Is Xiaomi's Pinecone processor aimed at rivals or Qualcomm and MediaTek?

On February 28, Xiaomi released its own Pinecone processor, the Surge S1. In November 2014, Datang Telecom, a well-known backbone enterprise in the domestic information industry, announced that the SDR1860 platform technology developed and owned by its wholly-owned subsidiary Leadcore Technology was licensed to Beijing Pinecone Electronics Co., Ltd., a joint venture between Xiaomi and Leadcore, for RMB 103 million. In other words, Xiaomi had already begun to develop its own chips many years ago.

The emergence of Pinecone will bring the end of Xiaomi and MediaTek

Recently, there is news that Xiaomi has given up on MediaTek's X30 chip. Xiaomi and MediaTek have always had a good relationship. Although they "broke up" once in 2014, the official soon came out to refute the rumor. Now that Xiaomi has released its own Pinecone processor, the news that Xiaomi and MediaTek are "breaking up" is not groundless.

  In the short term, Pinecone processors will definitely not be installed in Xiaomi's flagship models. For this, you can refer to the development of Huawei's HiSilicon Kirin processors. Of course, Xiaomi also has the Redmi series of mobile phones, which are ultra-cost-effective thousand-yuan phones. Relevant sources said that Xiaomi's own Pinecone processor, although not reaching the flagship level, has reached the mid-to-high-end level, so it should be no problem to use it in Redmi. Moreover, Redmi's shipments account for a large part of Xiaomi's mobile phones, so there is definitely no problem in supporting a Pinecone processor production line.

Why do we have to develop our own processors? In fact, the conclusion is obvious, for example, Huawei. Xiaomi phones used to be far better than Huawei. Huawei's self-developed chips in recent years have brought changes in the brand that are obvious to all. In order to achieve differentiation and optimization of mobile phones, we have to take this path. I won't say much about differentiation, the key point is optimization. Samsung processors don't have many highlights when used on Meizu, but they can be optimized on Samsung to be comparable to Snapdragon processors. Self-developed chips will definitely play a vital role in the optimization of future mobile phones.

Since they design their own processors, they will definitely want to move towards the high-end, but it is very difficult to move towards the high-end. The most direct example is MediaTek. After so long of SoC development, MediaTek has been hovering in the middle. If you want to move towards the high-end, you must solve a series of problems such as design and supply chain. Take the 10nm process as an example. If the sales volume does not reach 50 million, it will be difficult to make a profit. Imagine how many Xiaomi shipped in 2016. These chips are all from Qualcomm and MediaTek, two mature CPU chip manufacturers. If they use Pinecone processors, will anyone buy them?

  The Surge S1 processor uses an octa-core 64-bit architecture, four A53 cores with a main frequency of 2.2GHz and four A53 cores with a main frequency of 1.4GHz, a Mali-T860 quad-core graphics processor, and uses a 28nm HPC process technology, which is mid-range. The paper parameters are quite good, but the 28nm process will definitely have a less than ideal control of power consumption. In addition, it uses a public version architecture and does not support full network access, which also exposes that Xiaomi's Pinecone processor is still immature in terms of process technology and architecture.

Although the high cost-performance ratio has made Xiaomi a success, it has also become a stumbling block on the road of Xiaomi's development and evolution. In the past few years, Xiaomi has gone from "no design is the best design" to the current "one side of art, one side of life", but it has never been able to get rid of the label of "loser phone"; on the other hand, Huawei's current mobile phones have been going smoothly under the leadership of its own chip "Kirin". Although the Kirin chip does not have an outstanding advantage in performance, Huawei is very "popular" because of its own chip, whether in terms of tuning or patent technology.

Improve image and enhance industry status

Meizu and Xiaomi are now sworn enemies. Who could have imagined that Huang Zhang and Lei Jun were good friends? In 2010, Lei Jun approached Huang Zhang as an angel investor, and this period was also the "honeymoon period" for the two. At this time, Lei Jun stayed in Huang Zhang's office every day, even during meals. He constantly discussed the user experience, production process, and sales process of mobile phones with Huang Zhang, and even Huang Zhang gave Lei Jun internal information for reference. For Lei Jun, as an angel investor, Lei Jun must want to make investments, while Huang Zhang is a technology control. The two can be said to be completely different people. Lei Jun wanted to enter as an angel investor and wanted to be the chairman, while Huang Zhang wanted to invite Lei Jun to be the CEO. High salary and dividends were negotiable, but shares were not negotiable. Meizu was Huang Zhang's Meizu.

