During the IFA (International Consumer Electronics Fair in Berlin), Huawei and Samsung released 5G SoC chips Kirin 990 and Exynos 980 respectively, and Qualcomm followed up by revealing that 12 OEMs plan to adopt Snapdragon 7 Series 5G SoC. 5G SoC integrates 5G baseband chip into AP (Application Processor), which means 5G mobile chips are moving from separated to integrated, from functional to practical. It will lead a new round of 5G chip competition, releasing a positive signal to the 5G industry.
5G chip competition enters a new phase
IFA is the wind vane of consumer electronics, and held in the autumn when cell phone manufacturers focus on releasing new products, Huawei, Samsung and Qualcomm focus on releasing 5G SoC messages during this period, also heralding the approach of the 5G cell phone replacement wave. At present, Huawei will take the lead in commercialization and mass production of 5G SoC, and positioned in flagship models, while Samsung and Qualcomm's 5G SoC is biased towards mid- and high-end models. Huawei and Samsung will prioritize to meet the commercialization of 5G phones in 5G hotspots such as China and South Korea, while Qualcomm takes into account the regions that are interested in laying out 5G through millimeter waves. Huawei's 5G SoC will debut in the Mate30 series, Samsung's 5G SoC is expected to be equipped in Vivo phones within the year, and Qualcomm's 5G SoC will be adopted by 12 cell phone OEMs such as Redmi and Realme.
Huawei's 5G SoC Kirin 990 debuted on September 6, while the Mate30 series with Kirin 990 will be released in Munich, Germany on September 19, using 7nm EUV process, the first 5G NSA&SA SoC, equipped with the industry's first 16-core Mali-G76 GPU, supporting Sub-6GHz. industry insider Zhong Xinlong told China Electronics News Huawei uses advanced SoC design to integrate the 5G baseband chip Baron 5000 into the 990, and supports NSA&SA dual-mode and TDD/FDD full-band, which prepares the channel for the next 5G commercial process and can support independent networking for the next 3 to 5 years, improving the cost performance of the phone and extending the usage cycle.
It is worth mentioning that to address the challenges of unstable connection and poor connectivity in high-speed mobile scenarios at the early stage of 5G commercialization, Kirin 990 optimizes the 5G uplink experience through intelligent uplink splitting design, using both 5G and 4G networks in application scenarios such as live video streaming and short video upload, with 5.8 times higher upload rate; for high-speed mobile scenarios, it supports machine learning-based adaptive receiver for more For high-speed mobile scenarios, it supports machine learning-based adaptive receiver for more accurate channel measurement.
Two days before the release of Kirin 990, Samsung grabbed the 5G SoC Exynos 980 and plans to provide samples to customers starting this month, which means that the mass production of Exynos will be later than Huawei, which released its Mate30 series this month. In terms of architecture, Samsung uses the latest Cortex-A77, but the GPU is a 5-core Mali-G76 MP5, 11 cores less than Huawei's Mali-G76, and does not use the 7nm EUV process, but is based on 8nm FinFET technology, positioning it towards the mid- to high-end market. The built-in NPU is 2.7 times more optimized than the previous generation, capable of data streaming according to user settings, fast connection processing mixed reality, smart cameras and other high-capacity data, and the built-in ISP can handle up to 108 million pixels. According to Samsung's official website, the Exynos 980 is expected to be officially put into mass production within the year.
Qualcomm's 5G solution, on the other hand, emphasizes support for Sub-6GHz and millimeter wave, as well as mobile ecology on the mobile side. Lu Weibing, general manager of Redmi, and Shen Yiren, vice president of OPPO, retweeted Qualcomm Snapdragon 5G-related news on social media platforms and hinted that Redmi and Realme would be the first models to carry it. It is reported that the Snapdragon 7 series 5G SoCs that Redmi, Realme and other 12 OEMs plan to use are sampling in the second quarter of this year, and the first batch of terminals are expected to hit the market after the fourth quarter of 2019.
5G SoCs become the driving force behind the popularity of 5G cell phones
In the early stages of 5G commercialization, AP+5G external baseband served as a compromise solution to bring 5G features to the terminal market quickly. With the release of the 5G SA standard by 3GPP, the first 5G commercial deployments are being closely carried out. IDC expects that 5G smartphone shipments will account for 8.9% of total smartphone shipments in 2020. The chip, as the arithmetic core of the terminal, should be more ahead of the curve.
Wang Xiaolong, research director of Coremind, told China Electronics News that external baseband has lost its competitiveness since 4G, and 5G SoC is a necessary condition for large-scale commercialization of 5G terminals. "External baseband indicates that manufacturers have the ability to achieve 5G functions, to large-scale sales of 5G cell phones, or based on an integrated chip to achieve. In addition to Apple, which insists on using its own processor and temporarily does not have the ability to integrate 5G baseband, other cell phone manufacturers will get rid of external baseband as soon as possible." Wang Xiaolong said.
For cell phone chips, SoC has advantages in chip area and power control. Zhong Xinlong pointed out that SoC is the evolutionary direction of the chip to enhance functionality and reduce power consumption, which can integrate more functional chips into a large chip, shorten the transmission distance between the chip and the chip, improve the stability of the signal, and have a very good improvement in power control. Wang Xiaolong said, compared with the SoC, external baseband will produce a waste of chip area, and the baseband can share power management and storage retrieval with the AP, which has more advantages in computing speed and power control.
Due to the lack of agreement on inter-regional communication agreements, the different progress of 5G deployment in different countries, and the positioning of cell phone manufacturers for different models, 5G baseband will still coexist with 5G SoC in the short term.
Xie Yushan, senior research director of TrendForce, told China Electronics News that, in the current situation where 5G cell phone penetration is still low, in order to continue to promote 5G cell phone features, the use of 5G modem chip with flagship AP's separated chip combination, and a single 5G SoC solution may be launched at the same time, corresponding to the different positioning of the cell phone market. Zhong Xinlong also told reporters that if the phone is sold to areas with inconsistent communication protocols, a temporary external 5G baseband can be adopted to give cell phone companies more options.
After having 5G SoC, when will the 5G cell phone replacement wave open? Sheng Linghai told China Electronics News that 5G coverage will reach a certain level in the second half of next year, and there will be a relatively large jump in 5G phones from major manufacturers. Wang Xiaolong said that the process of the first generation 5G SoC has a process towards maturity, coupled with the fact that 5G terminal technology is not mature enough and it takes time for operators to build their networks. It is believed that at the end of next year, under the joint promotion of terminal manufacturers and operators, the chip and terminal costs will fall, and 5G cell phone users are expected to exceed 10 million.
The 5G cell phone is not as fast as the 4G cell phone era in terms of penetration rate, so it is necessary to differentiate the market positioning and develop measures to expand the market share steadily. It is expected that flagship handsets will maintain a separate solution with a 5G modem chip paired with a flagship AP, while high-end handsets will expand consumer acceptance through the use of 5G SoCs, and 5G handset penetration is expected to increase significantly in the second half of 2020.