On May 16th, Lenovo Holdings Chairman Lenovo Group Chairman Liu Chuanzhi and Lenovo Group Chairman and CEO Yang Yuanqing and Lenovo Holdings President Zhu Linan jointly issued an internal letter to explain the '5G voting' in response to Lenovo's '5G voting' incident. And the results of the survey. At the same time, Huawei also made a clarification statement. For this incident, industry insiders generally believe that due to the market and strategic value of 5G, all countries have spared no effort to develop related technologies and sought to gain a say. Behind the extortion, it is a challenge to Chinese corporate relations, and this reflects the 5G battle between China, the US and Europe.
Voting gate
In the process of 3G standardization in 3GPP, the decision on channel coding was made in stages in two sessions. The first meeting was RAN1#86bis held in Lisbon in October 2016. This session was only for eMBB scenarios. The data channel coding was fully discussed. At the meeting, there were three data channel coding schemes proposed, namely, LDPC and China-based Polar Code, and Ericsson, Samsung, Alcatel-Lucent and Shanghai Bell. Several Japanese companies recommended the LDPC+Turbo code portfolio. Out of its own technical reserves and patent considerations, Lenovo chose to support LDPC.
After the meeting, Lenovo changed its view on the Polar code for the consideration of 'strategic', which gave Huawei Huawei full support for the Polar code at the next RAN1#87 conference held in Reno, USA. The data channel for Huawei was short. Code and control channel coding schemes both voted in favor.
According to industry insiders, these votes are the decisions that determine the direction of technology. Finally, enterprises that have chosen the standard will receive more royalties after the commercial use of 5G.
It is understood that 'channel coding' is one of the most important components of the 5G communication standard, and has a great influence on chip implementation and patent fees. Various companies have paid great attention to this. The process of formulating 5G standards in 3GPP Among them, there are three kinds of coding schemes that were introduced: Turbo code, LDPC code and Polar code. The organizer 3GPP has a strong influence in the communications field worldwide. Because of its early establishment, the strength of the industry association covers almost the entire industry, and has basically played the role of 'coordinating member conflicts and designating new regulations and agreements' in the industry.
Internal letter
Lenovo's '5G Voting' incident originated from a question and answer given several days ago. In response to the 5G standard vote, Lenovo stated that Lenovo voted on Qualcomm’s plan, causing Huawei’s plan to lose its weak position. For a time, the outside world had made a verbal confession to Lenovo. However, for this incident, people in the industry generally believed that it was behind the scenes that it was pushed back by the outside world after two years. For this reason, Lenovo issued an internal letter to explain the situation in a timely manner.
Liu Chuanzhi and Yang Yuanqing jointly released the theme of the internal letter of "action, swear to win the Lenovo honor defense." The letter pointed out that throughout the voting process, Lenovo Group representatives follow two principles: One is the most basic principle, namely, maintenance A higher principle is to focus on the overall situation, that is, the overall interests of the country and the development of the industry. After detailed investigations and verification by various parties, Liu Chuanzhi believes that Lenovo's voting principle has no problem and implementation has no problem.
Liu Chuanzhi mentioned that during the first round of voting on the 5G data channel solution, Lenovo Group chose LDPC technology solutions based on its own pre-technical and patent reserves. In the second round of voting, Lenovo Group comprehensively considered the country’s overall industrial cooperation and innovation. In the development, we chose the Polar code solution that has not accumulated much technology before the company.
It is worth noting that it is reported that Lenovo and Motorola have turned to high-pass LDPC code schemes in terms of data channels, resulting in Huawei's dominant Polar code solution losing two votes.
People in the industry believe that Lenovo chose LDPC for the first time in data channel long code voting because Lenovo’s Motorola has been doing LDPC's layout before. Therefore, there are some patent reserves in the hands, and voting is also in their own interest. Consistent. But in fact, all companies support the LDPC scheme over long data channel codes. Lenovo and Motorola Mobile's two votes have no real effect on Huawei's Polar code's loss over long data channel codes.
In the next data channel short code vote, Lenovo and Motorola voted for the Polar code on the vote, but the Polar code solution eventually lost. In addition to support on the data channel short code, Lenovo and Motorola in the subsequent eMBB control The channel coding scheme also supports the Polar code scheme with no reservations, helping Huawei to recover the key game and become the coding scheme for the 5G eMBB control channel.
Analysts believe that if purely from the perspective of business interests, Lenovo and Motorola should also choose the LDPC code scheme for the short code solution of the data channel because Lenovo and Motorola themselves have more technology accumulation on the LDPC code. In the background, Lenovo and Motorola still choose to support the Huawei-dominated Polar code, which is actually to safeguard the overall interests of the Chinese 5G industry.
Standard War
Lenovo’s internal letter appears to be merely a clarification of the company, but as Liu Chuanzhi stated in the letter, an event in the technical field has suddenly been turned upside down and fermented in the past two years. This is an accidental event. The use of it cannot be thoughtless.
In the eyes of the industry, this incident does not rule out the possibility of self-promotion by the media. However, more importantly, it reflects the 5G war between China, the United States and Europe. Behind the collapse of Lenovo, it is actually the relationship with Chinese companies. Provocateur. Kang Ye, chief editor of the operator World Wide Web, believes that 2018 is an important node for 5G to enter international standards. The first version of 5G international standard will be released in June. There is a storm in this node, there must be behind the scenes, and it is related to interests. square.
Senior communication expert Xiang Ligang said that in terms of the overall industry ecology, the formulation of the global 5G standard depends to a large extent on the competition and competition of the three-party enterprise camp between China, the US and Europe. At present, the three parties are in a roughly balanced state. If Chinese 5G companies The situation of solidarity was damaged by the interference of external forces and false information. It is likely to break this balance and cause Chinese companies to be in a very unfavorable position in the formulation of the 5G standard.
It is reported that due to the early start-up of R&D and the formation of extensive industry cooperation, the current level of domestic 5G technology is comparable to that of foreign companies in many fields. Even in some key technologies, it has obvious advantages. Since then, international organizations have According to the assessment, China also has the ability to lead the development of the 5G standard.
According to a US study that previously published results, China is slightly ahead of South Korea and the United States in the race to develop 5G. The research results released by CTIA, a wireless network operator industry association based in the United States, show that in autopilot cars, telemedicine and The United States has fallen behind in the deployment of this ultra-high-speed wireless network system required by other technologies.
It is reported that in the current storm, the Polar code solution led by Huawei has become the control channel coding for 5G eMBB (enhanced mobile broadband, the main application scenario is 3D/Ultra high definition video and other large-flow mobile broadband services). 3GPP plans this year In June, the first standard specification of 5G was announced. The communication standard involves different scenarios. Different channels will involve multiple technical solutions.