Virtual Reality Wireless Experiences
Corporate
May 25, 2022
TDK Corporation (TSE: 6762) announced today that subsidiary TDK Ventures, Inc. has invested in wireless communications disruptor XCOM Labs to expedite the development of their 5G and wireless communications solutions, which emphasize bandwidth capacity, latency reduction/elimination, and compute load balancing. XCOM is working to apply their technology to the future of work and Industry 4.0, where wireless technologies could enable smart factories, automation, off-site training, and more immersive telework experiences. This extends further to telemedicine, entertainment, and even defense applications to help train and prepare military personnel. XCOM’s executive team – Dr. Paul Jacobs, Derek Aberle, and Matt Grob – was responsible for many of the breakthrough technologies seen in the 2G/3G/4G revolutions.
5G and wireless infrastructure are experiencing huge demand for greater expansion and rollout of enabling technologies, as current infrastructure can’t keep up. At its core, each “G” generation represents a push for greater wireless transmission speed, capacity, and overall value. To do this requires not just updates in hardware and software, but leveraging frequency spectra in either new and innovative waves, or utilizing new frequency bands entirely. One of many tradeoffs is in balancing energy, frequency, and transmission. Higher frequency – and thus energy signals – can carry more information in a shorter span of time, but decay more quickly over distance. From an infrastructure perspective, this means more transmitting “nodes” in the network are necessary to carry higher frequency signals across a given area.
XCOM is designing technology to change the playing field. Their solutions target increasing capacity and utility of spectrum over 10x, enabling the potential promised by 5G and next generation developers to become a reality. For example, XCOM is further innovating to push digital transformation to the next level through extended reality (XR). Using a globally available 60GHz millimeter wave band, they are developing a high throughput, low latency wireless system to deliver seamless virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) experiences. What was previously limited by either bulky processing equipment needed nearby, or low throughput limited by smartphone processing, is becoming a comprehensive system that can immerse the user in a metaverse or digital world environment. This will be a leap forward in the integration of edge computing processing to provide a natural user experience.
The XCOM team is set on continuing our tradition of excellence and innovating the wireless space. We understand how important high throughput/low latency is for the future of connection and are working to deliver those capabilities to create real and positive change in our world and industry applications,” said XCOM’s Dr. Jacobs. “Our XR technologies are evidence of this progress and show that seamless processing through edge computing can deliver a truly immersive and agile VR/AR system fit for business, entertainment, and more.”
“XCOM technology represents more than just an improvement in capability, but a new potential for how we work, connect, and experience life,” commented TDK Ventures President Nicolas Sauvage. “Their solutions are being designed to be pervasive to our digitally transforming world and represent a future that TDK wants to see and is committed to bringing to fruition.”
TDK Ventures shares XCOM’s commitment to a digital transformation for a positive, more sustainable tomorrow. TDK Ventures will work with XCOM to scale the impact of their technology, including leveraging their network connections, industry partners, and connecting XCOM to other TDK business units. TDK Ventures’ platform team additionally provides support to include early product validation, pilots, customer/channel/ecosystem access, market knowledge, operating expertise (e.g., materials, manufacturing, fabless, supply chain) and go-to-market/branding mentorship. To learn more about TDK Ventures, interested startups or investment partners should visit www.tdk-ventures.com or reach out at [email protected].
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About TDK Corporation
TDK Corporation is a world leader in electronic solutions for the smart society based in Tokyo, Japan. Built on a foundation of material sciences mastery, TDK welcomes societal transformation by resolutely remaining at the forefront of technological evolution and deliberately “Attracting Tomorrow.” It was established in 1935 to commercialize ferrite, a key material in electronic and magnetic products. TDK’s comprehensive, innovation-driven portfolio features passive components such as ceramic, aluminum electrolytic and film capacitors, as well as magnetics, high-frequency, and piezo and protection devices. The product spectrum also includes sensors and sensor systems such as temperature and pressure, magnetic, and MEMS sensors. In addition, TDK provides power supplies and energy devices, magnetic heads and more. These products are marketed under the product brands TDK, EPCOS, InvenSense, Micronas, Tronics and TDK-Lambda. TDK focuses on demanding markets in automotive, industrial and consumer electronics, and information and communication technology. The company has a network of design and manufacturing locations and sales offices in Asia, Europe, and in North and South America. In fiscal 2022, TDK posted total sales of USD 15.6 billion and employed about 117,000 people worldwide.
About TDK Ventures
TDK Ventures Inc. invests in startups to bolster innovation in materials science, energy/power and related areas typically underrepresented in venture capital portfolios. Established in 2019 as a wholly-owned subsidiary of TDK Corporation, the corporate venture company’s vision is to propel the digital and energy transformations of segments such as health and wellness, next-generation transportation, robotics and industrial, mixed reality and the wider IoT/IIoT markets. TDK Ventures will co-invest and support promising portfolio companies by providing technical expertise and access to global markets where TDK operates. Interested startups or investment partners may contact TDK Ventures: www.tdk-ventures.com or [email protected].
