First, Kirin 970 can't even beat Xiaolong 835, how can we talk about fighting Qualcomm 845?
I won't tell you anything about architecture here. In terms of real strength, the theoretical performance of Kirin 970cpu is not much different from that of Qualcomm 835, but the performance gap of GPU is very obvious, because the ARM public architecture used by Kirin 970 actually suffers, and its performance cannot be fully exerted. In terms of game performance, Kirin 970 is even worse than Snapdragon 660. In addition, Kirin 970 has 5.5 billion transistors, and Xiaolong 835 has only 3 billion transistors. The gap is so big. Kirin 970 has never played Xiaolong 835. Because of the large number of transistors and high power consumption, the energy consumption is much worse than that of Xiaolong 835.
Compared with Snapdragon 845, the limit theoretical performance is at least 30% lower, and the gap in normal use may be even greater.
At the same time, some Qualcomm processors have a relatively high market share, and many games will optimize the Qualcomm processor, such as the glory of the king and Wilderness Action, but they have not optimized the Kirin processor, so the actual game experience is even worse.
Second, why did Huawei buy Qualcomm processors?
Before 20 18, Huawei bought some processors from Qualcomm, but most of them were low-end processors, such as Snapdragon 625. Since this year, it has become less and less. Perhaps only a few processors come from Qualcomm, and most of them are the lowest-end Snapdragon 450, so the performance is very worrying.
And as early as the second half of last year, Huawei has announced that it will continue to expand the proportion of independent processors. Let's take a look at the new machines released from last year to this year. Among them, mate 10 series, Glory v 10 series and Glory 10 all adopt Kirin 970, covering the price range of 2,500 yuan to 9,999 yuan. In addition, for example, nova 2/nova 2 Plus/nova 3e, Maimang 6, Glory 9 Youth Edition and Glory Play 7X all use Kirin 659. Yes, I can see that Qualcomm processors are used less and less.
The benefits of using our own processors are also obvious, and the supply will not be hindered, so as to maintain our unique competitiveness in flagship machine. Machines using Kirin series processors will basically have no productivity problems.
However, in fact, Huawei now has one of the biggest problems, which is the lack of mid-range processors. Use Kirin 970 to hit Xiaolong 835 at the high end, Kirin 659 at the middle end can only hit Snapdragon 660, and Qualcomm 450 at the low end can only hit Snapdragon 625. As a result, the whole line died. There was a strange scene, using the nova3e of Kirin 659 and using the glory of Kirin 970 10, only 200 yuan.
I think the shortage of mid-range processors mentioned above is Huawei's hidden worry. If it is not handled properly, it will further aggravate the confusion of product lines, which is not conducive to Huawei's future product planning. Of course, it may also be Huawei's original intention. At present, Huawei's biggest shortcoming is the processor. Huawei should give due consideration to Qualcomm's midrange processors. Of course, the voice of independent chips is too high now, and some people will definitely scold me, but I just think it is more conducive to improving the competitiveness of Huawei products.
Therefore, Kirin processors can be said to be very abundant, and I even suspect that there is a bit of overcapacity. Otherwise, why do so many mobile phones use these two processors?
Although Huawei's Kirin series processors are powerful, they are still somewhat inferior to Qualcomm. After all, Huawei started late in AI artificial intelligence chip, and there is a certain gap between Huawei and Qualcomm in technology and experience. The adaptability of Kirin chip is not as good as that of Qualcomm, so there is little choice. There are many models of Huawei series mobile phones, and different levels of mobile phones have different requirements for configuration and performance, so high-end models still need better chips to be competitive.
The following is a comparison between Kirin 970 and Qualcomm 845 chips:
As can be seen from the table, both of them adopt 10nm process technology. Compared with Kirin 970 processor, the main frequency of Snapdragon 845 is 2.8GHZ and Kirin 970 is 2.4 GHz. Combined with the GPU performance comparison between 835 and Kirin 970, on the whole, Snapdragon 845 has crushed Kirin 970 in hardware performance. Therefore, high-end models with Qualcomm 845 are still very good.
