Gathering micro-messages, there are currently three main AI chips on the market. One is the implementation of AI algorithms using traditional chips, such as CPU, DSP, and FPGA, and the second is GPU+AI accelerators to implement AI functions. The three types are custom ASICs. These types of paths have their own advantages, but they are also flawed.
Like a huge 'magnetic field', AI's gravitation has gradually moved from a technological revolution to industrial development. As the core of AI technology, AI chips are also attracting attention, not only to meet the needs of AI computing, but also to adapt to different requirements. Application scenarios and different locations (cloud or end). The battle for AI chips also presents a variety of genres, each with its own fans, who will win?
Three paths
Currently, there are mainly three kinds of AI chips on the market. One is to execute AI algorithms with traditional chips, such as CPU, DSP, FPGA, etc. The second is GPU + AI accelerator, which implements AI functions. The third type is customized. ASIC.
These three types of paths have different positioning due to 'genes'. Russell James, Imagination's vice president of PowerVR vision and AI business, believes that the first category is for applications with less demanding performance requirements, such as face recognition, and accuracy requirements. Not high; the second category is for high-performance applications such as smart phones, smart surveillance, autopilot, etc. The third category of AISCs is specific to specific tasks, such as IoT domains. The reason is that the IoT domain requires correspondingly limited power consumption. The AI task requires the ASIC with the highest performance and power consumption ratio. And the shipment volume in this area will be relatively large and worthy of attention.
These kinds of paths have their own advantages, but they are also flawed. Ke Chuan, regional market and business development director of Imagination China, believes that CPU efficiency is not high and speed is not fast under high-speed load; DSP is fast but R&D ecology is not complete; ASIC only The ability to perform fixed algorithm functions, scalability is not strong, and so optimistic about the overall advantages of GPU + AI accelerator performance, efficiency and power consumption.
Although Ke Chuan’s words are endorsed for his own IP, it is clear that an architectural AI chip cannot be used for all scenarios. Different scenarios require different kinds of technical support and need to be able to support the milliwatt level. Kilowatts of a variety of architecture.
Industry changes
The AI craze struck, but from the development stage, it has not yet reached maturity.
Ke Chuan believes that the general industry is divided into four phases. First, the new technology comes to the forefront of institutions and companies to study and demonstrate, to find the possibility of industrialization; Second, the application of research stage to explore and solve practical problems; Third, rapid industrial development stage, At this time, many opportunities are also spawned. The fourth is to enter a mature period and become a relatively stable market, while the leading one is to establish a company with a Jedi advantage after the ebb. At present, the AI is in the early stage of the third stage, namely the rapid development stage.
In this process, end-to-end AI functionality is more promising. Russell James said: 'AI is changing the industry, and the neural network is its core. Such processing has been mainly in the cloud, but due to delay issues, privacy issues and With increasing scalability requirements, edge AI processing has become very necessary.
In addition, the algorithm will gradually become open source, and it is necessary to quench the optimal solution for different applications. Russell James pointed out that the United States focuses on smart phones, autopilot and other aspects to improve AI performance, and China attaches great importance to intelligent monitoring, is a potential The huge market, while there are many opportunities in smart phones, automatic driving.
New IP
In several different paths, all the forces are trying their best to avoid weaknesses.
Imagination recently announced that PowerVR Series2NX, based on its Neural Network Accelerator (NNA) architecture, has introduced two neural network cores, the AX2185 and AX2145. It is important to understand that this architecture is the only solution that supports 16-bit to 4-bit width, which can be lower. Increased efficiency and real-time response with bandwidth and power consumption.
For different applications, these two types of IP cores have been greatly optimized in terms of performance and memory bandwidth. It is reported that the Series2NX AX2185 targets high-end smartphones, smart surveillance and automotive markets. The AX2185 has the advantage of having 8 full-width computing engines. , Each clock cycle can handle 2048 MAC (4.1 mega operations per second), while the power consumption is outstanding, achieving the highest performance per area. And the AX2145 is optimized for cost-sensitive devices to mid-range smart phones, digital The TV/Set-top box, smart camera and consumer security market are targeted for applications such as image recognition and machine vision.
