The Race Between 5G And Semiconductor Technology: The Gamble Of Violet Light

Shortly after taking office in 2018, CEO took two notes.

First, the choice of baseband chips is 7 nanometer that we are trying to explore, or is it a very mature 12 nanometer? The second is to go ahead with NSA (independent Networking), then transition to SA (independent Networking), or do SA go ahead and support NSA at the same time?

At that time, the decision was that the two technologies would take the latter road. Behind this is the complicated technical and technological iteration background, although the industry has been judged, but it does not rule out the possibility of error.

"In particular, the selection of process nodes for the first set of chips is very difficult and very troublesome. There are too many factors to be synthesized. Even if you finally make any judgement, you still have to take a big risk, because many things are being estimated. Up to now, we can say that two points are right when we feel a sigh of relief. In a recent interview with the economic news reporters in twenty-first Century, Chu recalled.

In the era of 5G, the players of baseband chips are less and less. Even the old semiconductor giant Intel has sold related businesses to quit competition. Even in the lower reaches of the industry chain, the company needs to understand gradually from the past, so as to achieve better coordination between industries.

This is closely related to the gradual failure of Moore's law, which has promoted the development of the semiconductor industry for decades. What's equally important is that the number of manufacturers that can pass all the communication tests in the past generation is also numbered.

In the competition of "a few people", the purple light exhibition anchored the technical line, re established the management system, and positioned it as the ecological carrier of the digital world, and looked forward to "burning the stove as soon as possible" with the industry.

Purple CEO. Data map

How to face semiconductor technology wall?

In the time of Moore's law, if the technology of the semiconductor company has successfully entered the next more advanced node, it can instantly get three addition - the cost has almost halved, the performance has almost doubled, and the power consumption rate has been reduced by nearly half. On this track, whoever runs first to the next node will be the winner.

But bottlenecks have emerged. In 2012, Chu Qing obtained a conclusion after analysis: 7 nanometer will become a craft wall, which is the key turning point of the semiconductor cost curve. Then, there will be two completely different laws of competition within and outside the wall.

The biggest impact of the inflection point is that the entry cost of the chip is quite high under the premise that the result is unknown.

Chu Qing gave an intuitive example: if we want to enter the 7 nanometer wall (7 nm and below), we need to pay at least $70 million to the third party before there is any chip, even if the mature chip manufacturer can reduce the cost as much as possible, and the cost of the chip will be at least 30 million dollars.

It is not known whether chips will make money in the future. The cost of optical entry is as high as $one hundred million. At that time, the yield of most of the 7 nanometer manufacturers had not reached the ideal level at that time (2018). Chu Ching further explained that in the past 1-2 weeks, the climbing curve of semiconductor technology can achieve the effect in the past week, but after 7 nm, the cycle will go to the month. This means that it will take huge risks.

In essence, when the circuit size is smaller and smaller, a potential barrier will be formed on the microcircuit and can not be crossed. "When the size is smaller and smaller, it will become more and more close to the quantum law, so the rule of macro circuit will be even more inappropriate at this time. There will be a phenomenon that the potential barrier suddenly collapses, and the macroscopic circuit model is used to judge the microscopic circuit is more and more not allowed.

Then it will have an impact on the division of labor in semiconductor industry. The early chip designers and manufacturers can make the two directly according to the standard process. But nowadays, if the chip design companies do not grasp these processes thoroughly and do not know how to match the manufacturing line, the accuracy of the model is seriously doubted.

As early as 28 nm process, the signal has been revealed, the difficulty of production is directly reflected on the lithography machine. Before 28 nm, there are many lithography suppliers. But after 28 nm, the mainstream has turned to three. Within 20 nanometers, there is basically only one ASML (Aas Maier).

So in 2018, I decided to make 12 nanometers first. Because this process node hoarding capacity is far better than 7 nm, and from the optimization of performance, cost and power consumption, the distance between 7 nanometer and 12 nanometer "ceiling" is not so large, not to mention 7 nanometer to a theoretical limit. Chu Qing analyzed. This has decided that the two 5G program adopted in the early stage of the exhibition was 12 nanometer process, so far it has proved to be a bet.

In July 2019, the mainstream AI chip test run by AI Benchmark released the list of running points. Violet ran sharp and T710 ran 28097 points, exceeding 24553 points of Qualcomm Xiaolong 855 Plus and 23944 points of HUAWEI Kirin 810, once topping the list. At the time, the first two generation of 7 nm process options were chosen.

"Today, the enhancement of nanometers may not mean the upgrading of technological essence, but an industry strategy chosen by manufacturers." Chu Qing concluded that in the initial selection of the technology route, the 7 nanometer technology was not mature, and the cost and risk were very high. While TSMC optimized the 12 nanometer technology at that time, it contributed to the result.

However, the exhibition is not "dead on" 12 nanometer technology, Chu Qing told the twenty-first Century business news reporter, the 12 nanometer exhibition will be an important node, of course, the company also has a sharp soldier, the world in the wall to attack the city, and in 2020 will see the performance of this pioneer.

"On the choice of nodes, I comprehensively assessed the manufacturers and felt that we had chosen them very precisely. But we will also consider the following performance and cost performance. Until the right time, we will continue to explore more advanced process 5G chips, combined with market demand and product maturity.