I think the research and development of domestic AI smart chips is still in its infancy, and the research and development costs and high technology are not particularly mature, which is not suitable for mass production. In addition, there is a certain gap with high-end series chips such as Qualcomm, and it cannot meet the market demand by relying on its own products. So you need to buy Qualcomm potato chips.
For domestic mobile phone chips, the biggest shortcoming of China chips is that many real core technologies are difficult to master, and most of them need to be realized by "changing the shell". Of course, this is a shortcut to improve the ranking in the short term, but it is not a long-term development method.
Of course, we hope that domestic mobile phone chips will have stronger strength, but Huawei's Kirin 970 processor is in a backward state compared with Xiaolong 845 processor, but now it has narrowed the gap, and Huawei is worth looking forward to.
First, a rational view of Huawei HiSilicon Kirin 970' s' tough'
Generally speaking, Kirin 970 is similar to Qualcomm's top flagship chip Xiaolong 835 last year in CPU processing speed (but there is a gap in GPU performance), but there is a gap between Kirin 970 and Qualcomm 845 this year in CPU operation, GPU rendering and energy efficiency ratio (to be honest), but 970 is originally a standard 835 product, so it is unfair to use it to play 845. Pollen can look forward to the severe SOC this autumn.
So you can see that Huawei's flagship series, whether it's P and Mate, or my cousin's glory V and Magic, can completely satisfy the CPU independently without relying on Qualcomm. On its own low-end products, we can also purchase some low-end SoCs from MediaTek and Qualcomm to use, which is Huawei's strategic positioning for mobile phone chips! This can fully maintain a good chip competition environment and is conducive to the healthy development of the global chip industry!
For users who don't usually play large 3D games, Huawei's 970 can fully meet the needs of users. PS: Those game enthusiasts are usually not the target customers of Huawei's P and M series high-end models.
They usually choose 835, 845 or even A 1 1 platforms with better game performance.
Summary: Huawei can really be self-sufficient in mobile phone SOC, but Huawei is not only making mobile phones, but also has so many communication devices, base stations, wireless networks, servers and so on. , so I got to the second point.
Second, Huawei's chips purchased from American companies such as Qualcomm are mainly used for communication equipment.
From the data report released by CCID think tank before, we can see that Huawei's chips are mainly HiSilicon, followed by Qualcomm, so why does Huawei purchase chips from Qualcomm? Where is it used specifically?
Quote an internal speech of Huawei in 20 12: "When we make high-end chips, I am not opposed to buying high-end chips from the United States. I think we should try our best to use their high-end chips and understand them well. Only if their chips are not sold to Huawei can Huawei use many of its own chips, because Huawei's chips are slightly worse, but they can make do. "
Looking back on the current ZTE crisis, Mr. Ren does have a sense of urgency and a long-term vision.
Qualcomm is a world leader in both CDMA and LTE technologies. It can be said that all telecom equipment and consumer electronics brands in the world are inseparable from Qualcomm, and Huawei is no exception. In the fields of 3G, 4G and even the latest 5G, any communication equipment manufacturer can't do without Qualcomm's patent authorization.
More specifically, Huawei's chip design tool EDA is provided by American companies such as SynopsisCadenceMentor, and high-speed chips such as FPGA also need to be imported from the United States.
Thank you for inviting me!
Judging from Huawei's mobile phones, there are still many Qualcomm Opteron processors, such as Glory 7i, Glory 4A, Play 4, Play 4X, Play 4C, Maimang 4, G7, P8 Lite, B 199, C 199, Huawei Maimang 5, G9 plus, G9 Youth Edition, Glory 5x. So some people will question why Huawei's Kirin processor is so powerful, but it still uses Qualcomm's chips!
In fact, although Huawei's Kirin processors are doing well in high-end parts, such as Kirin 960, Kirin 970 and Kirin 980, the mobile phones using Kirin 900 series processors are basically high-end mobile phones, which are expensive. In low-end mobile phones, especially those below 2000 yuan, Huawei seems to have only one processor, Kirin 659, with too many product lines and brands. But if you only use Kirin processor, it will cause some problems.
