Xiaolong Chip "Three Consecutive Hair": Qualcomm 5G Big Chess And Chinese Mobile Phone Manufacturers Abacus

Gan Jun photo

"Now is a very special time point, because we have entered the important transition period of 5G, that is, the stage of scale." Us time December 3rd, Qualcomm President Cristiano Amon in 2019 Qualcomm Xiaolong technology summit said.

Let Ann feel deeply that on the same occasion, a year ago, we were still looking forward to the future of 5G, but today, 5G is within reach. This amazing speed of development has never been achieved before in the 3G and 4G era. In the face of the "5G speed" beyond imagination, the whole industrial chain needs to constantly speed up to cope with it, and Qualcomm plays a crucial role in it.

Since the first Qualcomm Xiaolong processor came out in 2007, Qualcomm has occupied a dominant position in the field of mobile chips in the following 12 years. From the original S products to 800, 600, 400, 200 and four series in 2013, Qualcomm's iterative Xiaolong processor is one of the most important promoters in the development of smart phones.

Over the past three years, the Qualcomm summit held at the end of each year has become the vane of the smart phone industry, because at this meeting, Qualcomm will issue a new generation Xiaolong processor, which will directly determine the performance limit of the new flagship machine for most mobile phone manufacturers in the coming year.

This year is no exception, Qualcomm released the 8 series and 7 series of the latest three products at the 2019 Xiaolong technology summit, namely Xiaolong 865, Xiaolong 765 and Xiaolong 765G.

It is worth noting that these three new products are all produced for 5G, amon said. "They will help 5G scale in 2020." At the summit, you can also feel that all the contents of Qualcomm are all around 5G.

However, because of 5G, there has been some controversy about the new chip produced by Qualcomm. The focus of controversy is that Xiaolong 865 uses the design of the Xiaolong X555G baseband, which is not integrated.

Generally speaking, the integrated chip has some advantages over the external baseband mode in terms of power consumption, heat dissipation and space area. The latter has more advantages in manufacturing difficulty and cost.

There is no doubt about the manufacturing process, but the root cause of this controversy lies in the integrated design of HUAWEI released Kirin 990 and the 1000 5G two chips issued by MediaTek.

Qualcomm's choice

Aiming at the problem of why Xiaolong 865 is not integrated, amon told reporters in twenty-first Century, economic report reporters in December 4th that Qualcomm would never sacrifice the performance of application processor (AP) or modulation mediator in order to make a SoC. "Compared with other manufacturers' 5G solutions, their performance levels are not at one level compared with Xiaolong 865+X55."

Amon said, "we know that the new 5G services that need new capabilities require the best performance of the modem and AP. If we only want to launch 5G SoC, we have to reduce the performance of the two or one of them, so that we can not fully realize the potential of 5G."

Alex Katouzian, senior vice president of mobile communications and general manager of mobile business, talked about this topic and even commented on competing products. He told the twenty-first Century economic news reporter that "unicorn 990 is not as good as Xiaolong 865 on the AP side. On the side of the modem, unicorn 990 only supports the following 6GHz band and 100MHz bandwidth, so although Kirin 990 is an integrated chip, it has a discount on the performance and function of AP and modem two."

"While MediaTek TEDA 1000 can support 200MHz bandwidth below 6GHz band, it also does not support millimeter wave, and its performance on AP side is not as good as that of Xiaolong 865, so Tianji 1000 is not a top-level solution." Katouzian said.

Through the reply of two top executives, we can see that Xiaolong 865's plug-in baseband scheme is not the only choice for Qualcomm, but after making a comprehensive comparison of the two schemes of integration and separation, they have made the best choice they think.

According to the briefing, Xiaolong 865 can support a peak rate of up to 7.5 Gbp, and AI performance is 2 times that of the previous generation platform. It can perform 15 trillion operations per second, and the ISP processing speed can reach 2 billion pixels per second, which can capture 200 million pixels of photos.

In addition, in Qualcomm's view, Xiaolong 865's separate Baseband Design, in addition to avoiding trade-offs between AP and baseband performance, is also helpful for OEM manufacturers to shorten the design cycle of flagship.

Keith Kressin, senior vice president of Qualcomm product management, told the twenty-first Century business news reporter that OEM manufacturers had already used Xiaolong X50 on the flagship aircraft, and they also preferred to use Xiaolong X55's separate solution, which allows them to join Xiaolong 865 processor directly.

So in product design, we also listened to the opinions of OEM manufacturers. Therefore, the separation of baseband will not bring any disadvantage or inconvenience to the end users or OEM manufacturers. " Keith Kressin said.

OEM manufacturers are restless

Perhaps in order to prove their integration capabilities, this technology summit is also the first time at Qualcomm issued Xiaolong 8 and Xiaolong 7 products. And Xiaolong 865's plug-in Baseband Design is different. Xiaolong 765/765G uses integrated design and integrates Xiaolong X525G baseband.

