator to a camera to machines in manufacturing to retail, et cetera.

When we think of something as simple as going to the grocery shop, we see technology now with something, the stuff we've been working with companies like Walmart, electronic shelf labels, the ability for you to have smart cameras that can look at shelves and can, the camera's smart enough to say some product needs to be replenished, ability to see with stress.

So it's about really providing processor connectivity, artificial intelligence to everything.

And I think that's 1 of the largest addressable markets we have for technology because you can't really define everything.

It's a nice market because it keeps growing potentially exponentially in speed.

So how are we doing on the everything part?

So there is, like I mentioned, sub 6 gigahertz 5G and there's millimeter wave 5G.

So there's a speed, there's a bandwidth thing, and then there's coverage.

How many people get to enjoy today, and how does the progress in the next 5, 10, 20, 30, 50 years you think it looks like in terms of coverage?

When I meet with regulators across the globe, I tell them, resistance is futile.

Every spectrum needs to be allocated to wireless.

The reality is when we start moving from CDMA to OFDMA, we knew that this industry has done a lot to get more bits per Hertz.

But the reality is the massive amount of improvements that is required in capacity and in speed, you need more spectrum.

You know, there's not so much we can rely on more bits per hertz, you just need more spectrum.

And if you look, for example, what carriers since the 2G era, they participate in different license and auctions and every spectrum they accumulated from 2G or 3G or 4G, All of that, you may be able to get 1 or 2 channels max of sub-6, which is a channel that's about 100 megahertz or 200 megahertz, and that's it.

So 5G's been designed to work across every spectrum, from the low frequency bands, that's what we call the sub-6, but you needed more, you needed to go to the millimeter wave.

So that's why 5G is a technology that you can deploy from 450 megahertz as an example, or 600 or 700, all the way to in the 42 gigahertz and that's where millimeter wave comes into the picture.

Now let's now connect this to your question about coverage of 5G.

The easiest thing to do is to deploy 5G in the new spectrum you can get, which is in the sub-6 you see bands being auctioned across the globe in the 3.5 gigahertz.

There's nothing special about the band, it's just the only 1 that was available because everything else has been used for 4G.

And you can deploy on that, go into existing cell towers and just put a new equipment without having to build new towers.

But when we go to technologies such as millimeter wave, then you have to build more dense networks.

You need to build more stations because a deployment in that case look like a wifi deployment.

When you need to build more stations, you need permits, you need to build fiber.

So what you see happening is coverage has been built fast with sub-6 across the globe.

Now the United States also have the sub-6.

And if you, I will say, for example, Verizon, United States has had a leadership in building millimeter wave.

I'll say cities like Chicago, Manhattan, starting to get coverage.

It will be a process over a number of years as you build those different access point type networks, but it's inevitable.

So every 5G operator, just a matter of time, will have millimeter wave as well.

Okay, so for millimeter wave, we need density of access points.

And what's the biggest resistance for Qualcomm for human civilization?

Is it politicians, regulators, federal regulators?

Is it not enough money from the consumer perspective?

Like who is the biggest pain in the butt?

From a Qualcomm standpoint, but answering the question about what it takes to build all this technology.

I think regulators across the board understood the importance of 5G.

I have not met a regulator that said, it's really important to be late on 5G.

I don't think anybody wants to be late on 5G.

And as a result, we've seen enormous amount of progress in getting spectrum allocated to 5G.

I think the real issue is the time that it takes to build infrastructure.

You know, investment in 5G infrastructure, especially millimeter wave, is like building roads and ports.

Like 1 of the number 1 obstacle you're going to hear from operators is site permit.

You know, sometimes they have to negotiate municipality by municipality about permits to get new cell sites, but you know, the networks will be densified and you're gonna need all of that capacity for the promise of the fully immersive augmented reality that will replace phones and everything being connected 100% of the time.

This would not be a conversation with a CEO if I did not ask questions that make you nervous.

Look, I have a very simple answer to this question.

As we build new capabilities such as 5G, Power is going down, especially when you think about reducing the number of base stations, the networks becoming more dense.