Then in 2011, Lei Jun released Xiaomi's first mobile phone - Xiaomi 1. The launch of Xiaomi 1 surprised many people and brought Xiaomi a lot of fans. The opening of the online mode allowed Xiaomi to surpass Meizu almost overnight. The battle between Xiaomi and Meizu mobile phones started from then on and has continued to this day. Basically from that time on, Meizu seemed to have been suppressed by Xiaomi, and this situation has not changed until now.

  In fact, anyone who has used a Meizu phone knows that in terms of appearance and craftsmanship, Meizu is not inferior to Xiaomi at all, and even does better than Xiaomi. However, Meizu's biggest failure is betting on MediaTek. MediaTek processors are really speechless. Compared with Qualcomm's powerful independent architecture and GPU, MediaTek's public version architecture and old GPU seem to be stretched.

There is no doubt that Meizu and MediaTek are old partners, but MediaTek will never achieve great success by relying on Meizu alone. Although Meizu is small in size, its price is relatively expensive compared to Redmi, so MediaTek earns more. When Meizu Pro 6 was released, it had a monopoly on Helio X25 for three months, but poor sales also made MediaTek suffer. Three months later, Xiaomi released Redmi Pro, with the same processor starting at 1,499 yuan, which directly pushed MediaTek's highest-end processor to the thousand-yuan machine. Redmi sold very well, and MediaTek could only make small profits but quick turnover. "Counting money with tears" is the most appropriate description of MediaTek at this time.

Meizu and MediaTek have had a bumpy road, especially Meizu, which had to fight against the huge fees from Qualcomm's patents on one hand, and catch up with its competitors on the other. The strong pressure forced the "good friend" to cheat. On December 30, 2016, Meizu compromised with Qualcomm and said it would release a new Qualcomm phone by the end of this year. It seems that MediaTek is definitely the one who got hurt. MediaTek, which did not have an advantage to begin with, lost Meizu and it was no doubt worse. It was really a "great shame" to see its "lover" throwing himself into the arms of someone else and still not getting angry.

Meizu has now reached a settlement with Qualcomm. Although the settlement between Meizu and Qualcomm is a helpless move, domestic mobile phones have always been unable to escape Qualcomm, a patent troll, and we have to admit that Qualcomm does have a deep accumulation of communication technology. After the settlement between Meizu and Qualcomm, Meizu will definitely release models equipped with Snapdragon processors, which will undoubtedly narrow the gap with Xiaomi. Of course, as Xiaomi's self-developed chips begin to show their power, the situation will tilt towards Xiaomi, which will undoubtedly be of great significance to Xiaomi's widening the gap with its competitors in the long run.

Xiaomi's departure from MediaTek makes matters worse

MediaTek is the full name of MediaTek.Inc. Before the advent of smartphones, not many people may have heard of MediaTek, but I believe more people will have heard of MTK. For a long time, MTK, a Taiwanese chip manufacturer, has been focusing on low-end mobile phone products, from the previous "copycat phones" to today's low-end Android phones. Over time, people have formed the impression that MTK is low-end.

MediaTek's nanny-like mobile phone solution has led to the rapid development of domestic big brands, and also enabled MediaTek to accumulate strong technology and capital. However, sooner or later, you have to fill the hole you dug yourself. Just like Xiaomi can't get rid of the hat of "diaosi phone", MediaTek has not been able to get rid of the title of "copycat" so far.

"Loud volume and marquee" are typical representatives of the MTK platform. At that time, the software was not .APP or .APK but .mrp. In addition to the Symbian platform, there was also the domestic MTK platform. It can be seen that MediaTek had an extraordinary influence in the era of feature phones.

