Don't think too highly of Apple, but underestimate Huawei's strength in the field of smart phone chips. The designed Kirin 820, 985, 990 and 5000 chips are all integrated with 5G baseband chips, and the high, medium and low-end chips have always occupied. In this regard, Qualcomm, Samsung and Apple have been dumped by Huawei, but many people still think that Huawei's chips are not good. In fact, the performance of Kirin chip can be very radical, and overclocking is not limited to Qualcomm, but
The performance of Apple's A-series chips is ahead of Qualcomm and HiSilicon, but the baseband solution is too dependent on others. After the collision with Qualcomm, Intel's baseband performance was not satisfactory, and it can be said that the signal was not very good, and it was also because Intel delayed the launch of 5G mobile phones. After the reconciliation between Apple and Qualcomm, the iPhone 12 series supporting 5G network went on the market, and the external baseband has been the best solution in Qualcomm. I have to say that Huawei's chip design ability.
The disadvantage of external baseband is that the integrated baseband is integrated in the mobile phone chip, which saves space and consumes low power. There are also some subtle advantages, such as heating and network stability. Through the actual measurement, Kirin 990 5G and Snapdragon 865G chips have stronger network speed, power consumption, heat generation and stability under the 5G network, which is the advantage brought by the integrated baseband.
Qualcomm also wants to be a chip integrating 5G baseband. Take Snapdragon 765G as an example, the baseband problem has been solved, but the performance is directly tied, and overclocking is not so good as Snapdragon 768G. "You can't have your cake and eat it" is the current situation in Qualcomm, which may be caused by patent problems. Qualcomm couldn't copy Hess's chip design, so he had to find another way.
There is no doubt that Apple's strength in mobile terminals is summarized, but the "cooperation" between chips and baseband is not as good as Huawei's. IPhone has always been selling chips and systems. If A 14 can integrate 5G baseband, Apple will not choose the plug-in method for the second time. Huawei's mobile phone chip is so strong that a country has to use the power of Z-governance to ban it. Although Apple is very strong, don't underestimate Huawei.
Is this an apple injury or an apple hug?
Why did Apple make a baseband-free chip? This is because Apple can't make an integrated baseband chip (SoC). What else can it do? Moreover, Apple can't just make an integrated baseband chip (SoC), or even make an independent (plug-in) baseband chip. Let's just say that Apple can't play baseband at all, and there is no technology to develop baseband chips at all.
Mobile SoC is the top mode of mobile chips, with high integration, low energy consumption and small size, which is the future direction. At present, the most powerful 5G mobile SoC is undoubtedly Huawei's Kirin 9000 SoC. This chip has left Qualcomm and Samsung far behind, and Apple is almost the same.
Samsung, Huawei and Apple all have their own chips, but both Samsung and Huawei have baseband technology. Both Samsung and Huawei have independent baseband chips and SoC with integrated baseband. Of course, Huawei is the leader, because Huawei itself is the most powerful communication manufacturer in the world.
Over the years, among the top three mobile phones in the world, only Apple can only make processor chips. Of course, Apple's A-series processor has strong performance and is the leading mobile processor (CPU). However, the only fly in the ointment is that, because it doesn't have its own baseband technology, Apple has to plug in Qualcomm's baseband chip for several years. Later, we had a conflict with Qualcomm and started a lawsuit. We had to switch to Intel's baseband chip, but Intel's baseband technology was not mature, which happened to be one of the biggest criticisms of Apple's mobile phones in recent years: poor signal!
With the advent of the 5G era, Intel's 5G baseband technology is progressing slowly, while Huawei, Qualcomm and other 5G baseband technologies and products are fully mature. Intel simply gave up this business and directly packaged and sold all mobile communication technologies, intellectual property rights and human resources to Apple.
Apple has started its own baseband technology journey, but it has a long way to go, but it lacks technology and intellectual property rights, and the acquired Intel mobile communication technology is not perfect. It is difficult for Apple to come up with its own baseband products in the short term. So last year, Apple had to pay money to settle the lawsuit with Qualcomm, and used Qualcomm's 5G baseband, which finally opened the 5G era of Apple's mobile phone on the iPhone 12 flagship machine.
Of course, because Apple only has its own processor, it is almost impossible for Qualcomm baseband chips to be integrated into Apple processors to build a mobile SoC. For a long time, it will only be Apple processor+Qualcomm baseband chip. Of course, Apple itself can only make baseband chips for a long time.
When Apple's baseband technology can break through and when it can come up with an independent baseband chip is a big question. Of course, SoC with integrated baseband is a distant future.
It is easy to understand that Apple can't develop an integrated baseband SoC chip now, because it is only a chip research and development manufacturer and doesn't have relevant technologies in the communication field.
The core technology of baseband is in the communication field: mobile phone baseband is a special communication processing module, and its core work is to demodulate, descramble, despread and decode the mobile network signal, and return the decoded digital signal to the upper processing system.
From the specific use point of view, when we use functions such as surfing the Internet and making phone calls, the system will send instructions to the baseband to carry out relevant modulation and demodulation work, and then the baseband will return digital signals after processing. At this time, our mobile phones can start surfing the Internet or talking.
As can be seen from this function, the core technology involved in baseband is communication domain correlation.
