Is Apple's mobile phone chip falling from grace?
Latest update time：2019-09-12
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Once upon a time, Apple's A series chips were their banner and their pride in the competition with their competitors. But in the new chip released by Apple yesterday, the A13 Bionic processor, we saw for the first time a comparison between them and their competitors. In the eyes of many analysts, this seems to send a signal that Apple is "anxious".
According to Apple, the new A13 Bionic uses a 7nm process and contains 8.5 billion transistors, making it the chip with the most integrated transistors ever made by Apple (A12 has 6.9 billion). The CPU and GPU equipped with the A13 Bionic are the fastest ever in a smartphone. At the same time, Apple also stated that the A13 Bionic is designed for machine learning - two new machine learning accelerators are added to its CPU, with a faster neural engine for real-time photo and video analysis.
But from the above picture, we can see that Apple's comparison is with the Snapdragon 855 released at the end of last year and the Kirin 980 released in September last year. In fact, Huawei has recently launched the new Kirin 990 series. We can see that the Kirin 990 5G uses a 7nm + process and integrates more than 10 billion transistors, making it the industry's first mobile SoC to break 10 billion. Judging from the process and the number of transistors alone, Huawei has far surpassed Apple.
From the perspective of machine learning, Huawei introduced an independent NPU neural network unit as early as the Kirin 970 era, and the Kirin 980 was enhanced to dual-core. The Kirin 990 5G was further upgraded. Its CPU uses a "2+2+4" combination solution, integrating the Da Vinci architecture 2 large cores + 1 micro core NPU neural processing unit. This is ahead of Apple again.
In addition, Kirin 990 5G also integrates 5G baseband, and Apple will not launch 5G until next year. The cruelest point is that, except for Apple, all other mobile phone chip manufacturers have already launched 5G this year.
From this point of view, has Apple's chip really begun to fall from the altar?
The origin of Apple's mobile phone chip
In 2007, Apple released the revolutionary first generation iPhone, which used the ARM architecture SoC designed by Samsung and the GPU through Imagination Technology's PowerVR. Although the performance of the first generation iPhone was good, Jobs still decided to set up Apple's chip research and development project.
Why would Apple take such a huge risk and design its own chips? According to Patrick Moorhead of Forbes, the answer is simple: Apple chose to take this risk because they need to achieve differentiation and reduce costs through vertical integration. Apple believes that by owning iOS, the iOS ecosystem, and now the chips, it can provide a better user experience.
Based on this, Apple began to plan the development of Apple A series chips in the next few years. In 2008, Apple poached Johny Srouji from IBM. He later served as the vice president of Apple's chip department, responsible for the design of each generation of Apple SoC. In the same year, Apple acquired Palo Alto Semiconductor (PA Semiconductor) for $278 million and acquired a 150-person engineering team. At the WWDC conference that year, Steve Jobs announced that the team would develop custom chips for iPod, iPhone and other future mobile devices (iPad).
In 2010, Apple launched its first self-developed chip, the A4. According to EET, the A4 uses the Cortex-A8 architecture, which was optimized by Apple through cooperation with Samsung and an American company, Intrinsity. However, Samsung later used this CPU in its own mobile phones. In order to avoid competition with Samsung, Apple urgently acquired Intrinsity three months after the release of the first generation iPad. This is also the second chip design company acquired by Apple in two years. So far, Apple has laid a solid foundation for its own CPU.
Then in 2012, Apple acquired the Israeli semiconductor company Anobit for $400-500 million, aiming directly at the leading flash memory solution. It is reported that based on its own patented MSP (Memory Signal Processing) technology, Anobit can provide flash memory solutions for corporate customers and the mobile market. This technology can improve the speed, durability and performance of flash memory systems while reducing costs. In the same year, Apple acquired AuntheTec. AuthenTec has become the world's largest supplier of semiconductor fingerprint recognition sensors, and Apple's TouchID uses AuthenTec's technology. Two years later, Apple acquired Passif Semiconductor, aiming at the low-power communication chips it produces.
Later, Apple attempted to conduct independent research and development on GPU. According to a report by Weiphone.com, in 2013, Apple hired a large number of AMD graphics engineers to work in Orlando. Utku Diril, a director of Vivante, a graphics technology designer that supplies GPUs to Marvell and Huawei, was also poached by Apple. After that, Apple poached a large number of graphics engineers from chip manufacturers such as IBM, AMD, and Freescale. Then in 2015, Apple also snatched John Tynefield, a senior director of GPU architecture at Nvidia. But so far, Apple has not achieved "independence" in GPU.
Years of fighting with Qualcomm and Huawei
Looking at the entire mobile phone market, Apple and Huawei both use their own chips, while Qualcomm and MediaTek have also occupied a place in the mobile phone chip market under the demand of Xiaomi, OV and other mobile phone manufacturers. Since Apple launched A4, Apple has actually started competing with Huawei and Qualcomm. From the comparison of their products, perhaps we can also see the power of Apple chips.
(Image: Semiconductor Industry Observation, data source: Fast Technology)
The first trial of Apple's A series chips was the A4 on the iPad launched in 2010. Jobs said that this was the most advanced chip Apple had ever used, and that the A4 was the key to ensuring the iPad's computing speed, operating reliability, and up to 10 hours of battery life. But Linley Gwennap, a chip analyst at the Linley Group at the time, said: "I don't find the A4 that convincing. The A4 doesn't seem to be a completely new product, and even if it is, it doesn't have much new to offer."
Judging from the reviews of the A4 by analysts at the time, this chip did not seem to have any special features compared to its competitors.