The AI chip competition is not only hardware performance, software ecology is also crucial. Russell James introduced, both of these cores fully support Android's neural network application programming interface, while Imagination provides a set of tools to simplify the development of AI applications. And for deployment and debugging and analysis, the machine learning framework can also use the Network Development Kit (NDK).
Russell James mentioned that these two AI-acceleration IPs have already been used by mobile phone and automotive manufacturers. More importantly, these IPs can also be adapted to CPUs, FPGAs, etc., but they have certain requirements for bandwidth delay and so on. It doesn't have to be 'matching' with the GPU. If these AI-accelerated IPs are able to expand to other general-purpose chip areas, the path of the AI chip may be variable. (Proofreading/Fan Rong)
2. Qualcomm Snapdragon 429/439 Exposure: Ready for Android Go
In the Xiaolong 845, Xiaolong 710 re-screening, Qualcomm did not ignore the low-end processor area, According to Roland Quandt broke the news, Qualcomm's next generation of low-end processors will be focused on Android Go equipment to prepare.
Specifically, Qualcomm is developing two Snapdragon 400 series processors, namely the Snapdragon 429 and Snapdragon 439. It is currently not known when these two chips will be launched. There are rumors that some high-end Snapdragons 439. Will use 14nm technology and eight-core architecture.
In fact, Qualcomm does not have low-end processors. The Qualcomm 200 series is prepared for ultra-low-end devices. However, due to weak performance and MediaTek's competition, virtually no companies use Qualcomm's 200 series chips. Currently, the market is extremely low. Most mobile phones use the MT6737 processor.
Considering that the new version of Android Go will be released at the same time as Android 9.0 later this summer, Qualcomm is likely to announce the details of the two processors.
With 3.5G approaching, vendors have stepped up to baseband chips
With the forthcoming commercial use of 5G networks, handset chip manufacturers have pioneered the launch of their own 5G chips. Prior to this, Qualcomm, Intel, and Huawei successively demonstrated their own 5G chips, and announced that they expect to commercialize them in 2019. In contrast, MediaTek seems to be slow. Half beat, until recently announced its first 5G chip M70.
M70 appeared at Taipei International Computer Show
At the recent International Computer Show in Taipei, MediaTek officially announced the launch of the first 5G baseband chip M70. MediaTek said that in 2019, the industry will have the opportunity to see the launch of terminal products equipped with MediaTek 5G baseband chips.
At the media conference, MediaTek’s general manager Chen Guanzhou stated at the media conference that MediaTek has been actively deploying the 5G market, and has long since cooperated with major companies in the communications industry, including Nokia, NTT DoCoMo, China Mobile, and Huawei. Nowadays, the new M70 is launched. The chip will support 5G NR and conform to the latest standard specification of 3GPP Release 15, up to 5Gbps transmission rate.
It should be noted that MediaTek M70, like Qualcomm Snapdragon X50 and Intel XMM8060, are all 5G chips based on SA independent networking. Therefore, if you want to be backward compatible with 2G/3G/4G networks, you must also connect with existing 4G. Baseband chips are used in combination. However, Chen Guanzhou stated that independent products are good practice products, which can also help future single chip products to have better integration performance when they are launched.
It should be pointed out that, compared to MediaTek’s 5G progress, Qualcomm Xiaolong X50 is progressing faster and is expected to be commercially available in the first half of next year. Prior to this, Qualcomm has signed a large purchase agreement with mobile phone manufacturers such as Xiaomi, OPPO, and Vivo. Therefore, MediaTek may have to suppress sales of future 5G chips. In response, Chen Guanzhou pointed out:
'Mainland China is still one of MediaTek's major markets, and it also allocates the most resources. Therefore, in the face of the layout of its competitors, MediaTek will continue to operate in mainland China and cooperate with related customers. It is expected that 2019 You will also see the end product with MediaTek 5G data chip.
Chip manufacturers rush to layout 5G
In October last year, Qualcomm officially demonstrated its first 5G modem chip for mobile terminals, the Xeon X50, and announced that it has successfully implemented gigabit data connectivity in the 28GHz millimeter wave band. At the same time, Qualcomm also demonstrated The reference design of the Xiaolong X50's 5G mobile phone is expected to see the corresponding terminal equipment as quickly as possible in the first half of 2019.
