Semi-conductor Pillars in 5G Era and Beyond

Since the introduction of smartphone almost 15 years ago, it has been evolved to an arena of different up-to-date semiconductor technologies, from the advanced fab nodes to the computation architectures, from the high-speed low power digital circuits to the high efficient analogy/RF chains. The nowadays chipset of 5G terminal is a giant hierarchical computational platform, with multi-core CPU, powerful GPU, in-house optimized ISP/NPU, and multi-mode communication baseband processor, etc., rather than a thin modem system. It is widely recognized that the advances of modern semi-conductor industry are the pillars of success of the mobile communications systems. As the further evolution of the communication standards, the next wave of system level innovation is already on the way. The integration of sensing and communication, the AI for wireless systems especially for the physical layer signal processing, zero-power communication, full duplex schemes, and so on, have been identified as the key technologies of 5.5G, and possible of 6G for their succeeds. This paper will review our journey to the 5G era, and share our viewpoints on the key semi-conductor technologies that will support the mobile information system entering the next decades.