The main reason is that MediaTek provides a "turnkey" authorization method to copycat manufacturers, and MediaTek itself undertakes 80%-90% of the research and development work. There was once a saying that manufacturers using MediaTek solutions only need three people, one to contact MediaTek, one to be responsible for production, and one to be responsible for collecting money. Although it is a bit exaggerated, it also illustrates a scenario at the time: regardless of whether there is R&D strength or not, as long as there is courage and money, a new mobile phone brand will enter the mobile phone market, even if there is no brand. At that time, its main features were: first, low cost, which was the best choice for the fiercely competitive mobile phone market; second, the chip had music and video functions, meeting the needs of MP3 and MP4; third, the chip had high integration, more functions and good technical performance, which catered to the needs of the market.

MediaTek's old rival is naturally Qualcomm. Before MediaTek X20, all MediaTek SoCs did not support CDMA. "Once you enter the telecom industry, it's like entering a deep sea. From then on, your phone will cost a hundred yuan more." This is why telecom phones used to be more expensive than ordinary phones. There are only two manufacturers in the world that have CDMA patents, namely Qualcomm and VMware. Later, MediaTek also obtained authorization from VMware to realize the full network baseband chip.

In fact, apart from the baseband problem of telecommunications, there is indeed a big gap between MediaTek and Qualcomm, which can be seen from the performance of the two chip products. First of all, let’s talk about the architecture. Although both companies have obtained architecture authorization from ARM, the so-called "nine sons of a dragon are different" and the final products are also different. After Qualcomm CPU obtained the authorization, it carried out targeted transformation and design to independently design the architecture, while MediaTek only used the ARM public version architecture and then made minor repairs. Of course, this also further proves that MediaTek does not have the ability to independently design the architecture. In addition to the CPU, the GPU is also a crucial part of the performance of mobile phones. When the top-end version of Xiaomi Note was launched, people found that they could still play games smoothly when the CPU turned off two or three large cores, and the GPU played an indispensable role. There is a big gap between the public version GPU used by MediaTek and Qualcomm's GPU.

In fact, many people in the industry have said that MediaTek's processors simply use existing technology or give it a facelift: ARM needs to spend a lot of laboratory resources and technical personnel to research a new technology, and then they apply for a patent, which is unlikely to cover everything. MediaTek studies their technology and then gives it a facelift to make it its own technology, so the cost is very low.

Samsung's CPU performance was not eye-catching at the beginning, but now Exynos performs better than MediaTek. In fact, it is not that Exynos processors are much better than MediaTek, but mainly because Samsung Exynos processors are basically used in Samsung's own mobile phones. After all, the processor design, packaging, etc. are all done by Samsung itself. "It's convenient to use your own things." Samsung is comfortable enough to use its own processors, and with Samsung's long-term experience in smartphone optimization, it is naturally handy.

Compared with Samsung, MediaTek only has the advantage of baseband. MediaTek has obtained CDMA authorization from VIA Telecom and can make full-network mobile phone chips, but Samsung has not yet obtained relevant authorization.

Samsung has a great advantage over MediaTek. As a pillar enterprise in South Korea, Samsung is supported by the government or has favorable policies. Samsung occupies an important position in the mobile phone industry, has its own production line, and has relatively advanced technology. Although CDMA technology is lacking, many foreign operators are already beginning to phase out CDMA networks. In addition, with the advent of the 5G era, I believe that the bottleneck in this regard will gradually be broken.

MediaTek, which was not very competitive to begin with, has been further derailed by Xiaomi. Even if MediaTek gave up its high-end dream, it would be hard for it to win back Xiaomi, a major customer. After all, Xiaomi used MediaTek processors on Redmi. If even Redmi doesn't use MediaTek now, Meizu will probably be the only MediaTek left. And if it is just for self-use, it would be fine. But if Pinecone processors can really gain a foothold in the market and be sold to other manufacturers one day, it will undoubtedly pose a great threat to MediaTek.

