The 5G RF chip was successfully made in China, and Huawei could not use it. What's the secret behind this?

Pure domestic 5G RF chips are also available, which have been installed on Huawei mobile phones. However, its production capacity is not rich. China's self-produced RF chips use old technology, which is far from the technology of giant factories such as TSMC and Samsung. I can only say it works, but it doesn't work well.

Shenzhen Fuman Microelectronics Company launched its own 5G RF chip this year, which is a product with independent intellectual property rights. At present, Fumanwei has cooperated with many mobile phone brands such as Huawei, Xiaomi and Chuanyin. Huawei's Mate 40Pro uses a castrated Kirin 9000L processor, which is not as good as Kirin 9000 and 9000e, but the 5G RF chip on this processor is a product provided by Fumanwei.

The above are RF chips with domestic technology. As for the foundry, there is no accurate information at present. However, the high probability is not a big manufacturer like TSMC and Samsung. After all, both TSMC and Samsung's advanced manufacturing processes contain American technology and materials.

There is an important device in the RF chip, which is the filter. At present, there are two kinds of filters on the market, namely surface acoustic wave (SAW) and bulk wave (BAW).

The SAW filter market is dominated by Murata Company of Japan, while the BAW filter market is monopolized by American companies such as Broadcom, Skyworks, Qorvo and Qualcomm. As for the equipment of domestic enterprises, the proportion is very small.

Even with filters and RF chips, the most critical issue is OEM. There are three mainstream chip foundries: SMIC in Chinese mainland, TSMC in Taiwan Province Province of China and Samsung Semiconductor in South Korea.

Among them, TSMC is a company with more than 60% holding in the United States. Although a factory is set up in China, the actual controller is the United States. Most of Samsung Semiconductor's production equipment is still supplied by American enterprises, and some technologies and materials belong to American patents, so Samsung and the United States have a cooperative relationship in semiconductors.

As for SMIC, although it has its own technology and domestic equipment, compared with TSMC and Samsung, the overall process and product market has no advantage, and it can even be said that it has been led by others with overwhelming advantages.

However, since SMIC invited Liang Mengsong to join us, the overall process and product quality have been greatly improved. After Liang Mengsong joined SMIC, he not only iterated the advanced technology, but also promoted the optimization of the old technology. Moreover, he has always advocated domestic technology, and is gradually weakening American technical materials in terms of technology patents and material use.

However, the semiconductor industry in China has developed slowly. Although it has been catching up, advanced technology and high-end equipment are still in the hands of western countries. The United States and Samsung have begun to develop 3nm process nodes, while SMIC's 7nm has not been mass-produced for commercial use.

SMIC has only a mature manufacturing process of 28nm, which can completely break away from the factors of western countries and realize self-research and self-production. As for when it can reach the world mainstream level in manufacturing, it will take a long time.