The Growing Chasm Between Data and Communication
Telecommunication is a major source of innovation, for example enabling the Fourth Industrial Revolution (or Industry 4.0), which is characterized by a massive deployment of IoT devices with seamless connectivity.
This article was authored by Rafic Makki (Mubadala Capital), Gabriele Manganaro (MediaTek) and Victor Zhirnov (SRC).
Electronic communication technologies play a critical role in the modern world and influence all aspects of our life. In fact, telecommunication services have spiked in 2020–21, and they have become instrumental for minimizing the impact of the global health and economic crisis due to the COVID-19 pandemic. There is major infrastructure behind all of it and benefiting from it: the communication industry and all of its components from network providers to cloud systems, to mobile apps and ICT security. This is a massive area of the economy, which is accelerating 5G deployment and future 6G. Telecommunication is a major source of innovation, for example it is an enabler of the Fourth Industrial Revolution (or Industry 4.0), characterized by a massive deployment of IoT devices with seamless connectivity (both wired and wireless).
Connectivity and communication technologies are at the heart of the state of the developed world. According to the Global Workspace Alliance, the average global internet user today spends 7 hours per day on the Internet. That’s 40% of the average waking life spent using connected devices. Driven by tremendous advances in semiconductor technology year after year and decade after decade, our global communication systems have proven to be robust with annual increases in capacity rates more than sufficient to handle the growth in data production rates. However, this delicate balance between data and communication capacity is about to change. Indeed, we got used to always-available communication and connectivity, which has a tremendous impact on all sides of life. For example, a manifestation of this is Cloud Storage and Computing. The ability to get data from anywhere and send it to everywhere has transformed both the way we do business and the individuals’ habits and lifestyle, just to mention social networks as an example. However, the whole concept of the cloud is based on the ability for instant communication, which is not granted! Furthermore, the demand grows daily for communication to become more ubiquitous as we become more connected. An alarming trend is a growing gap between the world’s technological information storage need and communication capacities. For example, while currently it is possible to transmit all world’s stored data in less than one year, in 2040 it would require at least 20 years. For example, the Cloud technologies may undergo substantial changes with emphasis shifting toward edge computing and local data storage. “Will the clouds disappear? Advancing communication technologies at the same pace as growing storage demand are needed to “save the clouds”.
A decade ago, Mark Andreessen accurately declared that software is eating the word. Today it is Data! A decade or two down the road it will also be data, and decades after that. In fact, data is more than a megatrend — it can be viewed as a measure of the progress of humanity, cutting across all walks of life, public and private organizations, and all verticals of the economy — this was discussed in the first blog of this series. Indeed, data production is accelerating exponentially, doubling every two years globally and 2020–21 is the crossover: the point after which data storage rates surpass communication capacity rates.
The widening gap between data rates and communication capacity rates may result in lost opportunities for faster economic growth. It is a significant problem — indeed a seismic shift! Closing this gap will require truly radical changes in communication infrastructure technology.
Today, the biggest drivers for the data explosion include video and machine learning applications. While these drivers will continue to grow, we are witnessing the arrival of a new era of distributed intelligence on the edge. The communication paradigm is evolving from human-centric to machine centric. In a future world of autonomous mobility and sensors everywhere with edge computing devices, machine-to-machine (M2M) communication will play a dominant role as a percentage of overall communication.
Clearly, multiple technology advances will be needed for future telecommunication. As 5G is now entering into the massive commercialization phase, it is important to identify trends, challenges, and research goals to support future developments, including 6G and beyond. One thing must be stressed however: We have no clear technology enabler for 6G yet! This situation is very different from previous ‘Gs’. For example, back in 2010, when 4G had just begun to roll out, some of the solutions for 5G had already known (of course 5G is much more than just an iteration on 4G). However, today’s situation is radically different as much of the future solutions require fundamental research.
What we know, is the forthcoming wireless expansion into the higher frequency range of the mmWave / THz region. While silicon transistors are expected to continue being a major workhorse, aggressive introduction of other semiconductor materials will be needed for higher-frequency and higher-power, such as GaN and InP. The new materials will likely complement silicon chips, ideally in the same package. Overall, more and more chips in a communication system will be packaged and stacked together — a trend that calls for 3-dimensional heterogeneous and monolithic integration. Such integration will certainly increase the functionality per footprint of communication IC, however, will also introduce new challenges; first of all, the increased heat production. New radical solutions will be needed that push thermal dissipation limits.
The communication networks will also look very different from today’s. Obviously, not all communication needs to be centralized. A locality of many devices that need to communicate with minimal delay will drive an acceleration in communication capacity by higher densification: smaller, cheaper and more energy-efficient fixed gateways wirelessly linked to neighboring mobile devices… And a lot of in-situ processing on these devices! What we really need to do is to off-load the Cloud. Google is already going to put more edge AI capability in their upcoming Pixel 6 phone to offload the cloud from the burden of dealing with repetitive functions/queries. It may also likely help with voice recognition by the Google assistant.
Of course much more needs to be said about the future of telecommunication. There are, for example, topics of digital beamforming, massive MIMOs, requiring arrays of even thousands of antennas, new physics of passive elements… As for wired communication, new technologies will be required including novel optical electronics and silicon photonics. On the application side, the increasing importance for security and privacy should be stressed. One of potentially disruptive approaches is to apply security measures that are bio-inspired. Also, the emerging Quantum Communication technologies is a promising direction for a radical security enhancement. Another very interesting topic is the future role of Space Communication. And, of course, the question of the energy of communication requires very close attention. We will discuss these and other topics in articles to follow.
To conclude, the current landscape of communication technologies can be characterized by the following observations:
(i) mmWave yields a dramatic increase in achievable throughput
(ii) Massive IoT: >350B connected intelligent devices by 2030
(iii) Increasing role of AI/ML for channel and network optimization
(iv) Security needs to be made a priority, with a focus on hardware and overall network security.
Finally, we want to underscore the point that the typical next ‘G’ communication transition cadence has to change substantially — 6G will need to be a completely different paradigm that 5G with new semiconductor systems technology infrastructure.
SRC’s Decadal Plan for Semiconductors outlines research priorities that can help us meet the needs of future generations. Developed by leaders across academia, government and industry, the report identifies five seismic shifts shaping the future of semiconductor technologies and calls for an annual $3.4 billion federal investment over the next decade to fund research and development across these five areas. Read the report at: https://www.src.org/about/decadal-plan/