For example, we can't get rid of the differences between products, and the original mid-range and below mobile phones need to have certain performance differences. If we all use Huawei's own Kirin processor, it is difficult to segment the market because of the small number of processors, which will lead to a large number of similar mobile phones, which is not conducive to Huawei's marketing, but may affect sales.
Another reason also depends on the cost. As I said before, Kirin currently has a processor like Kirin 659 in the mid-range machine, and it is impossible to use Kirin 659 in the low-end machine. If the cost is spread out, the low-end machine can't reduce the price. Therefore, Huawei still needs to buy some processors from other companies to make mobile phones, including those from MediaTek and Qualcomm.
Only with more and more Kirin processors developed by Huawei and more models, the number of processors purchased from other manufacturers will be less and less in the future. Personally, I think it is very likely that all Huawei mobile phones will use Kirin processors in the future, as long as Huawei can continue to strengthen the research and development of this part of the chip!
Thank you for inviting me. First of all, correct one point. Kirin 970 can only be compared with Xiaolong 835, and compared with 845, its performance is completely inferior. Obviously, under the same performance, the power consumption of Kirin 970 is much higher than that of Xiaolong 835.
As for why Kirin is not used completely, I personally think there are two reasons.
First, the production capacity. Indeed, the problem of production capacity is indeed a big problem. Although TSMC has been promoting new processes, their backward production capacity accounts for a high proportion of revenue. In TSMC's revenue last year, the 28nm process accounted for 23% of the revenue last year, second only to the 25% of the 16/20nm process. 28nm and 16/20nm account for 48%, while 10nm only accounts for 10%. From here, we can see that more than 40% of TSMC's revenue still comes from backward manufacturing technology, and the truly advanced technology below 20nm is only about 35%.
Huawei's mid-range chips adopt 16nm technology, and there are also giant customers such as NVIDIA, AMD and Apple. The production capacity is simply not enough, and it is difficult for Huawei and TSMC to expand the production of chips.
Second, because there are many mobile phone manufacturers covered by chips in Qualcomm, optimization and adaptation are the best. However, without their own R&D capabilities, most Android users will choose Qualcomm. Huawei is very clear about the market positioning of its mobile phones. Camera phones for the young market rarely use high-end chips in chip configuration. Mobile phones like Huawei nova are equipped with Snapdragon 600 series chips, which have relatively balanced performance and cheaper configuration cost. Relatively speaking, it is more cost-effective than using Kirin 659. For companies, the profitability of mobile phones is the key.
At present, Huawei Kirin chip. In terms of performance, to put it simply and rudely, it is actually running points. At present, the running score of Kirin 970 chip is equivalent to that of Qualcomm 845.
The Kirin 970 of Huawei Mate 10 equipped with Android 8.0 system has a single-thread performance of 1900 and a multi-thread performance of 6200, while the rival Qualcomm Xiaolong 835 processor has a single-thread performance of 1900 and a multi-core performance of 6500, which means that the performance of Kirin 970 is comparable to that of Qualcomm Xiaolong 835.
Kirin 970 mobile computing platform is built with TSMC 10 nm process technology, and has eight cores, which are composed of four A73-based performance cores and four A53-based low-power cores to maximize performance and power consumption.
At present, Huawei Kirin chips are only used on Huawei mobile phones. Let alone provide it to other manufacturers. Therefore, for manufacturers without chips, they can only use chips from Snapdragon.
Compared with Huawei 970 chip, Qualcomm Snapdragon chip has better compatibility. And at present, for games, Snapdragon's gpu is better than Huawei's Kirin 970. Therefore, for some friends who like to play games, it is recommended to buy mobile phones with Qualcomm Snapdragon series chips.
With the increasingly fierce competition in the domestic mobile phone market, many manufacturers have also launched their own mobile phone chips. Compared with purchasing Qualcomm Snapdragon chips, the chips developed by ourselves can be distinguished from other mobile phone manufacturers by adding some features of their own. In this way, in the case of similar mobile phone design and function, it can highlight its own characteristics, such as the ai camera function of Huawei Kirin 970 chip, which is enough to kill a lot of mobile phones.
However, the development cost and production cost of Kirin 970 are relatively high. If it is used for low-end mobile phones, the profit cannot support the iteration of the chip itself.
