5G’s Achilles Heel: Heat

> As I understand it, these mmWave operate at very high frequencies — close to microwave — which require high clock speeds in the chips.

All mobile telecommunication systems from 2G onwards operate in the microwave range (which starts at 300 MHz).

mmWave, as the name indicates, means millimeter range. For 5G this is between 24 and 53 GHz (3G and 4G don't go beyond about 2.4 GHz).

I think the high clocks in chips will come from the high data throughput, not really the RF. If the chip has to shift 20Gbps then that requires serious horsepower.