Q. What level of Analytics and Artificial Intelligence (AI) is involved here?
A. Here is a good example to understand this. When my son went to high school in the US, he used an iPad instead of notebooks for his study and homework. As he was always connected to the cloud, when he did his homework, his performance was immediately tracked and his next question was based on the accuracy and response time of his previous answer. If he took forever to get through the first question, his second question will be related to the concept that he missed in the first question. So, here the cloud uses analytics to tune and tailor the questions for the benefit of the students. From teachers’ point of view, they get the statistical distribution of how each student and class perform. The teacher will get a very clear view of what are the concepts that work and what needs more enforcement. Evidently, the productivity level goes even higher and on a new level, which is one of the reasons why in the US the Wi-Fi market went from being nothing for mesh Wi-Fi in 2016 to 40 percent in 2017.
Q. Could you shed more light on Qualcomm’s self-organising network?
A. One major concern is to keep the user free of tension. Users need not have to worry about the service set identifier (SSID), passwords or how to reconfigure the Wi-Fi router when they want to watch his show or do some task. The self-organising network takes care of everything. It automatically senses what is going on in the network, what the network capacity is, if the network is in the noisy channel and reconfigures itself on its own.
Q. How is Qualcomm gearing up for 5G tech?
A. For every design or technology that we to bring to the market, we have a clear roadmap. Once we have all the features ready, we focus on the cost of the implementations. There is a curve along the time axis that drives massive implementation options and like we have worked with 3G and 4G, it is not going to be much different for 5G.
Q. Is there any specific way in which you motivate your team at Qualcomm?
A. I believe that as a leader you should never assume that you have a better intelligence quotient (IQ) than anyone in your team. Such an attitude is the first mistake that de-motivates people. So, having the ability to listen to what is being said and align it with logic are the essential things required to motivate people. And, this is what I have learned over the years and it has helped me to encourage my team at Qualcomm as well.
Q. What is the vision of your business unit for the year 2020?
A. We want to remain in the position that we are currently in, develop and continue to invest in technology. One is well known about Qualcomm as a semiconductor company, but we are equal sized software company as well. We believe in directly investing in software to deliver better experiences through our platforms over the years.
Q. What will be your advice to future engineers who are working towards cutting-edge technologies?
A. Always think ahead of what is needed but be measured of what to do. You may end up building something beyond the need and as a result, fail to outdo. Be realistic and never let your ego get on your way.
