This article is from WeChat official account:Core things (ID: aichip001), author: Dong Wen Shu, from the title figure: vision China
Nov. 10 news that after the unveiling of Apple and Huawei’s 5nm chips, the release dates of the other two chip giants Samsung and Qualcomm’s 5nm chip industry will come in November and December respectively.
As the most integrated chip manufacturing process humans can achieve so far, the 5nm process can achieve up to 171.3 million transistors per square millimeter; it is also based on the mobile processor architecture Cortex-A77, 5nm chip performance may be 50% higher than 7nm products.
For the smartphone processor industry that aims to reduce power consumption and improve performance, the 5nm chip process has become a “high ground” that it must seize. In this industry window period, chip design and manufacturing processes have become the key to the commercial implementation of 5nm chips.
Currently, Qualcomm, MediaTek, Samsung, Apple, and Huawei HiSilicon, which rank the top five in the global mobile phone SoC chip market, have already deployed 5nm. With the launch of Samsung and Qualcomm’s flagship chips approaching, On the 5nm track, the “big five” in the global mobile phone SoC chip design community have gathered four of them.
Focus on the upper reaches of the industry chain. On the “mountain” where 4 5nm chip foundries are made, TSMC and Samsung have their respective enclosures.
7nm, 5nm, 3nm… The more advanced the chip manufacturing process, the more the number of transistors per unit area, the closer to the limit of the physical system.
With the official debut of various products, 5nm chips have gone from a “legend” of Moore’s Law to a new situation where the bayonet will become popular in the market. Needless to say, as mobile phones equipped with 4 chips enter the consumer market, the battle for 5nm chipsThe situation will become more intense.
However, on the starting line of the 5nm chip commercial circuit, there are far more than Apple, Huawei, Samsung, and Qualcomm. On the 5nm chip foundry circuit, TSMC and Samsung are equally hard to separate.
In the background board where the four 5nm chips made their debut, Moore’s Law hits the top and the process development is hindered, and various factors are causing this eternal battle on mobile phone SoC to slide in an uncertain direction…
Today, Xinshixi will clear the fog with you and walk into the eye of the storm in the battle of mobile phone chips-the real situation of the 5nm chip commercial track.
1. Mobile SoC design battle: the big four are rushing, who is still queuing?
As the most advanced manufacturing process currently available for mass production, 5nm chips have become the target of most chip design players. The most eye-catching part is the competition among mobile phone chip design players.
On the one hand, the performance of each 5nm chip is directly related to the performance of mobile phones, so it has become one of the most concerned topics for consumers; on the other hand, as the most advanced process available for mass production, 5nm production capacity Will be chased and divided by mobile phone manufacturers.
Qualcomm had predicted that global 5G mobile phone shipments will reach 450 million units in 2021, a direct double the number compared to 2020. Faced with the sudden increase in market demand, the four Apple/Huawei/Samsung/Qualcomm rushed ahead, and the remaining players such as MediaTek and Ziguang Zhanrui have also warmed up.
▲Apple, Huawei, Samsung, Qualcomm commercial 5nm chip inventory
1. Apple A14 & Huawei Kirin 9000: The dust will settle in October
Apple and Huawei’s self-developed 5nm chips were successively released in October and landed on Apple iPhone 12 series mobile phones and Huawei Mate 40 series mobile phones respectively.
In terms of integration, the number of Kirin 9000 transistors is 30% more than that of the A14 chip. Apple A14 integrates 11.8 billion transistors, and Huawei Kirin 9000 integrates 15.3 billion transistors.
In terms of architecture, Apple’s A14 chip uses 6-core CPU and 4-core GPU; Huawei uses 8-core CPU and 24-core GPU.
It should be pointed out that due to US restrictions on Huawei’s acquisition of chip technology, Huawei Kirin 9000 is designed based on Arm’s previous generation flagship architecture Cortex-A77, and Apple, Samsung, and Qualcomm can all obtain Arm’s latest IP authorization. From the network transmission of Samsung Orion 1080, Qualcomm Snapdragon 875 architecture, these two chips are designed based on Arm’s latest Cortex-A78.
In addition, Kirin 9000 has built-in Huawei’s self-developed baseband chip Barong 5000. In contrast, the A14 chip is an external Qualcomm X55 baseband chip.
According to the iPhone 12 dismantling article published by China’s “United News Network” in Taiwan, the A14 chip confirms the external Qualcomm X55 baseband chip, but it is temporarily unclear whether Apple directly uses Qualcomm’s complete design or a customized version.
▲iPhone 12 disassembly diagram (Source: “United News Network”)
The comprehensive performance comparison of the two chips can refer to the data disclosed by the benchmark platform GeekBench: a Huawei Mate 40 series equipped with Kirin 9000 runs into single-core 1016 and multi-core 3688; iPhone 12 equipped with A14 runs into single Core 1593, multi-core 3893.
2. Samsung Orion 1080 & Qualcomm Snapdragon 875: Grab the tail of 2020
Following the pace of Apple and Huawei, Samsung and Qualcomm plan to take the “last train” of 2020 and plan to launch 5nm chips in November and December respectively.