According to his prediction, 3 nm will be the bottom of another process. "There is no sign yet."

NSA and SA

The confusion and exploration of process selection has flooded the two years of the semiconductor industry, but more than that. In the era of 5G, new confusion has come again.

Unlike the previous generation of communication systems, the two concepts of NSA and SA appeared in the early days of 5G business. The former is anchoring the control signal of 5G to the base station of 4G, while the latter is the complete 5G base station accessing 5G core network.

This is a process that also exists in Korea, the United States and other countries, taking into account factors such as commercial efficiency and cost, and landing process. To implement the fastest mobile phone for consumers, the NSA system means to plug in the 5G baseband on the basis of the 4G chip, so that 5G phones can enter the market quickly.

However, exhibition firm resolutely walked the SA line. "I was originally born in mobile communications, and I climbed the tower and screwed the screws. I concluded that NSA is not a perfect 5G technology. " Chu Qing said so.

It is well understood from the principle. The full name of 5G is "the fifth generation of cellular mobile communication technology". "Honeycomb", as the name implies, cuts the network into many small pieces. When people transfer from one block to another, it is actually a completely different communication system, which needs to switch between services, and this is a very complicated process.

In the NSA scheme, it uses an advanced technology base station to match another old core network. Chu Qing pointed out that this can not be landed. The difficulty is that complex handover protocol conversion can cause all businesses to break down for a period of time during handoff. In the era of 5G high-speed interconnection, such a hundred milliseconds of interruption will be fatal to business entities.

"I was an objection to NSA early in the day, and it's just not feasible to use mobile phones. Even if the same base network is used for the same base station, if the handover is between 4G and 5G, the shortest time of handover is 230-240 milliseconds. Chu Qing pointed out to the twenty-first Century economic report reporter, and with the upgrading of mobile communication system, in fact, the demand for switching time is getting higher and higher. For example, the GSM in the 2G era is usually 200 milliseconds, the LTE in the 4G era is already 20 milliseconds, and to 5G, it will be faster than 5 milliseconds. The more extensive and innovative applications of 5G, such as AR, VR and driverless, must be based on SA core network.

As a result, the core team of the exhibition group has concentrated all the research and development on the SA system since January 2019.

The choice of the two major technical routes is a microcosm of Chu Chin's new exhibition in the early days of 5G research and development. It is thought that the exhibition will be further developed under the development pattern of the next five tigers (Qualcomm, HUAWEI Hass, MediaTek, exhibition and Samsung).

And in the era of 5G, where the universe is interconnected, the huge application market outside the mobile phone is also being nurtured privately, extending the larger imagination space. That will be another world.

Constructing eco driven applications

Hass, which has always been regarded as "closed", has begun to open up. Recently, Hass announced the launch of the first 4G communication chip to the Internet of things industry. This is seen as a step towards the massive market ecosystem.

In the era of 5G, open ecology will be a major topic. Chu pointed out that it has positioned three major markets: consumer electronics, industrial electronics and universal connectivity. He believes that, especially in the Chinese market, it is necessary to assume the responsibility of digital world ecological carriers.

"In fact, in the process of ecological construction, only one pillar is unstable, and other pillars are welcome to support it. In fact, the relationship between them is more like a synergy." He told the economic news reporter in twenty-first Century. After the 5G revolution, it will create the biggest new demand in history. It can not be carried by any manufacturer at all. "We very much welcome all the manufacturers to join us and heat up the pot as soon as possible."

Chu Ching said that if we focus on the core chip, consumer electronics, China's chip has more than 10% of the total, but in the field of industrial electronics, there may be only 1%, and Chinese manufacturers have yet to shoulder the responsibility of the main ecological carriers.

"We must blow the horn." According to him, the first year of the establishment of the Ministry of electronic industry broke one hundred million dollars. "In the foreseeable future, the growth rate of industrial electronics should be close to 100%."

To achieve ecological construction, we must also have technological accumulation. According to Chu Qing, because all the products in the exhibition are CPU, they also involve all aspects of connectivity. At present, the code loaded on CPU is almost 100 million units.

There are tens of millions of new lines of code brought by 5G. Among them, there are some developers who have written their own works, and those from the open source third party. These codes are loaded on the top of the chip and constitute the foundation of the carrier.

"We have to build up the" shed "and, of course, need the protection of intellectual property rights locally, which is a great loss to the leader company. Chu Qing frankly, there are still some invisible challenges in development. "We hope that we will give special protection to the leading enterprises with intellectual property rights, which is also a strategic vision of a society. If it is not protected, it will probably cause the hall to be emptied by the ants.

Chu Qing, one of the head enterprises of the local telecommunications baseband chip, points out that when thinking about 5G, we should adhere to some invariable conditions: to meet the needs of the market and customers, and to conform to the trend of the objective development of the industry. This is also the core point of developing strategy.

He emphasized the need to provide products that meet the needs of the market and users, such as cutting into future formats in a more mature and more optimized way. In the first generation of 5G chips, the choice of 12 nanometer SA is the way forward. This is also his suggestions for industrial development as a veteran of the semiconductor industry.