Aiming at Qualcomm to enhance its own voice

As we all know, Xiaomi and many domestic manufacturers are working hard to expand overseas markets, especially the Indian market. Everyone knows that India is a "cheating" nation. I believe many people have seen videos about Indian motorcycles and trains. Although Indians are good at "cheating", they have not been able to make India's economy "cheating". India's economy is relatively backward, so the mobile phone penetration rate is not as good as that of China today. The Indian smartphone market, which has just started, is not strictly controlled in terms of patent technology, supervision is unfavorable, and the performance of local smartphones cannot satisfy consumers, which gives many domestic manufacturers the opportunity to exploit loopholes. Since it is a loophole, it is inevitable to be sued.

In 2014, Xiaomi phones were banned from sale in the Indian market, and the final result showed that processors equipped with Snapdragon chips could be sold, while phones equipped with MediaTek processors were banned. So far, the only Xiaomi phones that can be sold in the Indian market are those equipped with Snapdragon processors. Even though Xiaomi released more than a dozen phones last year, phones equipped with MediaTek processors are still difficult to sell abroad. As for why Xiaomi phones equipped with Snapdragon processors can be sold, it depends on the relationship between Xiaomi and Qualcomm. On December 20, 2011, Lei Jun announced that he had obtained $90 million in financing. Among a series of investment institutions, the name "Qualcomm" appeared. Of course, Xiaomi must have a relationship with Qualcomm and has obtained some patent licenses from Qualcomm. Abandoning MediaTek and only relying on Qualcomm is undoubtedly of great significance to Xiaomi's entry into overseas markets.

Xiaomi phones are basically powered by Qualcomm processors. The two seem to be in harmony on the surface, but they are closely related in private. Xiaomi did have a very good relationship with Qualcomm in the early days of its establishment. In addition to Qualcomm's investment, Wang Xiang, then Qualcomm's global vice president and president of Greater China, personally supported Xiaomi at the Xiaomi 2 launch conference, which shows that Xiaomi and Qualcomm have a special relationship. Since 2013, the relationship between Xiaomi and Qualcomm seems to have broken down. Xiaomi 3 does not use the Snapdragon 800 processor for all series. In addition to the insufficient production capacity of Snapdragon 800, there may be other reasons.

After the Xiaomi Pinecone processor project was launched, Wang Xiang, former global senior vice president and president of Greater China at Qualcomm, joined Xiaomi as senior vice president in 2015, responsible for strategic cooperation and important partnerships. It can be seen that Xiaomi has made a ruthless effort for the Pinecone processor. Imagine that for a president-level person, it is a piece of cake to poach a few people from Qualcomm.

The release of Xiaomi Pinecone processor will also have a great impact on Qualcomm. In addition to the possibility of "borrowing" technology from Qualcomm, it will definitely directly affect the shipment volume of Qualcomm's chips for Xiaomi mobile phones. With Pinecone, it can further increase bargaining power. If Xiaomi 5c can achieve good shipment volume, Xiaomi will win the right to speak in the mid-range SoC market with Qualcomm and MediaTek. In the long run, this approach will also help Xiaomi continue to reduce the cost of the production line of mid- and low-end models, better grasp the shipment rhythm, which is also good for consumers.

The domestic CPU industry still has a long way to go. Just as Xiaomi said, "a chip company starts with 1 billion and produces results in ten years." The CPU and even the entire semiconductor industry basically follow the law of "nine deaths and one life." Making good chips can not only improve the competitiveness of mobile phone products, but also symbolize the strength of the brand. Of course, how to solve the problems of independent design and industrial chain to improve competitiveness is a problem that independent chips have to face. How Xiaomi Pinecone chips perform can only be answered by waiting for the market and time.

As a winner of Toutiao's Qingyun Plan and Baijiahao's Bai+ Plan, the 2019 Baidu Digital Author of the Year, the Baijiahao's Most Popular Author in the Technology Field, the 2019 Sogou Technology and Culture Author, and the 2021 Baijiahao Quarterly Influential Creator, he has won many awards, including the 2013 Sohu Best Industry Media Person, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Beijing Third Place, the 2015 Guangmang Experience Award, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Finals Third Place, and the 2018 Baidu Dynamic Annual Powerful Celebrity.