“I can even bring it lower than that,’ said <one who knows> but who couldn’t go on the record by company policy. At the Brooklyn 6G conference, everyone was excited by the performance of “systems on a chip.”
You can’t buy one at Amazon today. If you order less than 100,000, the price will be higher.
Systems on chip are reaching the market from Qualcomm, Marvell, AMD/Xilinx, and others. Nokia CEO Pekka Lundmark told me their custom chip is doing very well.
Intel’s high price on Xeon can be avoided by using a RISC-V processing core. EdgeQ and Marvell have announced a SOC with RISC-V. Running on ARM cores, it should be very power-efficient.
SOC’s aren’t really a full system. To build the gear, you’ll have to add power, an antenna, radio frequency, and other parts.
5G small cell prices should ultimately approach about twisedouble the price of today’s best Wi-Fi routers.