Tantra's Mantra with Prakash Sangam

At CES 2026, Lenovo showcased an exciting new AI innovation called QIRA, redefining what personalized technology can offer. This powerful, system-level feature works seamlessly across devices and platforms, enhancing user experience like never before, and it’s now being rolled out on select Lenovo devices.In this episode, I had the privilege of speaking with Jeff Snow, the Head of Product and AI Ecosystem at Lenovo. We explored the inspiring vision behind QIRA, its capabilities, and how Lenovo is uniquely positioned to offer such an experience. Join us as we dive into how QIRA gathers insights, develops its extensive knowledge base, maintains synchronization across devices, and implements robust measures to protect user privacy and security.Index:00:00 - Intro02:00 - Guest intro (Jeff Snow, VP & Head of Product & AI Ecosystem)02:50 - What is QIRA - Cross-device, local-first personal intelligence03:42 - The vision of QIRA - Uniform "Lenovo AI Experience" across devices05:13 - Organizationally, one team is working on QIRA, implemented on all Lenovo devices06:12 - Examples of what it can do today: Catch me up - Summarize what happened across devices, Pay attention - Summarize meetings, and make it part of the knowledge base across devices, more08:17 - QIRA learns from experiences - Implicitly and explicitly (with user permission), gathers and personal knowledge & insights09:59 - It is more than an OTT app - App interface, but tightly integrated into the machine, even connecting with the OS, utilizes local AI models, and can be surfaced in any other apps12:29 - The inputs to QIRA - Multimodal, text, images, voice, additional context (emails, chats, etc.), system health and telemetry, cross-device artifacts (e.g. notifications)14:00 - Explicit user permission is required before saving any inputs, and it can be revoked at any time. "Humans are always in the loop"15:06 - ALL the data generated by the device is stored locally on that specific device, the vectorized and encrypted data is shared across devices to keep all the devices in sync18:16 - The "learning" happens and is stored in the individual device, and synced across devices20:10 - Hybrid and agile model selection: mix of local, cloud, own, and third-party, with always a local-first approach21:56 - User option "Local-only" or "Hybrid." Even in local-only mode, sync across devices can be enabled23:56 - Most QIRA actions are user-initiated or part of an experience or workflow.23:27 - It can surface suggestions, but not directly take action without direct user intervention28:49 - QIRA can be the primary AI assistant interface on your Lenovo device32:20 - Lenovo is exploiting its unique position, with pocket-to-cloud offerings, to provide a more personalized and well-rounded AI experience to its users32:49 - Key challenges Lenovo faced in bringing QIRA to market: changing the mindset of the team to be software-focused, and moving quickly34:99 - Defenses against accessing QIRA-related data when the device is stolen36:17 - Ability to migrate personal knowledge base from old to new device37:20 - No QIRA knowledge base vector data cloud back-up38:30 - Different peer product in China, QIRA is for the rest of the world39:33 - Evolution of QIRA: More devices, third-party devices, even richer knowledge base & orchestration, enterprise solution39:48 - Portability of QIRA vector database41:20 - Closing

This year, CES saw its highest attendance in the post-COVID era, attracting 141,000 attendees. As usual, the event saw many announcements across technology and product categories. Although AI was everywhere and IoT had a huge presence (albeit without that name), there wasn't a dominant theme. In this episode, Leonard Lee of Next Curve and I analyze what we saw and heard and try to understand the key takeaways. We also discuss how automotive exhibits have changed, how industrial participation is increasing, and how CES has become a non-Chinese global show.

For the first time, an AMD executive joins our podcast. In this episode, I sit down with Salil Raje, SVP and GM of Adaptive and Embedded Computing Group at AMD. As a pioneer in the FPGA market, Salil provides unique insights into the industry's current landscape and AMD's strategic direction. We delve into the status of Xilinx's integration into AMD after two years of acquisition, the challenges and opportunities of Edge computing/AI, and how AMD's upcoming Versal 2 platform aims to revolutionize this space.

After the successful launch of eMBB, everybody is eagerly looking at the next phase of 5G. Industry observers are wondering where the subsequent growth will come from, how the mobile network operators will recoup the enormous investments they have made in deploying 5G, when the exciting applications and use cases we have discussed for years will come to fruition, and what the key enablers will be. In this long-ranging discussion with John Smee, SVP and Head of Wireless Research at Qualcomm, I explore 5G Advanced, drivers of wide deployments of 5G Stand Alone, and the role of AI in the evolution of 5G, 6G, and beyond.

Recent market developments, like license litigations and the need for high-performance, low-power processors, have heightened the focus on RISC-V, the open standard Instruction Set Architecture (ISA).In this wide-ranging discussion with the RISC-V International CEO, Calista Redwood, I discuss where the ISA currently stands, how the ecosystem is expanding, what the challenges are, and when the market can expect RISC-V to support more complex, high-performance workloads, and be a formidable competitor for the incumbent Intel's X-86 and Arm architectures.

This episode was recorded at Verizon's 5G Innovation Lab in San Francisco, during its inauguration event. I spoke to Brian Mecum, VP of Device Technology and Sports Innovation at Verizon, regarding the lab, partners, applications/services developed there that have become commercial, next phase of 5G for Verizon and more.

Discussion with Qualcomm RAN product marketing head Gerardo Giaretta on why in-line accelerators are needed for 5G virtualized and Open RAN deployments and their collaboration announcements done at MWC 2022. For reference, check out our previous podcast and articles on the subject below: Forbes: What It Takes To Build Modern 5G Open Radio Networks (Open RAN) HPE and Qualcomm announcement signifies the role of cloud and telco collaboration in Open RAN Podcast: Qualcomm re-entering cellular infra business with 5G RAN Solutions - How, What and Why?

In this episode, I discuss the mmWave RoI report and its specifics with its lead author Stephen Rose of Bell Labs Consulting. The discussion revolves around the methodology, findings, and the value of the report cellular operators and industry at large. As a reference, here is my article summarizing the findings of the report published on RCR Wireless News Can 5G mmWave deployments be profitable? Yes! Says Bell Labs Consulting