Immediately after Qualcomm, in November last year, Intel also announced its 5G modem chip - XMM 8000 series. The first chip model is XMM 8060. Intel is expected to be commercially available by the end of 2019.
Although Samsung has not released its own 5G chips, this does not mean that Samsung’s R&D on 5G chips lags. On the contrary, as early as the beginning of 2017, Samsung announced that it has designed 28GHz millimeter wave RF for 5G infrastructure. The chip has been developed, and Samsung's baseband chip is mainly used for its own smart phones, so the actual progress of its internal 5G chip is not known to the outside world. Optimistic estimates, the Samsung S10 released early next year is expected to carry Samsung's own 5G chip.
In February of this year, Ziguang Zunrui announced that it has reached a new 5G cooperation with Intel, including a series of modems based on the Intel XMM 8000 series. It faces a diversified market and cooperates with multiple product lines. Based on the cooperation between the two parties, Zeng Rui planned to be in 2019. The first commercial 5G mobile platform in the second half of the year. In addition, Spreadtrum's own brand of 5G baseband chips is also under development. It is expected to be launched before the end of 2019. Formal commercial use may wait until 2020.
Industrial structure is expected to undergo great changes
At present, the global mainstream telecom operators are eager to build 5G experimental networks and promote the commercial use of 5G networks, especially the United States, Japan, and South Korea, as well as China. However, it is clear that the construction of 5G networks needs to be fully prepared at all stages of the 5G industry chain. , especially the chip area upstream of the industrial chain.
In the most upstream of the 5G industry chain, the baseband chip field, the world has formed the market structure of Qualcomm as a leader, MediaTek and Spreadtrum as followers since 3G. But now, the 5G chip market will increase more. Players' market pattern is expected to change dramatically.
Intel Corp., as the dominant PC chip, has been gearing up. In November 2017, Intel immediately announced the launch of its own 5G modem family, XMM8060, in line with Qualcomm, and reached a strategic cooperation with Ziguang Zengrui, a chip design company of Ziguang Group. Both parties will The Chinese market develops a new 5G smart phone chip platform equipped with Intel's 5G modem XMM8060.
Huawei is also a heavyweight company that cannot be ignored. Huawei announced the launch of the first 5G chip, Barron 5G01, in Barcelona on February 25 this year, and introduced a 5G terminal CPE based on Barron 5G01.
Samsung is also expected to enter the card slot. Now that Samsung has surpassed Intel to take the throne of the world's largest chip maker, it will never do anything in the 5G era. Perhaps soon Samsung will announce its significant achievements in the 5G chip field.
Industry insiders believe that different strategies of different vendors on the chip may bring new changes to the market structure of 5G mobile terminals. Terminal manufacturers of self-developed chips are naturally facilitated by vertical integration, but are cutting into the 5G terminal market. The window period is also risky. In addition, the market share in the 'global top three' market is gradually declining. OEMs represented by Chinese manufacturers benefit from in-depth cooperation with Qualcomm and gain a first-mover advantage in the wireless chip field. 5G brings new opportunities and new markets, realizes 'curve overtaking'. People's Posts and Telecommunications News
4. Z-Wave actively layouts, enters the commercial application market
Combining Z-Wave mesh network technology and interoperable product features, Smart Home R&D personnel can obtain large, diverse ecosystems and a full range of End-Node technology options for millions of smart homes. Customers provide vast business opportunities. Recently Z-Wave began to enter the small-scale commercial market, where it played its low-latency, low-cost and taking into account the advantages of high security.
According to research unit IDC data, by 2020, the global IoT terminal equipment will reach 9.4 million units. As promising applications of mesh network will be urgent, Silicon Labs acquires Sigma Designs in April 2018. Z-Wave Business Unit.
Z-Wave is the technology of smart homes in the mesh network. Chen Xiongji, senior marketing manager of Silicon Labs Asia Pacific, points out that the technology has developed more than 2,400 kinds of terminal equipment imported worldwide, and a total of 100 million devices are operating in the market, and in 2017 The annual sales of Z-Wave have reached 1.2 billion U.S. dollars, and the market is quite large.
