There are not many companies in the world that can play with 5G. Huawei is one, but now Huawei has a 5G chip but it can only be used as 4G. It must be said that this is very regrettable for the development of 5G.
Don’t think that 5G chips are very simple and cannot be made by ordinary companies. Even Apple is no exception. Earlier, in order to get rid of the clampdown of Qualcomm , Apple switched to Intel . As a result, after several years of tinkering, Intel still failed. , in desperation, Apple once again fell into the arms of Qualcomm.
Reluctantly, Apple also bought Intel's 5G department, but after so long, it still failed to achieve a breakthrough. Now analysts say that Apple has failed in the research and development of 5G baseband. This also makes people wonder, Apple, which can produce A-series chips, is actually in trouble with 5G baseband. What is the difficulty with 5G baseband?
is not a little difficult. Even Qualcomm, many people have found that the signal of mobile phones using Qualcomm chips is much worse than Huawei's Kirin chip . This is true in Huawei's series of new phones. You can see it above. The
baseband chip is a chip that exchanges signals between the mobile phone and the base station. It not only needs to synthesize the data information that the mobile phone needs to emit and convert it into the electromagnetic wave signal, but also needs to decode the received electromagnetic wave signal into data information that the mobile phone can understand. It can be simply understood as a communication "translation" chip, that is, data to signal, and confidence to data, which is the basis of mobile phone communication.
is like someone asking you a question. Whether your ears can understand what others are saying is very important. This is the function of the "baseband chip". Only when you understand it will you think about the answer to the question. This is the time of thinking. The work of CPU, and how you tell others the answer with your mouth, and how you should explain it so that others can understand it, is the function of the "baseband chip".
and CPU process calculation data differently. The baseband chip does signal exchange, which is more in the field of communication technology. Huawei's advantage is communication, which is what Apple and Intel do not have. Even Qualcomm, In recent years, the development of baseband has also been stumbling, and many problems have arisen.
Judging from the current situation, the baseband chip should be the most difficult chip to develop among mobile phone components. There are still about a dozen companies that can manufacture mobile phone processor chips, but when it comes to baseband chips, you can count them on one hand. come over. The difficulty of the
baseband chip lies in its multiple functions and difficulty in compatibility. Functionally, the baseband chip has both a CPU processor (timing control, digital system control, radio frequency control, power saving control and human-machine interface control, frequency hopping control, GSM terminal software functions) and a channel encoder (convolutional coding, FIRE code, parity check code, etc.), and the digital signal processor . In addition, there are modems and interface modules (analog interface, digital interface and auxiliary interface). Although the sparrow is small and has all the internal organs, for mobile phone communications, these functional modules in the baseband are indispensable. Unlike general-purpose processors that can only calculate, calculate, and calculate, the baseband chip is an all-rounder.
In terms of compatibility, there are too many mobile phone signal transmission standards now, which require both wireless networks and mobile networks, as well as , Bluetooth, , etc. Mobile networks also include 2G, 3G, 4G, and 5G. Different countries have different operators. , different equipment, different protocol standard issues, these are all different and need to be compatible. The processing of these signals is just like a person who has to master multiple listening and speaking languages. He not only needs to understand the standard language, but also understands different places. Dialects need to be freely converted without errors.
Why is Huawei’s 5G baseband chip so awesome? Or because Huawei itself has a large amount of technology accumulation in the field of wireless communications, which can be said to be Huawei's strength.As for Qualcomm, although it was doing well in the 3G and 4G fields earlier, Qualcomm is not facing just one mobile phone manufacturer. With so many manufacturers, how to satisfy everyone is a difficult problem. Don’t underestimate the impact of increasing scale. The increase in difficulty caused by it reaches a certain order of magnitude, and the difficulty increases exponentially.
is stable, fast and has low power consumption, all of which are indispensable. Just like when the mobile phone signal is not good, the mobile phone signal transmission power increases. Naturally, the mobile phone will heat up and the power consumption will increase. Therefore, when using the mobile phone, neither Frequent disconnections must be ensured, and the network speed must be ensured, not to mention not letting the phone get hot. These are often the key to competition among mobile phone manufacturers and the key to victory or defeat. Whoever's phone has such problems will soon lose the market.
From 2G and 3G to 4G and 5G, this is about breaking through the levels. The difficulty is getting higher and higher, and there are fewer and fewer players. Those who have passed through the previous ones may not necessarily pass through the later ones. The key is that your experience in the previous ones will have an impact on the later ones. Breaking through barriers is of little significance. Every iterative upgrade of communication technology will destroy a group of previous competitors.
If the 5G baseband developers have succeeded in terms of functions, compatibility, etc., then you still need to examine whether your own technology constitutes an infringement on other manufacturers. Why can Qualcomm take over the mobile phone chip field? It is because it has a large number of essential patents for wireless communication technology and the high patent barrier and wall, which makes other manufacturers daunted. Originally, Qualcomm and Apple did not deal with it very much. If Apple infringed Qualcomm's patents, Qualcomm would be in a hurry. With Apple out of the way, Huawei's value in 5G basebands becomes even more apparent at this time.
Intel is great in the chip field, but its baseband chip development technology was not developed by itself, but was obtained through the acquisition of Infineon . Even so, after ten years of hard work and tens of billions spent After that, Intel still failed to survive and eventually failed.
Apple has not experienced the pain of Intel, and it is excellent in chip development. Naturally, it does not pay attention to 5G baseband chips. After spending 1 billion and struggling for these years, it discovered that this time it is It really hit the "steel plate".
Although it is difficult to say whether Apple can succeed in 5G baseband, it is foreseeable that Apple will definitely encounter many difficulties in the subsequent development road.