About XCOM Labs
XCOM Labs is delivering on the promise of next-gen mobile technologies. Founded in 2018 by the former executive and technology team that developed and/or launched pioneering 2G, 3G, 4G, 5G, and other transformative wireless technologies, XCOM has attracted some of the world’s most accomplished mobile, software and hardware talent. Headquartered in San Diego, XCOM has developed a suite of patented technologies leveraging licensed and unlicensed spectrum for seamless and secure mobile XR experiences, and ultra-high performance 5G and next-gen networks serving military, defense, entertainment, communications, logistics and warehousing, training and development, and medical tech leaders. To learn more about XCOM Labs, visit www.xcom-labs.com.
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XCOM Labs Vice President of Wireless Tamer Kadous is another engineering leader who was previously at Qualcomm and has more than 20 years of experience in wireless communications spanning the areas of PHY, MAC and upper layers. He has been a design architect, systems lead and project lead for a variety of projects including UMB (ultra-mobile broadband), WLAN, EV-DO, LTE, LTE-U, MulteFire and 5G NR. Tamer led the first effort for LTE-unlicensed design, implementation, and commercialization. He pioneered wireless machine learning algorithms and has almost 200 US granted patents. He was Chairman of the Radio Working Group and board member in the MulteFire Alliance driving the standardization of PHY/MAC/MPS specifications. He holds a M.S. and Ph.D. in EE from the University of Wisconsin – Madison.
–Distinguished Member of Technical Staff
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XCOM Labs Vice President of Engineering Daaman Hejmadi brings extensive executive leadership and engineering experience to the team. His work has spanned semiconductor startups to device manufacturing giants over the past three decades. He most recently co-founded a startup company building the brain of an autonomous automobile focused on the rapidly growing market in China. Prior to this, Daaman’s most recent tour with Intel began in 2016 culminating in the role of Corporate Vice President & Infrastructure and Platform Solutions Group General Manager propelling the recovery of process technology leadership by creating a development platform for internal and external customers. This was preceded by nine years with Qualcomm in the capacity of Vice President of Engineering revolutionizing their development landscape, transforming their Bangalore design center from a small augmentation team to an engineering powerhouse comprised of ~4K staff that continues to deliver long-term value.
Daaman holds a Master of Business Administration in Organizational Behavior and Finance from the University of California, Berkeley, and a Master of Science in Computer Science and Engineering from the University of Massachusetts. He earned his Bachelor of Engineering (Computer Science and Engineering) at the Indian Institute of Science preceded by a Bachelor of Science in Physics/Electronics from the Sri Sathya Sai Institute of Higher Learning.
–Distinguished Member of Technical Staff.
XCOM Labs Vice President of Multimedia and Applications Serafin Diaz is a brilliant engineer and multimedia whiz who previously acted as Vice President of Engineering at Qualcomm leading XR Research. His work in XR started in 2007 when he jump-started the first Augmented Reality project. This project produced core real time Computer Vision technology which enabled not only XR but also became foundational to projects in robotics and autonomous driving. The inside-out 6DoF head tracking technology showcased in Qualcomm’s VR HMD reference design is an example of such technology. Serafin’s work influenced new generations of HW accelerators in Qualcomm’s SoCs.
He also led a variety of projects in areas concerning 2G CDMA data systems, test automation platforms for wireless devices, physical layer system integration and test for 1xEVDO as well as projects which laid down core technology for wireless VoIP and Video Telephony systems.
Serafin has been a digital hardware designer, a LAN systems engineer, a software architect, and a system validation engineer for TDMA cellular systems at Bell Northern Research (Nortel). He holds more than 60 active and pending US patents. Additionally, he has been recognized as one of the 20 most influential Latinos in tech in 2017 and 2018.
–Distinguished Member of Technical Staff.
Previously an SVP of Technology and Fellow at Qualcomm, XCOM Labs Chief Scientist Peter Black has worked on wireless system designs spanning 2G/3G/4G/5G. He contributed to all aspects of the life cycle of new innovations, starting with the concept, system design, prototype, evangelization, standardization, and finally the commercial ASIC realizations. He was a modem system architect in 1995 for the first commercial CDMA modem chip – the foundational Qualcomm chip-set product. In 1998, Peter co-led an R&D project which led to the high-speed Mobile Internet starting with 1xEV-DO. Concepts such as shared downlink, adaptive HARQ, link adaption, carrier-state feedback, fairness scheduling, carrier aggregation and cellular broadcast were designed, prototyped, standardized, and commercialized over the next 10 years under his direct technical leadership. The 3GPP HSDPA standard was motivated by and based on this foundational EVDO work. He holds 200+ US patents and holds a B.E. in EE from University of Queensland and was awarded a University Medal. He was also awarded a Fulbright Traveling Scholarship and attended Stanford University graduating with an M.S. and Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering.
–Distinguished Member of Technical Staff