Later, a strong competitor launched the unsuccessful K3V1 in 2009. In the same year, Huawei's first generation of commercial LTE terminal chip Balong 700 (the familiar baseband) was officially launched. According to Huawei, Balong 700 was a completely "backward" product compared with its competitors at the time, but it opened the door to Huawei's baseband and was the origin of Huawei's ability to stand at the end of 5G. This is a later story.
The processor launched by mobile chip giant Qualcomm that year had already entered the dual-core form. This helped the successful launch of Xiaomi Mobile 1, Sony Xperia S and Nokia 920. In particular, the Xiaomi's instant success made Qualcomm's dual-core processors MSM8260 and MSM8960 the focus of the mobile market. Apple launched a dual-core processor the following year.
Later, as Patrick Moorhead analyzed above, Apple gained many fans with its A series chips and its unique iOS. From the initial single-core to the current six-core, Apple has been making steady progress. According to relevant running score data, the running scores of Apple A10 and Snapdragon 835 were almost the same at that time, but after the launch of A11, Apple's mobile phone chips reached their peak.
According to industry analysts, Apple has the best performance. As shown in the figure below, although they have similar specifications, the single-core Geekbench score of A11 is twice that of Qualcomm Snapdragon 835. The single-core performance is 1.5 generations ahead of Android mobile phone processors, and the multi-core performance is one generation ahead of Android processors. The advantage is that both performance and power consumption are very good.
As for Qualcomm,
since entering the mobile market, Qualcomm has released multiple series of mobile phone processors, which are divided into four series: 200, 400, 600, and 800. It is currently the largest and most active mobile phone chip manufacturer in the world. Qualcomm has a complete layout from entry-level to high-end. The above table mainly intercepts Qualcomm Snapdragon 8XX series products. Currently, Snapdragon 855 is Qualcomm's most advanced processor. Among the Android flagship phones that have been released, most of them use the Snapdragon 855 processor. Snapdragon 600 and Snapdragon 400 continue to exert their strength and quickly occupy the mid-to-low-end market by relying on better system compatibility.
As for Huawei,
from the trial of K3V1 and Balong 700 to the initial appearance of the first SoC Kirin 920. According to the data, Kirin 920 uses the industry's most advanced eight-core architecture at the time. It is also the industry's first true eight-core HMP solution, which makes Huawei Kirin 920's Benchmark score surpass many competitors in one fell swoop, and also helps Huawei Mate 7 to cause a buying spree. In 2014, Huawei released the first 64-bit SoC Kirin 620; in 2015, it launched the industry's first mobile phone SoC Kirin 950 using 16nm FinFET process, and in 2018, it launched the world's first mobile phone SoC chip embedded with NPU artificial intelligence, and in 2019, the first SoC Kirin 990 5G with over one million transistors.
This also includes Huawei's parallel development in the Balong chip and the advancement of ISiP, which have helped Huawei Kirin reach the top step by step.
In comparison, Apple is a bit too complacent. Especially the lack of baseband has put them in the current embarrassing situation.
Is baseband the lifeline?
We know that the mobile phone baseband plays a very important role in the mobile phone. The performance of the baseband chip will play a decisive role in the signal of the mobile phone. Samsung and Huawei have developed their own basebands. At the same time, in order to welcome the arrival of the 5G era, both have launched their own 5G basebands early. Huawei has integrated its 5G baseband, Balong 5000, into the new Kirin 990 5G. In comparison, Apple is a lot later.
Before the iPhone 7 was launched in 2016, Qualcomm had been the supplier of Apple's baseband chips. But since 2017, Apple and Qualcomm have been engaged in protracted litigation and counterclaims around the world over patent disputes. Apple accused Qualcomm of charging unfairly high patent licensing fees to mobile phone manufacturers, while Qualcomm claimed that Apple had stolen its patent property. In order to check and balance Qualcomm and find alternative opportunities, Apple began to use Intel's baseband chips. But because baseband is a very demanding technology, Intel's baseband has caused Apple a lot of trouble. At the same time, according to industry rumors, Intel's lack of strength in 5G baseband has made Apple lose interest. This has made Apple further aware of the importance of developing its own baseband.
In order to take into account both the present and the future, in April 2019, Apple and Qualcomm jointly announced that they had reached a settlement on all lawsuits worldwide. Apple agreed to pay Qualcomm patent licensing fees and reached an agreement to purchase baseband chips from Qualcomm in the next few years. At the same time, they are also recruiting baseband talents from all over the country and investing in self-research. It is reported that Apple has opened a new office in San Diego, which can accommodate 500 people, and has begun recruiting talents related to chip basebands. They even took over the relevant teams of Intel's baseband department and stepped up their efforts. As a "spare tire", Intel has sadly withdrawn from the ranks of mobile phone basebands.
However, according to reports, industry insiders revealed that Apple's self-developed 5G baseband will not be available until at least 2021. There are even reports that due to limitations in technology reserves and patent authorization, Apple's 5G baseband development process will be slower than expected, and it is expected to be launched in 2025. This makes Apple even slower than others.
To sum up, Apple's innovative ability in chips is truly amazing, and their vision in this area has made them move forward, but whether 2019 will be a watershed year for Apple chips and even the iPhone remains to be seen in the future.
*Disclaimer: This article is originally written by the author. The content of the article is the author's personal opinion. Semiconductor Industry Observer reprints it only to convey a different point of view. It does not mean that Semiconductor Industry Observer agrees or supports this point of view. If you have any objections, please contact Semiconductor Industry Observer.
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