Apple launches 3nm chip for the first time! Is it necessary for us to spend money on such expensive technology?

The digital circle has been very lively recently. Huawei has broken through the process blockade and brought the new Kirin 9000S chip. Apple also launched the A17 chip with a 3nm process for the first time. Qualcomm's annual flagship chip 8Gen3 will also be launched soon.

As mobile phones become more powerful, many people will ask: Do I need such a good chip when I just watch videos, chat and read news? Why do we need more and more advanced chip manufacturing processes? Do I really need to pay for such expensive technology? Today, let's talk about these questions that you care about.

What is chip manufacturing process

When talking about chip manufacturing, we have to mention a famous law: Moore's Law . If you know something about electronic products, you must have heard of this law. The specific content of this law is: the number of transistors that can be accommodated on an integrated circuit doubles approximately every 18 to 24 months. In other words, the performance of the chip doubles every 18 to 24 months, and the price will be half of the previous one.

Image source: https://unsplash.com/ Photographer: Brian Kostiuk

Among them, chip manufacturing process is one of the key factors to accommodate the increase in the number of transistors. The 7nm process or 3nm process we often hear mainly refers to the size of the gate width of the chip transistor. The smaller this number is, the greater the transistor density is. For example, the latest chip can have more than 15 billion transistors.

Of course, many of the 5nm, 4nm or 3nm processes you see now do not actually reach 5nm or 3nm in physical width, but have become a brand name, just like a mobile phone model . However, this does not affect the process and it is still moving forward.

Generally speaking, more advanced processes can bring performance improvements on the one hand . Taking mobile phone chips as an example, they actually consist of many parts such as CPU, GPU, AI chip, ISP, etc. More advanced processes, such as 3nm process, bring more large-scale game rendering, video editing, image processing, AI computing analysis, etc., which require more computing and stronger performance to achieve scenarios.

On the other hand, it will also bring about an improvement in energy efficiency, that is, to achieve the same performance, a more advanced process will theoretically consume less power . Of course, as the process improves, it also means that manufacturing becomes increasingly difficult.

Why do ordinary people also need advanced technology?

Back to the above question, although ordinary people may not need the stronger performance of the latest flagship chip, if the demand for mobile phones is only to surf the Internet, chat, and watch videos, is the performance excessive? In fact, our demand for performance is greater than we think, and perhaps in the foreseeable future, we will not see the real "performance surplus". Software can always bring new functions to eat up performance improvements and create new performance requirements, and these functions have actually subtly influenced our use .

1. Usage Habit Analysis

Almost all mobile phones will learn your application usage habits to recommend corresponding applications. For example, fitness apps are recommended during gym time, and transportation apps are recommended during commuting time. Some mobile phones can even sense QR codes or barcode scanners to display payment codes or automatically scan codes to improve daily convenience.

2Album Classification

The photo album applications of all mobile phones have photo editing functions, as well as geographic location, person, object recognition, and even text recognition in pictures, travel tags for a period of time, and selected moments. All this information is obtained by calculating and marking the geographic location and picture information in the photos locally, which is also achieved through chip computing power.

Even more powerful, you can not only achieve a high degree of freedom in photo editing in the album, but you can even edit 4K 60fps HDR videos directly, adjust the video angle, or long press the picture to quickly cut out the picture, and paste it across apps... These functions also require powerful computing power support.

3. Take photos

The camera function may be one of the greatest conveniences brought by mobile phones. The popularity of smartphones has met the needs of many people for daily photography and video shooting. "Computational photography" has also become one of the applications that consume the most chip computing power. Under the limited camera size of mobile phones, computational photography improves the dynamic range of photos through multi-frame synthesis, reduces overexposure or dead black, and ensures exposure and detail quality including strong backlight or night. The super-resolution algorithm of the telephoto lens brings 100x zoom, and there is also a portrait background blur simulation effect algorithm comparable to professional SLR and micro-single... All of this is brought by real-time chip calculation.

Even if you are not interested in taking photos, you still cannot avoid scanning codes . Smooth code scanning and information recognition also require computing power support. For example, fuzzy recognition and partial magnification of QR code areas, QR code recognition at different angles, and fast response in dark environments...

4. Watch the video

Back to the scene of surfing the Internet and watching videos, our demand for videos has increased a lot without us noticing. Today, we can see 4K HDR videos, which is almost the same as the era 10 years ago when old TV series and old movies in 1080p were rare. Higher resolution, higher frame rate, and computing power support for local HDR display are also supported by chips. Even on a screen the size of a mobile phone, it can bring a more immersive viewing experience. I believe that you who have watched 4K videos will not be willing to go back to the era of high-definition blurry images again.

Look, you think you only need to surf the Internet and watch videos, and you don’t need strong performance. However, computing power is pervasive in the daily use of mobile phones, so even if you don’t have high requirements for the functions of your mobile phone, you still can’t escape the upgrade of mobile phone computing power and chips, and you still can’t escape the upgrade of process technology .

The recent breakthroughs in domestically made chips have also given us hope for developing more advanced chips. Although they cannot yet compare with the most powerful chips, they have already achieved good performance. Perhaps in a few years, advanced chips will no longer be a problem.

Planning and production

Author: Li Bojun, popular science creator

Review丨Yu Yang, Head of Tencent Xuanwu Lab

Editor: Cui Yinghao