Moreover, Kirin is currently positioned as a high-end smartphone chip. If all series products use Kirin chips, the brand image positioning of the products will be blurred. In order to cover all the high, medium and low-end products, Huawei chose Kirin as the high-end product and Qualcomm chip as the low-end product to form a joint force and conquer the market.
I remember Yu Chengdong once said that Huawei has not only black technology, but also core technology. Even if it is sanctioned by the United States one day, Huawei can make the best 5G mobile phone in the world.
Although the Kirin officially promoted by Huawei is very powerful, the technology is not up to standard, so we have to go back and use the Qualcomm chip that was scolded by many people in the past.
Huawei's mobile phone has applied for the most patents up to now, but it is incredible that it can't make a 5G mobile phone after being sanctioned by Americans. Didn't you say there is black technology and core technology?
Supposedly, Yu Chengdong is half a scientist and should not use such frivolous language. He dares to boast that he can make the best mobile phone in the world even if he is sanctioned. It seems that he is really smart and confused for a while.
Chairman Mao once said: scientific things can't come with any hypocrisy and pride, what is needed is the opposite, honest and humble attitude.
I hope Huawei mobile phone can get rid of the hat of assembling machine one day, do business honestly, be a modest person seriously, be an honest enterprise, and be a mobile phone with independent research and development chips, so that people can be proud!
Huawei Kirin's top-end 970 chip is not inferior to Qualcomm's high-end chip in performance. Because of the addition of CAMBRIAN AI chip, it has more advantages in AI performance. At present, Kirin chips are widely used in Huawei's mid-to high-end mobile phones. Because of product positioning, Qualcomm chips will also be used in low-end products. When Huawei uses Qualcomm chips, it will still consider factors such as product positioning, market competition and production capacity.
First, product positioning.
Huawei's flagship products at the high end basically adopt its own Kirin 970, which is also the core competitiveness of Huawei's mobile phones. After all, self-developed chips are better than other manufacturers' products in system optimization. In the field of low-end mobile phones, Qualcomm chip has a better overall cost performance, while Huawei Kirin's low-end chip has limited production capacity and relatively high cost, so Huawei will also adopt Qualcomm chip.
Second, market competition.
Although Huawei Kirin's high-end chips, as the core competitiveness of Huawei mobile phones, have made achievements in the high-end mobile phone market. In Kirin's low-end mobile phone chip, the overall cost performance is not very high. Considering the market competition, Huawei's use of Qualcomm chips in the low-end market is more conducive to gaining a competitive advantage in the low-end market.
Third, production capacity.
Although with the rise of Huawei mobile phones, the production capacity of Huawei Kirin chips has been further improved, but there is still a big gap compared with Qualcomm. Although the production capacity of Kirin 970 can guarantee the normal supply of Huawei's mobile phones, the production capacity of Kirin's low-end chips cannot be completely guaranteed, so Huawei will choose chips from Qualcomm and MediaTek as low-end mobile phones.
It should be said that Huawei's mobile phone chip strategy is still very powerful. By independently developing chips, we can be independent of others and enhance our competitive advantage in the high-end mobile phone market. Using general-purpose mobile phone chips such as Qualcomm and MediaTek in low-end mobile phone products and walking on multiple legs can effectively cope with market challenges, enhance the market share of Huawei mobile phones and make Huawei mobile phones truly bigger and stronger.
First of all, as far as this issue is concerned, Huawei itself does not produce processors, and Kirin is produced by TSMC. Strong Kirin processor does not mean high output. After all, the output is not determined by Huawei, but by the capacity of TSMC.
TSMC not only accepts orders from Huawei. TSMC's biggest customer now is Apple, so everything takes Apple's processor first, and Kirin's processor order can only be delayed.
At present, Huawei only has two or three Kirin processors, one is the high-end 970, the last generation 960, the low-end 659, and even the 970 itself is still using TSMC's 10nm process technology, resulting in Huawei's output being limited by TSMC, which means TSMC can produce as much as it wants.
Therefore, the strength of Huawei Kirin processor depends on whether the foundry has a production time limit. After all, Huawei is no better than Apple! For TSMC, Apple is obviously much more important than Huawei.