Keith Kressin told reporters that "it is precisely because of shortening the development time of Xiaolong 865, that we can build Xiaolong 765/765G with integrated solutions in the process. This is the two completely different chip product, the price of the product is different, the representative factory is also different. "

In the 2020 5G mobile phone market, Qualcomm gave a product portfolio strategy. For those flagship products that pursue the ultimate performance, Xiaolong 865 will be chosen, while those who prefer to emphasize cost-effective will choose Xiaolong 765/765G.

It is worth noting that Xiaolong 865 is a pure AP product, so it does not exist and the performance of the baseband products is duplicated and wasted. Moreover, Qualcomm has no plans to match Xiaolong 865 with other baseband except Xiaolong X55.

According to the product information released by Qualcomm, both Xiaolong 865 or Xiaolong 765/765G can support all key areas and major frequency bands in the world, including 5G millimeter wave and 6 GHz below frequency band, 5G independent (SA) and non independent (NSA) networking mode, as well as TDD, FDD and dynamic spectrum sharing (DSS).

This also means that if OEM manufacturers want to use Xiaolong 865 and Xiaolong 765/765G, the product must be 5G. According to Qualcomm, according to Qualcomm, millet, OPPO, black shark, cool, iQOO, Lenovo, Meizu, Nubian red devil, Canada plus, Realme, nuts mobile phones, TCL, vivo, Wen Tai, ZTE, and 8848 Chinese manufacturers all plan to adopt the newly released Xiaolong processor in their 2020 and future 5G mobile phones.

If the 5G phones launched in 2019 are in the water test market, then the competition for 5G phones will be officially opened in 2020.

At the Xiaolong technology summit, the representatives of OEM manufacturers such as Xiaomi, OPPO, Motorola and so on also carried out the platform for Qualcomm. Lin Bin, co-founder and vice chairman of Xiaomi group, said that millet will launch its flagship millet 10 in the first quarter of next year, becoming one of the first mobile phone manufacturers to deliver Xiaolong 865. 5G

Over the past two years, the overall sales volume of the smartphone market has been declining significantly. All manufacturers are hoping that the replacement tide brought by 5G can inject vitality into the continuous downward market. According to the three quarter earnings report released by Xiaomi in 2019, sales and revenues of its smartphones have declined.

In response, Zhou Xiaopi, senior vice president of Xiaomi group, told reporters at the twenty-first Century economic report that the "double drop" situation occurred because millet chose a sound development strategy during the reporting period. It believes that at present, is in the 4G, 5G switching period, many consumers are waiting for the arrival of 5G phones, and next year, millet will launch more than 10 5G phones.

Amon told reporters that in the past many people in the world, the frequency of replacement is an average of 4 years to replace one, so in the previous forecast, Qualcomm also believes that the entire mobile phone market will follow this rhythm to a smooth transition to 5G.

"But in fact, 5G is advancing very fast, many operators have launched unlimited data packages, and the terminal products are constantly improving, so we now feel that the replacement cycle of the market may accelerate and return to the frequency of the new machines that have been in the market for two years, which means that the whole terminal market will grow at a rate of two times." Amon said.

According to the Qualcomm forecast, by 2022, the global 5G smart phone will have more than 1 billion 400 million shipments. This is a huge incremental market, and it is also an opportunity for all mobile phone manufacturers to miss.

Shortly after the release of Xiaolong's new generation of processors, Lu Weibing, vice president of millet group and general manager of Redmi brand, also announced in micro-blog that the upcoming Redmi K30 series will start Xiaolong 765G. In the three quarter earnings call conference, millet executives placed high hopes on Redmi K30, and said that the product will be a critical moment for the popularity of 5G phones.

The new generation Xiaolong product released by Qualcomm has provided "ammunition" for Chinese manufacturers who have coveted 5G for a long time. In December, a number of manufacturers' 5G new products conference was waiting.

For the coming 2020, there is a restless breath in the field of mobile communications. In an interview with the twenty-first Century economic report, Meng Pu, chairman of Qualcomm China, said that the development of 5G in 2020 could be summarized by three key words: "expansion", "opportunity" and "cooperation".

Among them, the extension includes multiple dimensions, such as 5G will be popularized to the mainstream level, operators will expand the deployment of independent Networking (SA) from the deployment of NSA, and 5G will surpass the mobile phone itself, which will have an impact on more terminal types and more industries.

The "opportunity" is that 5G will be a universal technology platform, which will be everywhere like water and electricity, and bring many opportunities to the world. According to the latest data from the IHS 5G economy, by 2035, 5G will create 13 trillion and 200 billion US dollars in economic output and create 22 million 300 thousand jobs.

"Facing the 2020, there will be more and more opportunities for Chinese manufacturers around the world. For example, in the more than 40 5G networks currently operated by the operators, most of the operators' terminal start sequences have 5G terminals from Chinese manufacturers, which is the opportunity 5G brings to China's industry. Meng Pu said.

As for cooperation, Meng Pu said that Qualcomm does not make end products, only products such as technology and chips, so no partner will succeed without Qualcomm. Therefore, the development of Qualcomm in the 5G era can not be pushed forward alone, but it needs the above manufacturers to jointly promote.