Qualcomm, Volley Chips And 5G Chips Are Entering The "Warring States Era".

Although this year's MWC communication conference has been cancelled, the rhythm of the 5G chips of technology giants is still going on as usual, but the form of online conferences has been selected. The 5G in 2020 has attracted much attention because the industry generally believes that this will be the key time to build up the scale and the rise of the 5G market.

Under the current epidemic, the 5G chip market is heating up, and new products are frequent in the past two weeks. In February 26th, violet launched its new generation of 5G SoC chip, T7520, and released the Xiaolong XR2 platform and 8cx 5G chipset on the same day. In February 18th, Qualcomm also released the third generation of 5G modem and radio frequency system Xiaolong X60.

Yao Jiayang, an analyst at Ji Bang consulting, told the twenty-first Century economic news reporter: "in terms of 5G SoC performance, it can be divided into several levels: the three parts of CPU itself, which are the processing performance of the application, the AI computing power, and the download speed of the built 5G Modem (modem), will be the focal points of the big factories. Broadly speaking, the performance of these three parts has been significantly improved by comparing 5G SoC with 4G SoC. In 2020, the major factories will also strengthen these three aspects in principle.

At the same time, the performance of the chip has accelerated the commercial speed of 5G chips. Qualcomm, HUAWEI, violet light, Samsung and MediaTek's 5G chips have been commercially available on mobile phones.

New round of 5G chip competition

At present, the companies that have launched the 5G baseband chip are HUAWEI, Qualcomm, Samsung, MediaTek and violet. In addition to Qualcomm, the other four have launched 5G SoC chips that integrate baseband chips.

Among them, 5G baseband chips include Qualcomm's Xiaolong X50, Xiaolong X55, the latest release of X60, HUAWEI's Balong5G01 and Balong5000, violet's brilliant spring vine V510, MediaTek Helio M70, Exynos Modem 5100 and so on.

The 5G SoC chip has been released mainly from HUAWEI Unicorn 990, Samsung Exynos 980, Exynos 990, MediaTek TEDA 1000, Tianji 800, purple exhibition, sharp heart, T7520, T7510.

The latest products are Qualcomm's X60 and violet's brilliant tiger T7520.

Violet shows that tiger T7520 is the second generation 5G smartphone platform of purple light. It adopts 6nm EUV process technology and improves its power consumption. At the same time, tiger core T7520 supports full scene coverage, supports 5G NR TDD+FDD carrier aggregation, and uplink and downlink decoupling technology, which can increase coverage by more than 100%. It supports Sub-6GHz band and NSA/SA dual mode networking. It also supports 2G to 5G seven mode Netcom. In SA mode, the downlink peak rate exceeds 3.25Gbps.

Yao Jiayang told reporters: "as the processor uses the 6nm EUV process of TSMC, it is the first 5G SoC to determine the adoption of this process. At least it can be determined that the development of purple light has been able to catch up with the big factories such as Qualcomm and HUAWEI in the advanced process. However, in view of the current product planning of HUAWEI and Qualcomm, the 5nm EUV should be the main product, so violet has been catching up with the big factories such as Qualcomm, but it may take a little time to work with them.

He also said that from the configuration of CPU and GPU and the matching of 6nm EUV and other specifications, the strategy of purple light should be locked in the middle and low end markets, and the specifications of 5G Modem still do not support mmWave. In general, T7520 should be locked in the middle end 5G mobile phone market in China.

Look at Qualcomm Xiaolong X60, according to the introduction, Xiaolong X60 is the world's first 5nm technology, but also the world's first supporting the polymerization of all major channels and their combination of 5G baseband, support channels include millimeter wave and 6GHz below FDD and TDD band. In terms of speed, Xiaolong X60 can achieve up to 7.5Gbps download speed and up to 3Gbps upload speed. Compared with the solution that does not support carrier aggregation, the carrier aggregation of 6GHz below the independent network mode can double the peak rate of 5G independent networking.

Qualcomm said it plans to launch Xiaolong X60 in the first quarter of 2020, while Xiaolong X60's smart phone is expected to be launched in early 2021.

This year, Qualcomm in the mobile phone business is still based on X55 with baseband chips, Yao Jiayang told reporters: "in the 2020 5G mobile phone market development, there are two processors and 5G Modem, and 5G SoC (5G Modem)", 865+x55 is only one combination, like 765/765G will Qualcomm this year, the important main 5G products. X60 compared with X55, strictly speaking, there are not many specifications of upgrading, roughly on the upgrade process, as well as mmWave and sub-6GHz carrier aggregation technology import. "

Commercial upgrading

On the one hand, the technology of 5G chip is updating, Yao Jiayang told reporters: "in the long run, 5G chips will still develop towards integrated routes, and the way of plug-in is currently a transitional period. We believe that the development of 5G SoC will follow the steps of Qualcomm and try to integrate mmWave's function into 5G SoC, and adopt more advanced process. If technology develops, the integration of 5G Modem 5G SoC should be the mainstream in 2021.

At the same time, manufacturers also mentioned more about the commercial situation and user experience at the press conference. These chips are also gradually moving toward the business of mobile phones, CPE, PC and AR/VR.

Mobile phones are the most widely used terminals at present. So far, mobile phone manufacturers have launched more than 10 5G phones. The first time that purple light exhibition also announced that its 5G chip will be installed in Hisense F50 mobile phone, and the application of Qualcomm in Android is the most widely used.

Strategy Analytics's latest research report points out that by 2020, global 5G smart phone shipments will reach 199 million units. But the impact of the new coronavirus pneumonia and the slowing global economy will limit the sales of 5G smartphones this year.

Strategy Analytics director Ken Hyers said: "in 2020, the global 5G smart phone shipments will grow more than ten times from 19 million units in 2019 to 199 million. The 5G segment will be the fastest growing part of the global smartphone industry this year. Consumers want faster 5G smartphones to experience richer content, such as video or games. We predict that 5G penetration will increase from 1% of all smartphone shipments in 2019 to 15% in 2020.

"The 5G smartphone market is much weaker than expected in the first half of 2020, but we expect that the 5G smartphone market will rebound strongly in the second half of the year if the epidemic is controlled," added Neil Mawston, executive director of Strategy Analytics.

Besides mobile phones, HUAWEI and exhibition show have launched CPE products, and Qualcomm has released the second generation 5G chip platform of VR/AR glasses -- Xiaolong XR2, and 5G chip group, Xiaolong 8cx, which is used in ARM PC side.

Yao Jiayang told reporters: "XR2 is a high-order product in the positioning of Qualcomm, and 8cx is also a high-order product in the 5G PC field. We believe that the development of 5G market is still in the embryonic stage, even if it can be commercially available, the overall number is still relatively limited. We think that the maturity of VR/AR and 5G PC market may not wait until 2021, when the consumer market gradually accepts the convenience that 5G brings, then it will have the opportunity to gradually spread.

As chips become more mature, who can eventually reduce power consumption and reduce costs faster, successful card business becomes the first tier, and is also the focus of attention in the 5G mobile era.

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