Objectively speaking, there is still a gap between Hayes' technical level and Qualcomm's.
First of all, there is a time lag for Kirin 960 to surpass Xiaolong 820, just to catch the gap between Qualcomm Xiaolong 820 and the next generation chip Xiaolong 830. Xiaolong 820 was released in 2065 438+05 10 10, and its next-generation processor Xiaolong 830 is expected to be released at the end of 20 16, and adopted by various OEMs in early 20 17. Although Kirin 960 has surpassed Xiaolong 820, it is actually competing with the previous generation chips released by Qualcomm nearly a year ago. The overall performance of Xiaolong 830 will surpass Kirin 960 again without accident. In terms of production technology, Xiaolong 820 adopts 14nm process and Kirin 960 adopts 16nm process, which is still backward.
Secondly, a big difference between Kirin 960 and Snapdragon 920 and 930 is that although both of them are based on the patent authorization of British ARM company, Qualcomm's chip adopts its own core architecture on the basis of the patent authorization of ARM, while Kirin series has not developed its own architecture, and all of them are optimized on the public architecture of ARM. The IP authorization of ARM includes three ways: processor authorization, POP authorization and architecture authorization. Processor authorization refers to authorizing partners to use CPU or GPU processors designed by ARM. The other party cannot change the original design, but can use it according to their own needs. ARM will provide a series of instructions to ensure that users use their designs, but the design of the frequency and power consumption of the final product still depends on the manufacturer's own team. POP (Processor Optimization Package) authorization is an advanced form of processor authorization. If the partner's team can't control the ARM processor, then ARM can also sell the optimized processor, so that users can set up a processor with guaranteed family planning and output performance in a specific process. Architecture authorization means that ARM authorizes partners to use their own architecture, and the licensee can design processors according to their own needs. These processors are compatible with those designed by ARM, but each chip company has its own implementation method. Kirin 960 adopts the common architecture of ARM Cortex-A73 core (high power consumption) and A53 core (low power consumption), and the GPU is made of ARM's Mali-G7 1MP8 and TSMC 16nm FinFET+ process. Except Snapdragon 8 10, the mainstream chips in Qualcomm are all designed with independent Kryo architecture (the early independent architectures in Qualcomm are Scorpion architecture and Krait architecture), which is the architecture of the secondary optimization core designed by Qualcomm based on the ARM instruction set. Xiaolong 830 is a further improvement on the Kryo core used in 820. Manufactured by Samsung 10nm process, the highest frequency is 2.6GHz, and it can support 8GB of running memory at most, with Adreno 540 GPU and Cat 16 baseband. Obviously, Qualcomm's chip development capability is better than HiSilicon Semiconductor's.
Thirdly, Qualcomm chips have been laid out in the fields of artificial intelligence, 5G, automatic identification and other advanced technologies. In contrast, Kirin chips pay more attention to the end-user experience.
Huawei began to develop its own chips from 200 1, and Hisilicon was founded in June 2004. Huawei/Hisilicon's early products didn't stand out until 20 14, when Huawei developed Kirin 925, which was close to Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 10, and adopted it in Huawei Mate 7. Since then, Kirin 930 and Kirin 950 have been applied to the flagships of Huawei P series and Mate series respectively, and Kirin 650 has also achieved success in the thousand-yuan price model. For a young IC company in China, approaching or even surpassing the industry leader Qualcomm is a great success (even if the transcendence is temporary). So, what is the reason for Huawei Hisilicon's success?
First, standing on the shoulders of giants can see farther. The current smartphone industry can be divided into two camps, Apple's iOS camp and Alphabet's Android camp. The former chip was designed by ourselves, while the latter was mainly authorized by ARM, and then redeveloped by chip companies such as Qualcomm, Samsung and MediaTek, adding various functions to form their own chip solutions. Huawei Hisilicon did not make chips from scratch, but adopted the development route of designing solutions with companies such as Qualcomm, Samsung and MediaTek based on ARM patents. In this way, mature hardware platforms can be used to save investment and time in development, and the industrial ecosystem formed by ARM architecture can be fully utilized, including various components supporting CPU, Android operating system running on it and various apps running on Android platform.