So as you do that, the power becomes lower.

If your phone- Power radiated from the phone and from the tower.

As you get closer to the tower, you don't need that much power to reach the tower.

So as we move from 4G to 5G, I think we see a reduction in the amount of power is required to close the radio link.

Now, also you have a number of organizations, the FCC for example, has rigorous programs which they do a lot of tests to validate, you know, the safety of those devices And I think we have, has been a model for other countries to also to adopt the same things.

Cellular has been around for a number of decades now.

I think smartphone is our most beloved device today.

And I would argue how it's difficult to answer those questions, because you, but I'll argue that the data to date, I've always seen in 3G and 4G, has shown that a lot of the initial concerns were not valid.

We look at 5G, even though it's new, it's just less power.

So we look at it from a physics standpoint.

So from a physics, from a biology perspective, there's a lot of evidence, there's studies that show that it's not dangerous, that it is in fact safe.

However, the concern that people have is when you scale technology exponentially, how will that change human civilization?

I mean, that doesn't apply to 5G, that applies to every technology.

You said smartphone is the most beloved device, but love sometimes hurts.

And there's a little bit of fear, there's both excitement and fear.

It's a great topic of conversation actually.

So let me give you my perspective on this.

And you started to see some things actually happening right now.

So let me step back And let's talk about the fact that we are in a fully interconnected society.

That when you look of the situations, they would talk about smartphones, largest development platform, so much now of our life, we are connected to the smartphone, and we are all connected, and we're connected, and then we're building digital twins of everything.

Right, So when you look at that picture, when you look at that picture, this connected society, you started to have the following thoughts, which I think are very healthy, which means in the same way that in the physical world, You're entitled to some rights, you have obligations, and there's a lot of things that protect your integrity.

I think as a rule, we're gonna see the society evolving so those things extend to your digital being of people and things.

For example, the Europeans has done a lot in this area.

I'll say the Europeans probably ahead in the United States and thinking about privacy laws, digital privacy laws, most recent the DMA, the Digital Markets Act, which I think is a great thing.

I think we're, we believe there's incredible thought into enable ability to regulate the digital market so that there's innovation and competitions and not a single company can control all the data and then decide how things are gonna be work on the digital realm.

And even if we think about the potential things like the metaverses, we're connecting physical and digital spaces.

Of course regulation and laws always follow technology.

But the fact that we're moving to our interconnected society, there's no going back.

But there is opportunity to think about how the digital twin, should people and governments should think about it so that we get the best of a technology without any downside.

Yeah, so when you say digital twin, that's 1 of the other things you're excited about, which is the metaverse, or basically building worlds in the digital space, and you have to start to think about all the basic human rights that transfer from our physical meat vehicles out to the digital copies of ourselves, representations of ourselves.

The thing you mentioned about regulators that has been, this is me speaking, frustrating, is like you said, they follow technology.

So sometimes they don't get the technology at all.

So they're very clumsy in writing laws that censor that technology in interesting ways.

They mean good, but they can do a lot of unintended damage.

Now, both, it's a dance, it's a beautiful dance, but I just wish governments were better dance partners.

I just see what they're kind of writing now about regulating social media and platforms like YouTube, and it's just really, really clumsy.

They don't understand how machine learning works, how recommender systems work, and I just wish they kind of caught up a little more because it's really important to be great at regulation, but also it's important to let companies flourish and embrace this new wave of technology.

That weird dance, I'm more and more learning looking at public policy, how much positive government can do and how much clumsy negative it can do, unintentionally, just out of sheer incompetence or lack of curiosity about tech.

As I said before, I think the Europeans probably have a very good framework, but the way I'll think about it, We depend on have the ability to innovate.

We depend on the ability to create technology that will be disruptive.

But at the same time, I think the tech companies probably should spend time helping governments understand, helping understand ahead of time so that they can be better prepared.

Let's talk about 1 of my favorite topics, Snapdragon.

This processor has probably powered billions of smartphones over its pretty long history now, a decade and a half maybe.

