Tantra's Mantra with Prakash Sangam

Ericsson held its Analyst Conference on Nov. 7, 2024, at its D-15 Labs Innovation Center in Santa Clara, CA. It was a packed event with many interesting sessions with speakers from Ericsson and scores of its partners, including Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile, Meta, AWS, Google Cloud, Dell, Intel, and others. The theme of the event was "Programable High Performance Networks." As expected, the emphasis was on programmability, to scale the network up and down to make it fit the use cases, network scenarios, apps, and service needs.

In this episode, Leonard Lee of Next Curve and I discuss Network APIs, monetization, mechanisms that distribute the "value" across the value chain, and how Ericsson is accelerating it through its JV with operators. We also delve into the role of AI, Edge AI, rApps, and Ericsson's pilot of making cellular primary connectivity for enterprises, eliminating wire and wired connectivity.  

The Lenovo Tech World and Global Industry Analyst Conference were held in Bellevue (Seattle) from October 15th to 17th, 2024. During these events, the company showcased its vision for the industry through its "Hybrid AI" approach, technology, products, and services, as well as its broad industry partnerships.

In this episode, Leonard Lee of Next Curve and I discuss how Lenovo, with its "pocket-to-cloud" offerings, is well positioned for "Hybrid AI,” how it is accelerating AI adoption by practicing what it preaches in its own operations, its entry into the Automotive space, Server water cooling leadership, reimagining Motorola's smartphone business, and more.

Lenovo Innovation World 2024 was held in Berlin on September 4th—5th. During this event, the company announced a slew of Copilot+ PCs powered by the new Intel Core Ultra 400v, AMD Ryzen AI 300, and Qualcomm Snapdragon X Plus (8-core) SoCs.

In this episode, I talk to Olivier Blanchard, Research Director, Futurum Research, about the various SoCs, their strengths and weaknesses, the need for OEMs to position them well, specifically what Lenovo should do to maintain its formidable market leadership, and finally, key takeaways from the event.

Also, check out the reviews of these Copilot+ PCs powered by Snapdragon XElite SOC

 Lenovo Slim7x - https://bit.ly/3WK9W4n

Samsung Galaxy Book4 Edge - https://bit.ly/3XJSGLN

For the first time, an AMD executive joins our podcast. In this episode, I sit down with Salil Raje, SVP and GM of Adaptive and Embedded Computing Group at AMD. As a pioneer in the FPGA market, Salil provides unique insights into the industry's current landscape and AMD's strategic direction.

We delve into the status of Xilinx's integration into AMD after two years of acquisition, the challenges and opportunities of Edge computing/AI, and how AMD's upcoming Versal 2 platform aims to revolutionize this space.

Galaxy Unpacked, held in July 2024, unveiled a robust lineup of devices, including two groundbreaking foldable smartphones, a trio of advanced wearables, and innovative earbuds.

In this episode, I talk to Blake Gaiser, Samsung's Director of Smartphone Product Management, about the journey and evolution of the Galaxy Z Fold6 and Z Flip6, how Watch 7, Ultra, and Galaxy Ring are coming at a stage when the line between consumer and medical devices is blurring, what made Samsung make a bold design change for Buds 3, and finally, the company's overarching strategy for Galaxy AI.

Also, please check out my views about Galaxy Unpacked expressed on Next Curve Rethink Webcast: https://www.tantraanalyst.com/ta/quotes/#:~:text=Next%20Curve%20Rethink%20Webcast

This is the fourth episode in our series, focused on analyzing the introduction of CoPilot+ PCs. In this, I discuss with Pooja Sathe, Director and category leader of Worldwide Commercial AI PCs at market leader Lenovo, about their “Windows on Arm” journey with Qualcomm from the early beginnings until Snapdragon X Elite and X Plus SoCs, the design principles behind CoPilot+ PCs, customer feedback, target enterprise profiles, and personas for these PCs, and what the future competitive landscape will look like when Intel and AMD SoCs enter the market.

We also delve into Lenovo's efforts to ensure app compatibility of Windows on Arm, the role of AI/NPU now and their evolution, Lenovo's definition of AIPC, whether AIPCs will be a separate category or whether everything will be AIPCs in the future, and more. 

The ever-expanding edge computing landscape is a tangled web of diverse hardware, software,  and ecosystems. In this episode, I talk to Muneyb Minhazuddin, VP and GM of Network and Edge at Intel, about the challenges of Edge and how Intel's Tiber Edge AI platform helps its customers manage it. 

We delve into the need for Tiber, how it can simplify the complexities of Edge AI, go-to-market strategy, traction so far, the real-life applications and use cases, collaboration with Hyperscalers, Intel's new strategy on selling software, what the future holds, and more. 

In this episode, Leonard Lee of Next Curve joins me in discussing and analyzing the key takeaways from Computex and Apple's Worldwide Developer's Conference.

Computex Buzz: CoPilot+ PCs Take Center Stage: We explore how CoPilot+ PCs overshadowed everything at Computex, show and tell of Qualcomm, the announcement of Lunarlake by Intel, Ryzen Gen3 of AMD, both powering X86-based CoPilot+ PCs, opportunities during back-to-school season, changing competitive landscape by Holiday season and more.

Apple Intelligence Announcement: We delve into Apple Intelligence, its current standing against competition, Apple's collaboration with Open AI, security and privacy concerns, benefits of vertical integration in Hybrid AI, and more.    

This is the third in the series of Tantra's mantra episodes analyzing the CoPilot+ PCs from the market, SoC, and OEM perspectives.  In this episode, I talk to Hassan Anjum, Head of Product Management for Samsung New Computing Business, which covers the Galaxy Book series of premium laptops. 

We discuss the needs of premium PC customers, why Windows on Arm is different this time, app compatibility, competitive landscape, Samsung differentiation, positioning when CoPilot+ PCs with Intel and AMD arrive later in the year, and much more. 

Hassan says this will be Samsung's biggest PC launch ever with Qualcomm and Microsoft. 

TELUS will be the first operator to use Open RAN for not only new 5G deployment but also to replace the legacy 4G network. Although the Government mandate necessitated the replacement, it was still a bold decision. TELUS will also be a multi-vendor true Open RAN deployment, with radios, cloud platform, RAN software, servers, and processors, all coming from different vendors. It expects almost 50% of the network to be Open RAN by the end of 2025.

In this episode, I talk to Nazim Benhadid, CTO of TELUS, on the factors that led to choosing Open RAN, their large-scale live network performance testing, the decision to use look-aside accelerator configuration, and being their own Systems Integrator, as well as his recommendations to the other brownfield operators looking to deploy Open RAN.