On February 27, Spreadtrum Communications announced the launch of the 14nm 8-core 64-bit LTE chip platform SC9861G-IA at the 2017 Mobile World Congress (MWC). In addition to the impressive performance of this chip, the biggest highlight of this chip is that it is manufactured by Intel, which has the most advanced manufacturing technology in the world, and it uses Intel's current best 14nm manufacturing process. It can be said that Spreadtrum SC9861G-IA has set a precedent for Intel to manufacture chips for Chinese IC design companies.

Intel became the first chip foundry for Chinese IC design companies

Although TSMC has always held the largest market share in the chip foundry field, Intel has always mastered the most advanced technology in chip manufacturing process.

However, although Intel has the world's top manufacturing technology, except for some small manufacturers or IC design companies like Altera acquired by Intel, Intel rarely does large-scale OEM for other manufacturers.

Huang Renxun, the GPU industry leader of NVIDIA, once said that Intel should use its advanced semiconductor process advantages to manufacture chips for NVIDIA, Qualcomm, Apple and Texas Instruments, rather than tinkering with mobile chips on its own. However, Intel's foundry business is very small, and former Intel spokesman Jon Carvill also said that Intel's current focus is on designing its own products, not its competitors.

Therefore, although Intel has the most advanced semiconductor manufacturing technology, it rarely does chip foundry for fabless manufacturers such as Nvidia, Qualcomm, and Texas Instruments. Even as the PC market becomes a sunset market and the global PC market declines, Intel has excess production capacity, insufficient factory operating rates, and idle production capacity, but Intel still rarely does foundry for other IC design companies.

It can be said that Intel's foundry of mobile phone chips for Spreadtrum has set a precedent for Intel to manufacture chips for Chinese IC design companies.

How does Spreadtrum SC9861G-IA perform?

Judging from the three major components of CPU, GPU and baseband, the technical indicators of SC9861G-IA are still quite good.

As for the CPU, SC9861G-IA integrates an 8-core Intel Airmont architecture processor with a main frequency of 2.0G. Airmont is Intel's 14nm ATOM core architecture, which is basically the same as the previous generation 22nm Silvermont core architecture, except that the process has been improved to reduce the area and power consumption. Compared with ARM, Intel's architecture has high instruction parallelism (including Atom), long pipelines, and also requires higher branch prediction, out-of-order execution circuits, and larger high-speed caches.

The advantage brought by these is that Intel CPU is highly efficient in complex calculations, but this comes at the cost of high energy consumption. Atom has made some compromises in disorder, branch prediction, and parallel pipelines, but its performance is still significantly better than ARM of the same period. In terms of user experience, there is not much difference between the two in normal operations, browsing, and lightweight applications, but in engineering software and complex games (except 3D images), Intel is obviously much better. Therefore, in terms of bare CPU performance, SC9861G-IA is impeccable.

As for GPU, SC9861G-IA integrates Imagination PowerVR GT7200 image processor. Imagination's PowerVR has good performance and performance-power ratio. At least in terms of brand, Imagination's PowerVR series GPU is higher-end than ARM's MALI series GPU and has a better performance-power ratio.

This is also the reason why most of Apple's A series processors use Imagination's PowerVR. For example, the A10 processor of iPhone7 plus uses PowerVR 7XT GT7600 Plus GPU, which has 6 cores. The GT7200 used by Spreadtrum belongs to the same series as GT7600 Plus. Although the numbering makes people feel that GT7200 is lower-end than GT7600 Plus, and the number of cores of GT7200 is only one-third of GT7600 Plus, the performance of GT7200 should not be underestimated - GT7200 is a dual-core concept, but the performance indicators are comparable to ARM Mali's high-end T880 quad-core. In other words, the GPU of SC9861G-IA is at the same level as the Mali-T880MP4 used by Huawei Kirin 950.

In terms of baseband, Spreadtrum has achieved support for five modes (TDD-LTE / FDD-LTE / TD-SCDMA / WCDMA / GSM) full-band LTE Category 7 (CAT 7), bidirectional support for carrier aggregation and TDD+FDD hybrid networking, downlink rate of up to 300Mbps, uplink rate of up to 100Mpbs. Although it does not support CDMA, in the context of China Mobile's dominance of users and China Telecom's CDMA gradually withdrawing from the network, after all operators have generally launched VoLTE, with the support of the 4G full network, CDMA support is no longer a focus.