Apple has no communication plan: let's review the development history of Apple. It starts with assembling personal computers and developing its own Mac system. In the era of smart phones, although it was possible to develop mobile phone chips, it was not until 2008 that it got the ARM architecture that it officially entered the field of chip design.
Therefore, the whole development history of Apple has nothing to do with communication. In a word, the explanation is not mastering the core technology in the field of communication. After decades of development, especially in the last 30 years, the existing giants, such as Qualcomm, Huawei, Ericsson and Nokia, have mastered a lot of patented technologies. And it is difficult for Apple, a manufacturer without a communication family, to independently develop communication-related technologies.
As a result, Apple has no related baseband products. This is also the reason why the baseband performance developed by Intel is always so poor, because it is similar to Apple, only a chip manufacturer, not a communication manufacturer.
At present, Apple is developing 5G baseband: Of course, Apple is obviously so constrained by others, and it is always a hidden danger to buy Qualcomm baseband at a high price.
Therefore, after settling with Qualcomm, we directly acquired Intel's baseband team. After all, Intel has spent a lot of money and accumulated a little technology in this field. After the integration, Apple can completely use it for itself.
In addition, it must be mentioned here that an independent baseband chip and an integrated baseband SoC chip are completely different things. Take Qualcomm's 5G baseband for example. X50 and X55 generation baseband are plug-in baseband, so it is impossible to have 5G SoC chips (using X60 baseband) before Snapdragon 875 at the end of this year. It can be seen that even in Qualcomm, it is not easy to integrate baseband with mobile phone chips.
When you integrate baseband SoC chips, you need to consider more problems, the space layout will be more limited, and the power consumption will be greater, which will extremely test the ability of chip designers. Therefore, although the A processor is very strong now, it is only a pure mobile phone chip, so it is hard to say that it really integrates the baseband.
Why Samsung can develop baseband: Huawei won't say it here. Communication is someone else's business. Then why can Samsung also develop baseband?
Because Samsung realized the importance of the communication field very early, it officially entered the 4G communication equipment market on 20 12. In recent years, the overall development is not bad, and now it can be regarded as the fifth communication manufacturer in the world. You can look at Samsung's 5G essential patents. In fact, the number is quite large, which shows that people attach importance to the communication field.
In addition, Samsung itself has strong research and development strength in the semiconductor industry and electronic technology, so it can solve the baseband problem.
Lscssh technical officer's point of view: Generally speaking, if you want to make an integrated baseband SoC chip, you must first have the ability to develop baseband, and if you want to develop baseband, you must master the core communication technology. Unfortunately, Apple started earlier in the communication field and there is no such technology. Of course, it is still possible for Apple to develop its own baseband or even SoC chip in the future, because their research and development of baseband has never stopped.
Thank you for reading. Give me a compliment and encouragement. Welcome to Lscssh technical officer. Thank you ~ ~ I had a good relationship with Qualcomm before, but later I broke up with Intel because I couldn't stand the high cost. Therefore, iPhone 1 1 and iPhone series phones are all baseband provided by Intel, but the signal problem caused in the end is a big problem! Apple also said it some time ago!
So Apple is also actively solving this problem. Can only say that the speed is relatively slow, not as fast as Huawei and Samsung. In particular, Huawei only started to use Ba Long 5000 baseband last year, but it is also Huawei's own external baseband. By Kirin 990, we will be able to integrate resources and build our own 5GSOC chip. Kirin 9000 launched this year has made a great breakthrough in 5G and achieved new technological progress.
But this year Apple adopted X55 baseband from Qualcomm, but there are still problems, and it is still unstable on 5G. Other external baseband in the Android field is relatively mature, and there are not so many moths, but the power consumption is much more than that of the integrated 5G SOC, occupying a certain motherboard space, but normal use is no problem.
Samsung has its own chip research and development and chip manufacturing capabilities, but it is more famous in the field of memory chips. At present, the self-developed chips are mainly used in local areas and some countries in Korea, but they are not widely used! Therefore, at present, Huawei still maintains an absolute lead in the research of 5G chip design. Although it is not the best in performance, it still performs very well on 5G and smart ai!
So this time because of the ban, many orders can't be obtained, and many people in China are very sorry! Such an excellent chip is not only the regret of Huawei, but also the regret of Chinese people and the regret of the world's top technology! Xiaomi also said before that if Huawei allows them, they are willing to use Huawei's Kirin chip to support Huawei's HarmonyOS system! The key is to see whether Huawei is open or not!
This is a strange question. What is a baseband-free chip? It should be said that Apple can't make baseband chips. Apple can't make baseband, on the one hand, it is a patent issue. Apple has not accumulated in the field of communication, and of course it is out of stock. On the other hand, the technical threshold of baseband chips is really high. Look at MediaTek, every time it hits the high end, it is ruined by the lack of baseband. At present, there are basically three companies capable of manufacturing high-end baseband, namely Qualcomm, Huawei and Samsung.
Apple, like Huawei, was initially only responsible for designing and supplying it to Qualcomm for processing, and Qualcomm has been raising prices. Afraid of relying on Qualcomm's monopoly and rising prices to stop supplying it, Apple began to independently develop, design and manufacture chips.