Further proof that for etch and deposition there's no fundamental difference between die shrinks, as expected, since they go by process chemistry and not by lateral dimensions. 14 nm, despite being FinFET, still shares alot of the process chemistry with 28 nm planar such as W gate, high K dielectric, TiN adhesion layer, etc.
is BAW integrated on the SoC or a different chip in the phone?In case you don't think BAW filter is a big deal, it was a $9.6B market last year and expects to be $34.6B by 2030. I guess the people compiling these reports haven't thought about the effect of China price.
There were 700 million 5G phones sold in 2022. Based on this, each phone requires about $10-15 of BAW filter.
Chinese smartphone makers represent about half of the 5G phone market. In fact, China represents about 40% of Qorvo's revenue.
As such, Chinese smartphone makers going from Qorvo BAW to domestic options would represent probably $4B shift out of Qorvo & broadcom revenues toward domestic chipmakers. Of course, this won't happen over night.
But starting with 1 obvious trend. As Huawei regains 5G capability and capture greater portion of domestic market share, its competitors will loose market share. Just have Huawei exclusively using domestic BAW filters would represent a $400m shift in BAW revenue (if we assume something like 30 million 5G and 20 million 4G phones from them next year.
By the way, huawei kirin chip returning is trending on weibo. Even the Huawei whisper says this is no longer being hidden. Looks like Huawei is feeling pretty secure about its supply chain if it's willing to be openly celebrating it
btw, this is relevant post that caused to trend
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China will overcome the current sanctions just as it has overcome the previous sanctions meted out by the US over the last few decades. Military hardware, rocket / space cooperation, high tech manufacturing and innovation, these all followed the same trajectory.
Major chunk of earning still comes from mature nodes. 28nm/14nm
I think there are more than 1 BAW filter on your phone, so probably in SoC & 5G chipset & other places. Still looking into it
the bigger deal is SMIC, which is working with these guys to validate their tools for the advanced process. Naura can tell SMIC that their etching tool is good enough for 14nm or 7nm, but SMIC still has to put it in their process and validate that it is. thankfully, lithography machine really is very important in the process and they've gotten enough ASML ones to increase their capacity until SSA800 becomes mature
I am hearing similar news about the benchmarking of the SSA800 against the NXT2000i by SMIC. This can really only mean that the SSA800 has exceeded the performance of the NXT1980i, which it is based on.