Second, the money will come back after it is dispersed. Although Kirin chip adopts the public version architecture of ARM, it is not correct, otherwise all chip manufacturers and mobile phone manufacturers can challenge Qualcomm; Instead, it is necessary to integrate the hardware of several companies to optimize the overall performance of the chip, stabilize the operation and control the energy consumption. To do this, we still need enough technical strength and a large amount of R&D investment. Huawei is the company with the largest investment and the strongest innovation ability in R&D in China. Ren asked that 10% of Huawei's sales revenue should be used for research and development. 20 14 Huawei's r&; D investment reached 5.44 billion US dollars, ranking 15 in the world, R&; D investment is equivalent to 44.6% of Samsung's, which has exceeded Apple's 4.98 billion euros (ranking 18). Huawei's R &:D intensity is 14%, far exceeding Samsung's (7.9%) and Apple's (3.3%). In 20 14, Huawei applied for 3,442 international PCT patents, ranking first in the world, with the fastest growth rate among the top ten enterprises (63%). In 20 15, Huawei applied for 3,898 patents, ranking first among global enterprises for the second consecutive year. Although there is no data on R&D investment in HiSilicon, chip manufacturing is the industry with the highest R&D intensity. In 20 14, Intel and Qualcomm ranked 4th and 23rd respectively in R&D investment in the world. D strength reached 20.6% and 20.7% respectively. According to the R&D intensity data of IC companies such as Intel and Qualcomm, it can be inferred that the catch-up of Kirin 960 is based on high-intensity R&D. ..
Third, fight with brothers, and fight with father and son. As a wholly-owned subsidiary of Huawei, Hisilicon's success undoubtedly depends on Huawei's help and support. Huawei's role is reflected in both technology and market, which forms the technical thrust and market pull of Hayes' development. From a technical point of view, the mobile phone CPU solution includes not only the CPU core module, but also the communication baseband. As the world's largest manufacturer of communication equipment, Huawei has not only formed a series of its own core technologies and patents, but also has a deeper understanding of users' needs than ordinary chip suppliers. For example, in communication baseband, Huawei first launched Balong 7 10 supporting LTECat.4 on 20 12, and Balong 720 supporting LTE Cat.6 on 20 14. The new generation baseband using Balong 750 supports LTE Cat. 12 and Cat. 13 UL network standards. The theoretical download rate is as high as 600Mbps, and the upload speed also reaches 150Mbps. At the same time, it also integrates CDMA baseband, which is not inferior to Xiaolong 820 at the baseband level. In addition, Kirin 960 built-in baseband supports full netcom. Among them, the supported dual-card combinations are LTE+GSM, LTE+WCDMA and LTE+CDMA, which well meet the needs of some countries. These advanced technologies of Huawei can be integrated into the Kirin 960 solution and become the unique advantage of Kirin 960. The success of a new technology requires not only excellent performance in the laboratory, prototype, small test and pilot test, but also continuous discovery, improvement and perfection in the process of commercial production. For a vertically non-integrated enterprise, he usually faces the inextricable knot of "imperfect products-no market, no market-products lack opportunities for improvement", especially when there are already very successful and excellent incumbents and their products and services in the market. Because for users, using imperfect products will bring all kinds of bad experiences and troubles, and for parts, materials and equipment used in the production process, it will also cause defective products due to quality gaps, defects and instability, resulting in greater losses. The lack of stable market demand is an important reason why many domestic products have been successful in the laboratory or even in the pilot stage, but it is difficult to commercialize or the market performance is not ideal. For Hisilicon, its parent company Huawei has made great efforts in the terminal market in recent years, and mobile phone shipments have entered the first camp of domestic market share. In 20 15 years, its shipment reached/kloc-0.08 million units, ranking first in the country at one time. Kirin Chip seized the opportunity of high growth in the industry through Huawei mobile phones. Huawei's use of Kirin chip in mobile phones, especially flagship mobile phones, not only provides Haisi with stable market guarantee, enables its shipment to reach a larger scale, realizes economies of scale and reduces production costs, but also enables it to continuously improve, optimize and upgrade in the process of industrialization, thus breaking the deadlock that cannot be got rid of and entering a virtuous circle. Moreover, the use of Kirin chips in Huawei mobile phones, especially Huawei high-end mobile phones, is actually an endorsement of Huawei brands, which also improves the market image of Kirin chips.
Of course, as a wholly-owned subsidiary of Huawei, Hisilicon, while receiving Huawei's support, also faces typical vertical restrictions in industrial economics. At present, the only vertically integrated mobile phone manufacturers with their own chips are Apple, Samsung and Huawei. Other mobile phone manufacturers buy chips from professional chip suppliers, such as Qualcomm, MediaTek or Samsung. Huawei's competitors include vivo, BBK, Xiaomi and Lenovo. In the mobile phone market. From the point of view of limiting (at least not supporting) the development of Huawei's mobile phones, these competitors are generally reluctant to purchase HiSilicon chips, and will give priority to chips from specialized chip manufacturers (Qualcomm and MediaTek) or chips from integrated chip mobile phone manufacturers (Samsung), which greatly limits the market capacity of HiSilicon. Of course, there are also successful precedents in the upstream and downstream of the vertical industrial chain, that is, Samsung. But the premise is that Samsung's technology is leading and product positioning is different. Huawei Hisilicon has a long way to go in terms of technology if it really surpasses Qualcomm, not temporarily.