Ziguang ZTE's Zhou Chen: 5G will bring strong demand to the storage industry

At the China Flash Market Summit, Zhou Chen, Executive Vice President of Unisoc, delivered a speech on the theme of "5G Storage, Unlimited Market". From different industry perspectives, Zhou Chen shared the demands and changes that the 5G era has brought to the storage market.

In his speech, Zhou Chen mainly mentioned three core points. First, due to human nature, the entire consumer product has an endless demand for storage; second, SoC plays the role of an engine, because it is the carrier of user experience and content, it will bring about an increase in bandwidth and processing power, and these two points are the infrastructure of applications. When the infrastructure is improved, the user experience will also improve. The final result is actually an increase in storage demand. Storage Memory is the food in this field and is indispensable. Finally, Zhou Chen believes that 5G will definitely significantly increase storage capacity and performance requirements.

Demand for storage capacity in the consumer sector continues to grow

Everyone has experienced the situation where the phone cannot take photos because the storage is full. For consumers, this undoubtedly makes them realize the importance of storage. The core point of this phenomenon is human nature. Even if consumers have a phone with a large storage capacity, it will still be filled up in the end because no one wants to clear the storage of their phone, so the demand is endless.

Zhou Chen said that when something in the mobile phone field becomes the basis for pricing, it means that we have clarified the development direction that we will continue to pursue, and consumption will upgrade and move upward. This is also one of the reasons why storage has become a major and continuous demand in the consumer field.

Looking back, the driving force behind the continuous increase in mobile phone storage capacity is precisely the evolution of communication technology.

What does the evolution of communication technology mean? It means that we have wider channels to obtain information. After the development of communication technology to 4G, it is very obvious that the amount of information obtained on mobile phones has increased dramatically.

Zhou Chen believes that once the communication bandwidth is improved, it means that the content is constantly enriched, and the quality and quantity of the content are developing at a very high speed. Therefore, in the 5G era, along with the development of the entire communication technology, we will see some related storage products grow very rapidly.

In fact, in the entire semiconductor field, the two levels with the most control are actually the "left and right levels".

Zhou Chen said that one pole is mainly public memory and sensor. First of all, it is indispensable. Secondly, these two items particularly emphasize supply, such as futures, such as grain and oil futures are also based on supply; the other pole is SoC and communication. Finally, our demand for storage is based on what kind of applications and content we have, and what kind of content depends on what kind of SoC and communication. So we believe that these are the two decisive poles in the semiconductor field.

Why is SoC said to play the role of engine?

Zhou Chen said that even if the 5G network has full signal, there are no applications on mobile phones, because the 5G chip is not good enough. So in the end, we have many demands on storage, which depends on what kind of applications and content we have to fill it, and what kind of applications and content to fill it depends on whether there is a suitable SoC main chip.

Why can 5G bring strong demand for storage?

When interconnected relationships are formed in life, the amount of information will increase significantly, and this information is the root of our storage needs. In addition to speed and bandwidth, the biggest difference between 5G and previous 2G and 3G is that it is oriented towards the concept of large-capacity access.

Zhou Chen said that we are still at the stage of human networking, and the Internet of Things has not yet been completed, because many problems have not been solved. 5G is aimed at massive connections.

Secondly, we need to emphasize a concept - bandwidth is storage.

Zhou Chen said that with the upgrade of applications, content will grow, and content is data; at the same time, the increase in bandwidth also brings us requirements for interfaces and storage. When can we clearly feel the application of 5G? In fact, we feel that there is a lag in every upgrade of infrastructure. This is even more true for communications, because the content service providers are the service providers of these applications.

When we discuss 5G, we will discuss what are the killer applications of 5G. In Zhou Chen's view, this is essentially a false proposition. Take 4G as an example. If you turn off the 4G network of your mobile phone, basically all network-related applications will not work, so there are killer applications everywhere. The same is true for storage. When you start to have 128G, you can no longer adapt to 64G. So don't think that the basic bandwidth is enough and there is no need to increase it. This problem does not exist at all.

The application upgrade brought by 5G will actually promote a large-scale upgrade of our entire product hardware. Zhou Chen said that in the 5G era, the processor's capabilities must be able to adapt to the upgrade of related applications and content. This also means that a large amount of information is transmitted and stored, so it is bound to drive a new round of product hardware upgrades.

The upcoming wave of phone replacement brought about by 5G

At present, the speed of 5G popularization is much faster than that of 4G. Zhou Chen believes that this is because all first-tier terminal brands are now using their greatest efforts and fastest speed to promote the popularization of 5G mobile phones, so we expect that next year, all mobile phones priced at 2,000 yuan or more in China will be 5G phones.

As the main battlefield of mobile phones, China will also become a pioneer market for global storage. In the field of mobile communications around the world, the strongest and latest technologies and product applications are all in the Chinese market. This is why 5G can develop so quickly in China.

In addition to the Internet, we also have the best consumers in the world, which will become the driving force for the replacement of consumer electronics. Zhou Chen said that based on the basic factors mentioned above, consumer factors and irreversible factors in actual use, the growth of the storage market will be very obvious. At the same time, Chinese manufacturers have never lacked radical actions. We can fully expect that in this wave of replacement brought by 5G, there will be another wave of very direct storage capacity upgrades.

"In short, the storage demand of mobile phones is essentially reflected in four aspects: entertainment, social interaction, system and photography." Zhou Chen said that under the joint effect of these four aspects of demand, coupled with the influence of user consumption habits, although the storage market is actually highly competitive, its demand will still grow rapidly in the future.