Chen Xiongji further explained that compared to other wireless connection technologies, Z-Wave has a relatively complete ecosystem, and all Z-Wave-certified products can communicate with each other, both old and new. In addition, compulsory certification is also important for Z-Wave. Features, through the threshold of mandatory certification, the technology brings high security, high compatibility and advantages of friendly developers.
Huang Zhongyu, application engineering manager at Silicon Labs, pointed out that currently partners have connected the Z-Wave-enabled devices to the bridges of Amazon Alexa, Google Home, and Apple Homekit through the Gateway to implement voice-controlled smart homes. The function of the device.
It is worth noting that in addition to the smart home market, Silicon Labs will also expand Z-Wave technology to the commercial market in the future. Although this technology has high security, high degree of compatibility and other advantages, it is quite suitable for commercial field applications. However, due to considering the complexity involved in connection status and the consideration of maintaining low cost, the company has been focusing on the development of the smart home market in the past few years. Huang Zhongyu stated that at present, the company has begun to focus on small-scale commercial markets. In the future, this connection technology can have more innovative application possibilities.
In the future, Silicon Labs will continue to increase the penetration rate of Z-Wave in the Asian market. Huang Zhongyu shared that it seems that the biggest growth will be South Korea and Japan will be the next. Although the market demand is huge, the system in the smart home area is still very cluttered. Therefore, the market development will be relatively time-consuming. In Taiwan, the company has also started cooperation with the ITRI and telecom operators, and there will be related products released in the short term.
5. Improve Bluetooth 5 penetration, mobile phone introduction is the key
The Bluetooth SIG officially announced a new generation of Bluetooth 5.0 technology at the end of 2016. Although the transmission distance and transmission capacity of the Bluetooth SIG are significantly higher than those of the Bluetooth 4.2 standard, until now, the penetration rate of Bluetooth 5 is still low. In this regard, Nordic pointed out that the introduction of mobile phones is the key to promote the popularity of Bluetooth 5, but due to the application of Bluetooth 5 on the mobile phone side has not yet emerged, thus making the penetration rate is not as good as imagined.
Compared with the previous Bluetooth technology, Bluetooth 5 has the advantages of four times the transmission range, twice the transmission speed, and eight times the amount of broadcast message load, and also solves the interference problem with other wireless technologies. Helps coexist with other communications technologies in the Internet of Things (IoT) market.
However, according to Chen Junzhi, sales manager at Nordic, most of the devices currently connected are still based on mobile phones. However, the features of Bluetooth 5 mentioned above are not necessary for mobile phones; like Bluetooth 5 can support long-distance transmission, but the same Wi-Fi and LTE can also be used as long-distance transmission technologies. In the absence of obvious application requirements, the mobile phone maker does not necessarily choose Bluetooth 5. Bluetooth 4.2 can also meet the needs of consumers for short-distance transmission. Therefore, the mobile phone industry has not yet A large number of imports is one of the main reasons why Bluetooth 5 has not been rapidly popularized.
So, what is the current business model of Bluetooth 5? Chen Junzhi pointed out that most applications of Bluetooth 5 nowadays are used to connect equipment and equipment (point-to-point), such as for data transmission between electronic fences. When two electronic fences are used When the distance between the settings is long and you need to communicate with each other to transfer data, you can use Bluetooth 5 as the transmission method.
However, such applications still cannot rapidly promote the popularity of Bluetooth 5. Therefore, Chen Junzhi believes that the introduction of mobile phone manufacturers is still the key to the popularity of Bluetooth 5. Because most consumers or applications are still accustomed to using mobile phones. , And then connect to other terminal equipment; So, if Bluetooth 5 is to be popularized in the future, it may have to wait for the application demand to increase, prompting the mobile phone industry to use Bluetooth 5 before the penetration rate will gradually increase. High-speed transmission may be an opportunity because Samsung Galaxy S8/Galaxy Note 8 and Apple's iPhone 8/iPhone X are all used as the starting point for the introduction of Bluetooth 5 to meet consumer demand for high-speed transmission.