In addition, because it uses Intel's 14nm manufacturing process, which is equivalent to TSMC's 10nm manufacturing process, SC9861G-IA is the most advanced mobile phone chip on the market. When Intel's 14nm manufacturing process is used, it will bring a better performance-power consumption ratio, and its performance in energy consumption is also worth looking forward to.

How does it compare to Qualcomm Snapdragon 820, Kirin 950, and Kirin 960?

Among the SoCs, Spreadtrum SC9861G-IA's CPU uses the 8-core Airmont, and its GPU integrates the Imagination PowerVR GT7200 image processor. The baseband supports five modes (TDD-LTE / FDD-LTE / TD-SCDMA / WCDMA / GSM) and full-band LTE Category 7, and uses Intel's 14nm manufacturing process.

The CPU of Kirin 950 uses quad-core Cortex A53 and quad-core Cortex A72, the GPU uses Mali T880MP4, the baseband is stagnant and still only supports LE CAT.6, and is manufactured using TSMC's 16nm process technology; the CPU of Kirin 960 is quad-core 1.8G Cortex A53 and quad-core 2.4G Cortex A73, the GPU integrates 8-core Mali G71, and the manufacturing process is still TSMC's 16nm manufacturing process.

The CPU part of Snapdragon 820 adopts quad-core Kryo microstructure, the GPU adopts Adreno 530, integrates its own X12 LTE baseband, supports LTE CAT.12, and is manufactured using Samsung's 14nm process technology.

As for CPU, Spreadtrum SC9861G-IA is not inferior to ARM of the same period in performance due to the layoff of Intel's Airmont architecture. As for GPU, SC9861G-IA is roughly at the same level as Kirin 950, and there is a certain gap compared with Kirin 960 and Qualcomm Snapdragon 820. As for baseband, Spreadtrum SC9861G-IA is not as good as Qualcomm Snapdragon 820. Compared with Kirin 960, Spreadtrum SC9861G-IA also has the disadvantage of not being able to support CDMA network. However, compared with Huawei's previous generation flagship Kirin 950, which only supports LET CAT.6 baseband, Spreadtrum SC9861G-IA's baseband still has advantages.

In terms of manufacturing process, Spreadtrum SC9861G-IA is the best - because it uses Intel's 14nm manufacturing process, and Intel has always mastered the most advanced technology in chip manufacturing process. For example, although both are 14nm manufacturing processes, Samsung's 14nm manufacturing process is quite different from Intel's 14nm manufacturing process. According to industry insiders, due to the water injection of indicators, Samsung's 14nm manufacturing process is equivalent to Intel's 20nm manufacturing process. Although TSMC's 16nm manufacturing process also has water injection, the water content is smaller than Intel's, which is why Samsung's 14nm manufacturing process Apple A9 processor is not as good as TSMC's 16nm manufacturing process.

Therefore, Spreadtrum SC9861G-IA, which adopts Intel's 14nm manufacturing process, has the best manufacturing process. Even if Huawei Kirin 970, Qualcomm Snapdragon 830/835, and Samsung Orion chips using Samsung's 10nm or TSMC's 10nm are launched in the second half of the year, SC9861G-IA is still not inferior to these flagship chips in terms of manufacturing process. The author believes that the performance-power ratio of Spreadtrum SC9861G-IA is worth looking forward to.

At present, although Spreadtrum lags behind Qualcomm in communication technology, its baseband technology level is slightly higher than MTK. In addition, due to Huawei's overall strategic considerations, Huawei HiSilicon Kirin chips are not likely to be sold to other mobile phone manufacturers and provided with technical support. Therefore, if the market position of MediaTek or Qualcomm is to be shaken, Spreadtrum is currently the leading manufacturer in mainland China. Whether Spreadtrum integrates Intel's core or ARM's core, with Tsinghua Unigroup and Intel providing financial and technical support to Spreadtrum, Spreadtrum may have the potential to surpass MTK.

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.