So it's constantly iterating, there's constantly just like a turmoil of beautiful innovations happening.

was the main 1 with the 5 nanometer and this year it's Snapdragon 8 Gen 1.

Okay, what's the sexiest, most beautiful idea or concept to you about Snapdragon?

The way I would describe it, and I think the reason we have been successful with it, is to really understand how to build a platform, a single chip, like a single chip, that will have every single capability if you wanna make this smartphone in the palm of your hand, you know, something that has all of your computing needs.

And it was the ability to get, from an engineering standpoint, ability to get into a single chip of not only all possible connectivity technology from cellular to Wi-Fi to Bluetooth to every single constellation of satellites for position location.

But at the same time, you know, a very power efficient, you know, single threaded multi-threaded CPU, a GPU for your, all of your graphic demands, gaming, fastest growing segment for gaming is mobile gaming.

An artificial intelligence processor, which we call the neural processor unit.

And then a video engine, a multimedia engine for every single application, audio, everything.

So it's a single chip that has every single computing technology you need in the phone.

And what's exciting about it is what we already knew, for example, when you think about camera or computer vision, you see that the advancements in this technology now happens in the smartphone first versus additional camera.

So the beauty about the Snapdragon is we always have this thing within Qualcomm.

The phone, it's small, you have to be able to hold it.

You're gonna touch your face, so you cannot be hot.

You wanted to be able to have 8 core processors.

You wanna have all of those things that you can only get into sometimes a desktop PC.

And to do all of that in your phone and be able to be in the leadership position generation after generation is an incredible thing and we're very proud of that at Qualcomm.

Yeah, so you have to do the Wi-Fi, 5G, all of the- And you have to

be good to everyone of those technologies.

And pack it all in, and there's also pressure to make the thing faster and faster and faster.

And then there's more and more applications you're supposed to be effortlessly using.

And then you mentioned the NPU, GPU, CPU, they have to also dance together somehow.

They have to communicate well, share memory or not, depending on what the application is.

So think about that, from a company like Qualcomm, we have to be good in each and every 1 of those technologies.

We can't just say, oh, we're a CPU company,

What does it take to design a great processor?

So design this system on a chip that you mentioned.

Is there some insight you can provide in this chaos of engineers, designers, leaders, you know, the people that think about how much this is all gonna cause the whole mess of it.

I've been in this company for probably more than 26 years, but I will argue that there are a couple of things that are ingredients for the success.

So we talk about the fact that we have all those different technologies, they evolve at their own pace and you have to be good in each 1 of them.

And you need them to make them working together.

So you need to have an engineering organization that's with an incredible collaboration culture, because everybody has to be working.

When it leaves the station, it needs to leave on time.

Especially in the phone business, You can't change Christmas, you cannot change Black Friday, you cannot change all of the selling seasons.

So the phones are gonna launch on time and every technology needs to be there, the engineering needs to work as 1.

The other thing, you have to have incredible discipline because those are very complex systems.

So in 1 way, you have to design with quality because in many cases, we're gonna be ramping production and even before we have the silicon back and you have to rely on our simulation models and you have to rely on the fact that you design for commercial applications.

That takes a while to build and it's probably been the history of a semiconductor business at Qualcomm.

So you mean like the framework of how many people can use simulation software and all that kind of stuff to build the thing with a hard deadline that you might not even get back from like manufacture before.

No wonder our name is quality communications.

Oh, I never even thought about the qual part, quality.

So quality and there's a bar that's high and you're not allowed to mess up.

I mean to me as an engineer that's exciting.

Hard deadlines, no room for mistakes, I love it.

So there's a couple of other small companies called Google and Apple.

So Google is now using its own chip for the Pixel 6.

How does Qualcomm outcompete Google and Apple?

Actually, if you look at our mobile strategy today, and then 1 thing I was very clear when I became CEO, I think there's a lot of confusion in the market, our mobile strategy is very clear.

We are focused of making Snapdragon synonymous with premium Android experience.

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Cristiano Amon: Qualcomm CEO | Lex Fridman Podcast #280