Qualcomm is bringing 5G technology to its budget Snapdragon 4-series processors in early 2021, opening the door to a new generation of 5G smartphones that could cost $250 or less.
The San Diego, California-based company plans to roll out Snapdragon 4-series chips that can be combined with 5G modems for use in smartphones priced from $125 to $250, looking to soften the high prices that have deterred consumers from upgrading to 5G phones. Qualcomm said the chips would be used in smartphones coming to market in the first quarter of 2020. Xiaomi, Oppo, and Motorola have announced plans to release 5G phones featuring the 5G Snapdragon 4-series chips.
By bringing 5G to some of the cheapest smartphones on the market, Qualcomm said the chips would serve areas that currently have around 3.5 billion smartphone users combined. Cristiano Amon, Qualcomm’s president, said the chips would “exceed expectations for the mass-market segment by bringing an assortment of predominately high- and mid-tier features to a broader audience. It will deliver on the promise of making 5G accessible to all smartphone users.”
Qualcomm, the world's largest smartphone chip vendor, has been trying to add 5G technology to more affordable phones by building chips with a 5G modem embedded on the system-on-a-chip (SoC). Qualcomm has rolled out its Snapdragon 6- and 7-series chips with integrated modems for connecting to 5G networks, which deliver far faster data rates than current 4G technology. It has also started selling its Snapdragon 865 chip requiring a separate 5G modem for flagship phones.
5G smartphones that use Qualcomm's Snapdragon 8-series chips tend to cost over $700, while its Snapdragon 7-series chips with integrated 5G modems are used in phones in the $500 to $700 price range. Its Snapdragon 6-series chips are targeted at 5G phones with price tags of $300 to $500. Early flagship 5G smartphones released last year based on Qualcomm chips cost over $1,000.
Qualcomm has maintained its forecast for global 5G smartphone shipments in 2020 of between 175 million and 225 million. In July, the company said shipments would be on the high end of that range, signaling stronger-than-anticipated demand. Smartphones shipped with 5G modems in the first quarter accounted for about 8% of the overall market, according to Counterpoint Research.
proteanTecs, which sells tools to identify areas for improvement in chips and anticipate potential failures in the field, said that it has raised $45 million in funding to meet demand from customers.
The startup pinpoints problem areas in chips by placing semiconductor cores called agents in the floor plan of the processor. The cores, which can be embedded without any penalty in die area or cost, serve as sensors, gathering data on the performance, power, heat, and other characteristics before uploading it all to the cloud. Once there, the data processed by the company's artificial intelligence and data analytics tools to spot potential areas for improvement in the chip design.
The company said these cores can also be used to anticipate failures in electronic systems, from airplanes to automobiles, by continuously eyeing the chips inside throughout their life cycle.
The company is led by co-founders Shai Cohen, who serves as chief executive; Evelyn Landman, its chief technology officer; and Roni Ashuri, who leads the company’s growing global operations. They were also among the founders of Mellanox Technologies, the networking hardware firm purchased by Nvidia for $6.9 billion, where they all worked for more than 20 years. The startup's board includes David Perlmutter, who was previously in charge of Intel's processor development.
proteanTecs said its latest funding round, led by the corporate venture division of Koch Industries, would be used to expand its sales and customer-support teams and global operations as well as develop its products. The investment brings its total funding to over $95 million. Other investors include Intel Capital and WVRI Capital, the venture firm founded by Lip-Bu Tan, CEO of Cadence Design Systems, one of the world's largest vendors of software used to create chip blueprints.
The startup said major players in the semiconductor industry are adding its artificial intelligence and data analytics tools to locate problems in chip designs and speed up the production process. According to proteanTecs, its tools can curb the cost of chip development and reduce the time it takes to bring computer chips to market. The company is headquartered in Haifa, Israel.
proteanTecs said its technology can also be used to test and troubleshoot the chip while it is in mass production. Manufacturing chips is one of the most complicated processes in the world, with polished plates of silicon traveling from one tool to another for hundreds to thousands of steps. Any glitch on the production line can result in slight imperfections that may impact the performance. The variations can sometimes cause a complete failure of a die down the road.
Today, tens of billions of transistors can be crammed on a square of silicon. But the inaccurate placement of a single atom could be all it takes to cause a malfunction of the device in the field.
According to proteanTecs, its artificial intelligence and data analytics tools can identify defects and other variations, supplying insights its customers can use to improve the performance and reliability of a chip design before bringing it to market. By uncovering critical issues, its tools can also reduce the time it takes to carry out quality-assurance tests while on the production line.
Another focus is on improving the chip's operating temperature. Managing heat in electronics has become one of the primary challenges to improving performance. As transistors scale to smaller dimensions, more heat is concentrated within the same footprint, sapping energy efficiency and hurting chip performance. At the same time, different parts of the chip can dissipate more power than others, resulting in what are known as "hotspots" around the chip where temperatures soar.
proteanTecs said its technology is able to locate areas of the chip that need to run cooler, and customers can take advantage of these insights to improve the chip design and disperse heat.
According to the company, chips containing its semiconductors cores can report on their health and performance while out in the field. Moreover, it said the technology can anticipate areas that are on the verge of a failure due to defects or environmental conditions. On-chip monitoring gives companies a red flag about potential faults in the chip before they become system-level failures.
proteanTecs said it serves some of the largest electronics vendors in the data center, cloud, artificial intelligence, and communications segments. The startup said its semiconductor cores are used in chips that have made it to mass production based on process nodes smaller than 10-nanometers. It plans to use the funding to further develop its products and lure more customers.
September 11, 2020 at 02:41AM
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Qualcomm to Bring 5G Chips to Budget Smartphones by Early 2021 - Electronic Design
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