Samsung Begins Mass Production of Its Own 5G Chips (zdnet.com)

Samsung Electronics has started mass-producing its 5G chips, the company said. From a report: Among the company's new chip offerings is the Exynos Modem 5100, which contains a 5G multi-mode chipset; it is the same chipset that is used to power the Galaxy S10 5G, which became available for sale in South Korea as of Wednesday. The model, unveiled in August, is the world's first 5G modem to be compatible with the 3GPP's 5G New Radio (5G-NR) standard. Mass production for its single-chip radio frequency transceiver, the Exynos RF 5500, and supply modulator solution, the Exynos SM 5800, have also started, Samsung said. These technologies also power Samsung's flagship 5G phone. The Exynos RF 5500 has 14 receiver paths for download, 4x4 MIMO (Multiple-Input, Multiple-Output), and a higher-order 256 QAM (Quadrature Amplitude Modulation) scheme for data transfer in 5G networks; and the Eyxnos SM5800 is 30% more power efficient than previous offerings.

Comments

Better certification system needed.

[Gravis Zero]

Frankly, every wireless chipset (not just GSM version xyz) has been one shitty implementation after another. Since we're putting these things in everything from pocket computers to infrastructure, we need to start having stringent chipset testing to ensure they cannot be exploited. I there are few (if any) wireless chipsets that can actually stand up to fuzzing let alone a reverse engineering attack.

We really need a certification body that actually tests chipsets to ensure that at the very least they won't fault/reboot (indicative of being exploitable) when they are fuzzed. Frankly, I would think to have the highest level of certification from this body that your code would have be formally verified. Considering they are a small isolated system, this isn't a Herculean task.