The Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain is the wireless industry’s leading annual event, and this year’s edition in late February was buzzing with talk of 5G wireless technology and its evolving uses and technology requirements.

First, Gregg Bartlett and Dr. Bami Bastani, Sr. Vice Presidents of GlobalFoundries’ CMOS and RF business units, respectively, outlined 5G-related semiconductor challenges and opportunities for an audience of device developers, networking specialists and high-performance computing architects. 5G will impact all these areas because it enables smarter devices to feed through higher-bandwidth connections to ever-more-powerful data centers.

Then, a panel discussion moderated by Mike Cadigan, GF’s Sr. Vice President of Global Sales and Business Development, and head of GF’s ASIC business unit, took place. The panel was made up of invited experts from Nokia Mobile Networks, Mobile Experts LLC and TU-Dresden.