Chinese semiconductor thread II

PopularScience

PopularScience

Senior Member
Registered Member
huemens said:
I think they do this on purpose. Their design is not bad. Their chips performance is comparable to any other chips that use the same ARM-stock-cores and the same fab process. It's just that they never use the latest or even the second-latest TSMC fab process. If they were to produce a chip using the same ARM Cortex cores, and the same TSMC fab process as this Xiaomi chip then the resulting performance will not be that different (of course there will be some differences). Their most advanced chip currently use 6nm.

So why don't they just use TSMC's latest process and make a chip that could compete with MediaTek? If they did that very likely they would immediately get sanctioned and cut off from TSMC. They cannot also leverage SMIC the same way Huawei does. Their situation is different from both Huawei and Xiaomi. Huawei is a device manufacturer that has total control over their design of their cores as well as the design of device hardware and software, which allows them to optimize those in many ways to reduce the disadvantage of having to fab with an inferior process node. Unisoc is not a device manufacturer like Xioami so they can't just build some chips in-house and then buy some from Qualcomm to keep Qualcomm's US lobbying on their side either. Whatever they do they would have to compete with Mediatek and Qualcomm. Their current strategy of focusing on the low-end allows them stay afloat and maintain the knowhow until such time mainland fabs can compete with TSMC on the high-end nodes.
Click to expand...
I think the reason is cost effective. 3nm is expensive.
 
sunnymaxi

sunnymaxi

Major
Registered Member
huemens said:
I think they do this on purpose. Their design is not bad. Their chips performance is comparable to any other chips that use the same ARM-stock-cores and the same fab process. It's just that they never use the latest or even the second-latest TSMC fab process. If they were to produce a chip using the same ARM Cortex cores, and the same TSMC fab process as this Xiaomi chip then the resulting performance will not be that different (of course there will be some differences). Their most advanced chip currently use 6nm.

So why don't they just use TSMC's latest process and make a chip that could compete with MediaTek? If they did that very likely they would immediately get sanctioned and cut off from TSMC. They cannot also leverage SMIC the same way Huawei does. Their situation is different from both Huawei and Xiaomi. Huawei is a device manufacturer that has total control over their design of their cores as well as the design of device hardware and software, which allows them to optimize those in many ways to reduce the disadvantage of having to fab with an inferior process node. Unisoc is not a device manufacturer like Xioami so they can't just build some chips in-house and then buy some from Qualcomm to keep Qualcomm's US lobbying on their side either. Whatever they do they would have to compete with Mediatek and Qualcomm. Their current strategy of focusing on the low-end allows them stay afloat and maintain the knowhow until such time mainland fabs can compete with TSMC on the high-end nodes.
Click to expand...
UNISOC has 14 percent global market share. they have resource to climb up in high end category but as you said it can be risky for them. they have 5G modem as well.
 
sunnymaxi

sunnymaxi

Major
Registered Member
PopularScience said:
5G is several orders of magnitude more difficult, and Unisoc has 5G.
Click to expand...
Even if it's just 4G, it's still a big deal.. Modems are extremely, extremely difficult to develop. credit goes to Xiaomi.

i won't be surprised if Xiaomi make their own 5G modem and i m sure they are working on it. they have resource and now a competitive R&D team.

if you see the pattern, in last few year Chinese OEMs changed the gear and started to invest in R&D. Xiaomi is the perfect example of it. and its good to see we have another Tech giant developing its own ecosystem outside Hisilicon.
 
tphuang

tphuang

General
Staff member
Super Moderator
VIP Professional
Registered Member
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top