Abstract

MIC Perspective

Products supporting 4G specifications are introduced one after another; nevertheless, 4G network deployment is still incomplete and VoLTE standard is not yet published, so it is projected that in the short term, hybrid networks will be used by telecom operators in the near future. Therefore, chip suppliers aggressively develop products with multi-mode and multi-band supports. This type of chips thus becomes an indicator reflecting technology capabilities of chip suppliers. Owing to technology maturity and versatility, most of the multi-mode and multi-band chips support 3GPP (the 3rd Generation Partnership Project) Release 9 standard at the present stage.

ARM's Cortex A9 architecture is anticipated to gradually become the mainstream product in 2012, and the A15 architecture will be used by mid-range to high-end products starting from the second half of 2012 to the beginning of 2013. With increasing core clock speed, challenges such as cooling requirements and rising power consumption also emerge. Other than designing new products based on next generation architecture, for example, changing from A9 architecture to A15 architecture, using next generation process technology is projected to be crucial. Most of the existing A9 architecture-based products use 40nm or 45nm process; while a majority of A15 architecture-based products adopt 28nm or 32nm process. Adoption of new process will be a challenge for chip suppliers as regards design capabilities. Even though fabless is the mainstream in the IC design industry, substantial costs are expected at the initial phase if chip suppliers plan to adopt new process; moreover, suppliers' partner fabs will also have to provide stable capacity and score good yields. Chip suppliers which have their own semiconductor plants need to pour tremendous costs when introducing new process as well. It is thus expected that in the future, besides IC design capability, it is essential for chip suppliers to cooperation with fabs and control capacity of advanced process in order to compete. Moreover, owing to the needs for multi-mode and multi-band supports, power consumed by chips will increase; therefore, technologies of energy-saving and dynamic performance distribution will become the key to system design.

The fast-changing emerging markets prefer value-line products; therefore, chip suppliers pay increasing attention to total solutions, entry-level products in particular, in a bid to help their clients shorten products' time-to-market schedules especially when competing in the emerging markets. Both MediaTek and Broadcom target at the same market segments, so the two companies are expected to compete head-to-head and challenge the market leader Qualcomm. Intel aggressively forays into the mobile device market, and the company has made progress in terms of product performance and power consumption. Nevertheless, there is no specific standard for mobile devices and components of such devices are highly connected and integrated. Since Intel has merely limited experience except core computing chips, it is thus projected that Intel's chips will not be widely adopted in the mobile communications market in the short term. Being one of the major semiconductor vendors worldwide, Intel's advantages lie in its process technology. If Intel is able to strike a balance between its advantages of advanced process technology and costs, the company's potential is projected to be significant.

HD content becomes one of the most essential applications in mobile devices, leading to increasing importance of GPU. GPUs are important complementary units to APs, and the development of GPUs is observed to move towards multi-core GPUs, similar to the development of APs. In addition to strengthening image display performance, it is anticipated that vendors will put emphasis on achieving better performance through direct GPU supports. GPGPUs (General Purpose Computing on Graphics Units) have caught much attention in PC and super computing markets. Since applications on mobile devices become more complex, will GPGPUs be deployed on mobile devices are forecasted to affect future development of GPU technology.

Appendix

Glossary of Terms

List of Companies