Just like Xiaomi in the mobile phone industry, MediaTek has tried many times to enter the high-end chip market, but all failed.
Qualcomm's loneliest time was the "Fire-breathing Dragon 8 10" era. Without MediaTek, we can't take this opportunity to make a comeback. Instead, it released the world's only 10 core SOC-MediaTek X20 in Snapdragon, with a span of 8 10. Due to the lack of technology, the performance of this chip can only use quot garbage gt; One nuclear is in trouble, and nine nuclear onlookers quot comes from that era.
Since then, MediaTek has been sinking for quite a long time. Although the low-end mobile phone IC market and embedded Bluetooth IC market are booming, they have never been able to enter the high-end market with higher profits.
By 2020, MediaTek will restart its high-end journey again, and release a brand-new Tianji series processor to replace the previous X series processor. So far, four high-end products have been released-dimension1000, dimension1000p, Tianji100 and Tianji 1200.
However, it is a pity that, up to now, MediaTek Tianji series chips do not have the ability to threaten Qualcomm. Snapdragon chip is in place. So where is the gap between MediaTek, Tianji and Qualcomm Snapdragon? Why can MediaTek shake Qualcomm's position in the high-end market? This article will find out.
One reason is that there is a huge gap between MediaTek and Qualcomm on the GPU level.
GPU has always been one of the most powerful killers in Qualcomm, because the architecture of Adreno GPU series in Qualcomm was bought directly from graphics giant ATI, which is equivalent to standing on the shoulders of giants from the beginning.
The research and development of GPU architecture itself is recognized as a high-tech barrier industry in IC design field. At present, IC chip companies that can develop independent mainstream GPUs are NVIDIA, AMD, Apple and Qualcomm plus ARM.
Strong Huawei, Samsung, etc. You can only sigh at G on the GPU, which is the same as MediaTek. Therefore, these chip companies can only apply ARM's public GPU architecture, which is the Mali series. However, ARM's GPU architecture is relatively late, which is itself a poor student. How good a GPU architecture can a poor student design?
ARM Mali architecture is inferior to Adreno architecture in Qualcomm in energy efficiency ratio. Besides, MediaTek itself is a pure architecture application, and its SOC GPU has been in a situation of high consumption and low energy consumption.
For example, MediaTek Tianji's latest flagship processor is Tianji 1200, which uses 9-core Mali G77. But its energy efficiency is worse than that of Snapdragon 888.
In the test of GFX Manhattan 3. 1, 89 frames were run, but the power consumption could reach 7.6W；; In contrast, Snapdragon 870 can run to 100 frame, and Snapdragon 888 can run to 120 frame, with a power consumption of 5.7W and 8.34W In terms of power consumption per frame, Tianji 1200 is the highest, which is still in line with its positioning of "low energy consumption and high consumption".
Gap: In terms of cost, MediaTek Tianji processor is not dominant.
Besides the technical disadvantage, MediaTek is also at a disadvantage in business.
As we all know, in the competition with Qualcomm, MediaTek has always taken low price as the main means of competition. But as far as its comprehensive cost is concerned, the comprehensive cost of American chips at the same level in MediaTek is not necessarily smaller than that in Qualcomm, especially the high-end flagship chips, or even higher.
Because in addition to developing chips, Qualcomm also has a more invincible killer-communication patent authorization.
In 2009, MediaTek and Qualcomm signed a patent licensing agreement for CDMA and WCDMA, requiring Qualcomm to pay the patent fee every year, and all terminal phones equipped with MediaTek processors still have to pay the patent fee to Qualcomm. Moreover, there is no immunity. On the other hand, terminals equipped with Qualcomm chipset can be exempted from patent fees.
So think about it, whose processor of mobile phone manufacturer is more cost-effective? Of course, Qualcomm. In addition, in the field of high-end chips, there are scale effects everywhere. The higher the sales volume, the easier the research and development. D, the cost is recovered, the profit is higher, and the income is converted into R amp to invest in the next generation of chips, forming a virtuous circle.
If there is no scale, it is fatal for an IC design company to develop a high-end chip but not sell it. So it is unwise for MediaTek to rush into the high-end market. Therefore, after launching a series of chips, MediaTek first gained a reputation in the mid-end market, and did not rashly enter the high-end market. However, this generation of Tianji 9000 processors is expected to hit the high-end market, so we will wait and see.
Reason 3: MediaTek cat processor is not dominant in the bottom-level scheduling optimization.
Xiaomi American engineers made a technical response to MediaTek's slow adaptation. I'll extract it directly for you:
Google will give Qualcomm and MediaTek the underlying code in advance before the official release, so that the platform can be prepared in advance. Soon after the official release of Google, the platform will be provided to mobile phone manufacturers, who will adapt the new version of the system according to the latest Android package. The problem is that Qualcomm is a multi-team working in parallel and will deliver all series of bottom packages at one time. MediaTek shipped in batches, so some mobile phone platforms in MediaTek were upgraded in the second or third batch.
The meaning is clear. -MediaTek, the United States' response to Google is slower than that of Qualcomm, which actually illustrates many problems. In addition, MediaTek's share in the high-end market is relatively small, and mobile phone manufacturers lack experience, which ultimately leads to MediaTek's adaptive scheduling is not as good as Qualcomm Snapdragon.
In short, the gap between MediaTek Tianji and Qualcomm Snapdragon is multifaceted, not just because of technology. Whether MediaTek can really bring the cat 9000 series chips to the high end next year depends on his luck.
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