Among them, Samsung announced on Weibo on November 2 that it will be (November 12) in Shanghai, China in 10 days. strong>Orion 1080 chip launch conference. This is also the first time Samsung has held a press conference specifically for a processor. This shows how Samsung attaches importance to the Orion 1080.
According to foreign media information, the Orion 1080 CPU part will use 4 Arm latest Cortex-A78 cores and 4 Cortex-A55 cores. In contrast, Samsung’s previous-generation flagship chip 7nm Orion 9825 CPU uses 2 custom M4 cores, 2 Cortex-A75 cores, and 4 Cortex-A55 cores.
According to the running sub-platform GeekBench, the Orion 1080 running with 7nm process is divided into 1040 single-core and 3017 multi-core.
Among the major mobile phone manufacturers, Huawei, Samsung, and Apple each have their own ingenious designs for their flagship mobile phone SoCs. The remaining players, such as Xiaomi, OPPO, and vivo, are targeting Qualcomm’s 5nm chips. As early as October of this year, Qualcomm officially announced that it would release the 5nm flagship chip Snapdragon 875 on December 1-2.
According to the leaked information, Qualcomm Snapdragon 875 uses 8-core CPU, equipped with self-developed Adreno 660 GPU, and will integrate Snapdragon X60 5G baseband.
GeekBench platform data shows that a new Xiaomi machine that is supposed to be equipped with Snapdragon 875 has a single-core 1105 and a multi-core 3512.
In order to ensure objectivity, the core tool also collects the running scores of Apple, Huawei, Samsung, and Qualcomm 5nm chips disclosed by the running platform AnTuTu, and compares the running scores with the 7nm chips of the four companies. The chart is as follows:
3. MediaTek and Ziguang Zhanrui are “warming up”
The four design giants each divide their territory in the flagship SoC market. In contrast, MediaTek, Ziguang Zhanrui and other players are targeting the low-end and mid-range market, starting at the starting point of the commercial track for 5nm chips warm up.
▲Right-2019 Global Mobile Phone Chip Market Ranking (Source: Counterpoint)
As the world’s second-ranked mobile phone chip design player, MediaTek mainly targets the low-end mobile phone market. Since the beginning of this year, MediaTek’s 5nm R&D plan has also attracted market attention.
First, it was reported that MediaTek had specially built a 5G high-end platform based on 5nm technology for Huawei. In early September, it was also reported that MediaTek would “cancel the 5G high-end platform R&D plan based on 5nm process.”
In response to this rumor, MediaTek officially dismissed the rumor, saying that the 5nm chip is progressing as planned and will not change the product plan because of a single customer.
On October 31, the digital blogger @数码闲聊站 broke the news that MediaTek is developing two chips, mtk6893 and mtk6891, which will use the new 5nm/6nm process, and the progress is faster than last year. Considering that this blogger has repeatedly bet on news about the mobile phone industry chain, the news about Fake’s 5nm chip is also more credible.
▲@数码闲聊站 Weibo broke the news
For Ziguang Zhanrui, in February this year, it launched the Huben T7520 chip based on the 6nm EUV process, and will realize the Huben T7520 mass production by the end of this year. According to this plan, the launch of 5nm chips should also be in the Ziguang Zhanrui plan.
2. Process competition: both are 5nm, TSMC is more integrated
Here, 5nm mobile phone chip design players are vying for a fight, regardless of the ranking of the four giants, it will not affect the order of 5nm chip manufacturers upstream of the industry chain. On the other side, even though there are only two 5nm chip manufacturers, TSMC and Samsung, they are equally hard to separate.
Interestingly, among the four first commercially available 5nm chips, Apple A14 and Huawei Kirin 9000 are both manufactured by TSMC. Samsung Orion 1080 and Qualcomm Snapdragon 875, which will be launched next, are based on Samsung’s 5nm process. .
▲Comparison of global advanced process technology density
As early as 2019, Samsung announced the completion of 5nm chip research and development, and plans to achieve mass production of 5nm chips in the second quarter of 2020. Now that 2020 has entered the fourth quarter, the two 5nm flagship cores manufactured by TSMC have already landed, but the 5nm chips manufactured by Samsung have “catch up with the late set.”
In terms of product performance, although Samsung’s 5nm process chips have not yet been officially launched, there is news in the industry that TSMC’s 5nm chip products are more integrated.
China Taiwan’s “Economic Daily” once quoted TSMC’s internal sources that TSMC’s 5nm process trial production results show that its transistors are 1.8 times that of the 7nm process. In contrast, Samsung’s 5nm process has only a 20% increase in the number of transistors compared to the 7nm process, and TSMC products have more advantages in terms of power consumption.
▲ TSMC’s 5nm strategy (Source: “Economic Daily”)
In terms of the two companies’ plans for more advanced manufacturing processes, In July this year, Samsung announced that it would skip the 4nm process and cut directly from the 5nm process to the 3nm process.
At the “2020 World Semiconductor Conference & Nanjing International Semiconductor Expo” held on August 26 this year, TSMC (Nanjing) Co., Ltd. General Manager Luo Zhenqiu revealed that TSMC expects to mass produce 4nm chips next year and 3nm chips in 2022. <