Ming-Chi Kuo, known as "the strongest Apple analyst on the planet," posted on Twitter on the 28th that Apple's self-developed iPhone 5G baseband chip development may have failed.
Qualcomm will continue to be the exclusive supplier of 5G chips for the new iPhone in 2023, with a 100% supply share. As soon as the news of
came out, many people were shocked!
As the world's largest mobile phone manufacturer, Apple's A-series processors are gaining ground every second, punching Qualcomm and kicking MediaTek . They are invincible in the mobile phone industry. Why can't 5G basebands be developed?
Is this thing really that difficult? It really is! As for how difficult it is, you will know after reading it. The first difficulty with 5G baseband is that the baseband itself is relatively complex. From the perspective of von Neumann architecture, the baseband chip is actually a computer with relatively complete functions. It is generally divided into five sub-modules: CPU processor, channel encoder, digital signal processor, modem and input and output interface module. It is not much different in architecture from the computers we are familiar with, but is more complicated. Some manufacturers have strong technical capabilities and a lot of money in their pockets. They will also integrate radio frequency modules into baseband chips, which will increase the complexity to a higher level. The second difficulty of 5G baseband Compared with 4G baseband, 5G baseband has higher data throughput, power consumption and performance, resulting in a larger chip size. How big is the 5G baseband before it is integrated into the SOC chip ? We can ask Huawei Balong 5000 baseband and Kirin 980 (SOC) chip to compare. iFixit once disassembled the Huawei mate 20X 5G mobile phone and found that the size of the Barong 5000 (the chip in the red box in the picture below) is the same as the Kirin 980 (the chip in the yellow box in the picture below), and is quite large. We all know that the 5G network transmission speed is much faster than 4G, and a high-definition video can be downloaded in seconds. Fast speed means that the 5G baseband requires a large capacity of RAM to cache the data sent and received. Therefore, Balong 5000 also uses Samsung LPDDR4X with a capacity of 3GB (see the chip on the crowbar in the picture below) for cache, which is almost half of the mobile phone’s storage and is the same size as the Balong 5000 baseband. This means that if the 5G baseband is integrated into the SOC chip, the ultra-large capacity RAM cannot be left behind. It is equivalent to putting two elephants (baseband and RAM) into the refrigerator (SOC chip). The number of transistors will be greatly increased. The resulting design difficulty will increase by an order of magnitude. The third difficulty of 5G baseband Now the market likes full Netcom, so when integrating 5G baseband, the 4G baseband cannot be cut off, and the 5G and 4G baseband must be integrated. must not only maintain the performance of the plug-in, but also reduce power consumption and heat generation. Its design difficulty and cost will increase by another order of magnitude. Do you think this is the end? not at all! The fourth difficulty of 5G baseband The current 5G baseband suppliers on the market mainly include Qualcomm, MediaTek, Samsung and other manufacturers. They have been deeply involved in the field of communications for many years and have built up very high patent barriers for and . It is even more difficult for latecomers to bypass them and find new ways! In short, the integration of 5G baseband into the SOC chip is inseparable from superb chip design technology and advanced chip manufacturing technology. It is normal for the research and development of to fail. Now it seems that Apple may have to wait for a while longer for its self-developed 5G baseband.
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