How domestic Wi-Fi chips can recover the "lost decade"

Since Wi-Fi 5 was launched in 2013, the gap between domestic Wi-Fi chips and industry leaders has widened due to technical difficulties and difficulties in importing. Now 10 years have passed, when Qualcomm, Broadcom, MediaTek and other major manufacturers have announced the launch of Wi-Fi 7, most domestic manufacturers are still staying in Wi-Fi 4, although a number of Wi-Fi 6 chip startups have emerged, with many products. on the way of development.

"The past cannot be remonstrated, and the comers can still be chased." Is the gap between the domestic Wi-Fi chip industry and overseas leading technologies widening? Can the lost "ten years" be recovered?

A decade of silence after Wi-Fi 5

Just as Rome wasn't built in a day, neither was the drop formed suddenly.

From the perspective of the development history of Wi-Fi, it has gone through 25 years. From the earliest first-generation 802.11 standard in 1997 to the second-generation IEEE 802.11b standard in 1999, Wi-Fi officially entered the public eye. Around 2002, the third-generation 802.11g/a standard was launched; after that, the 802.11n standard has been used since 2007, which is commonly known as Wi-Fi4. In 2013, Wi-Fi5 came out, and in 2019, Wi-Fi6 officially debuted.

During this period, wireless technology has developed rapidly. However, Qualcomm, Broadcom, and Intel have firmly occupied a dominant position through first-mover advantages such as acquisitions or integrations, and they have built the country from 2001 to 2005. MediaTek, Realtek, etc. came first after fierce struggle from 2007 to 2010, and their advantages have continued to this day.

On the other hand, in China, although Huawei HiSilicon took the lead, Espressif, Broadcom Integrated, etc. seized the opportunity in the field of Wi-Fi4 IoT chips and made a strong debut, but unfortunately, when the fifth-generation Wi-Fi5 standard was released, due to Various reasons missed the opportunity to expand the "victory results", resulting in "absence" in this market.

When Wi-Fi history turned to Wi-Fi6/Wi-Fi6E, it ushered in a period of rapid growth this year. Not only is the scale of the consumer-level market rising, but it will also become the main force of enterprise-level network access equipment. According to Gartner, the scale of Wi-Fi 6 enterprise and small and medium business users will increase from $250 million in 2019 to $5.22 billion in 2023, with a CAGR of 114%. The Wi-Fi Alliance also pointed out that more than 350 million Wi-Fi 6E devices will enter the market in 2022.

Jiwei Consulting is also optimistic that the proportion of global Wi-Fi6/Wi-Fi6E terminal shipments will exceed 60% in 2022. After countless heroes compete, will the gap between mainland Wi-Fi6 enterprises and overseas "continue" history or achieve "reversal"?

Data source: Jiwei Consulting

Judgments need to be based on different situations from the past. As mentioned above, domestic Wi-Fi chip manufacturers have been surging in recent years, not only veterans are in the main battle, but under the domestic semiconductor boom, there are also dozens of Wi-Fi upstarts scrambled in.

In this regard, Wan Yujing, general manager of CEVA China, explained that, compared with the first echelon, although HiSilicon has been embargoed, its technical accumulation is relatively deep. Therefore, it cannot be concluded that the gap is widening; compared with the second echelon, there were fewer domestic players before, but in recent years, there have been many domestic mass-produced manufacturers of Wi-Fi 4 chips. In recent years, a large number of Wi-Fi start-up teams have emerged in China, and many of them are quite powerful in terms of technical background, experience accumulation, and operational services. Overall, the gap should be narrowing.

Li Ming believes that after years of accumulation and changes in the industrial chain environment, from an overall perspective, the gap between domestic Wi-Fi 6 and mainstream manufacturers will gradually narrow. The technical gap is mainly reflected in IP maturity, Wi-Fi compatibility, and performance optimization experience in application scenarios.

In this regard, Zhao Yi, research director of Jiwei Consulting, also mentioned that the gap between domestic chip manufacturers is reflected in algorithms and RF front-end. It is the iteration speed of Wi-Fi that has accelerated.

However, Yang Yi, deputy general manager of Ruichengxin Microelectronics, maintained a different view. He said that Wi-Fi chips have always been the backbone of the semiconductor field, with high difficulty and high investment, especially in high-performance applications such as routers. International oligopolistic enterprises monopolize, with very few mainland enterprises and manufacturers participating.

"At this point in time, the level of Wi-Fi technical indicators mass-produced by mainland manufacturers is close to that of international tier1 manufacturers' Wi-Fi5 technology. With the increasing demand for data throughput in the market, the Wi-Fi version will be updated soon. Up to Wi-Fi7, the technical threshold is getting higher and higher, which will widen the gap between mainland enterprises and overseas enterprises in a certain period of time in the future." Yang Yi said cautiously.

The main constraints of RF IP

Around the competition for Wi-Fi6, we have to mention the technical challenges of overweight.

Wi-Fi6 chips include SoC chips and RF front-end FEMs. SoC is a high-integration digital-analog hybrid CMOS chip, and FEM belongs to a special radio frequency process, which is quite different.

Regarding the design challenges of Wi-Fi6 chips, Zhong Lin, founder of Sanwuwei, once pointed out that the development difficulties of Wi-Fi6 chips are concentrated in the underlying protocol/communication protocol + algorithm. Compared with Wi-Fi4 and Wi-Fi5, Wi-Fi6 chips The underlying protocol/communication protocol and algorithm are more complex, and more senior teams need to be recruited, more understanding of the protocol, and more testing to improve the design level. Among them, the router SoC involves a number of new technology challenges, the research and development is the most difficult, and the RF front-end is also a difficult bone.

Yang Yi focused on the analysis from the radio frequency level. With the update and iteration of the Wi-Fi version, the requirements for radio frequency are getting higher and higher, especially for the performance of CMOS power amplifiers and the phase noise performance of frequency synthesizers.

An industry veteran Xu Hao (pseudonym) further analyzed that the development of Wi-Fi6 chips is even comparable to that of CPU and GPU, because Wi-Fi requires a team with many years of digital, analog, RF design experience and algorithm development. In addition to overcoming these difficulties in developing ICs, including the underlying drivers, application interfaces, and support for multiple operating systems, all must be fully dealt with, and it will still be a long march for domestic manufacturers.

In particular, it should be pointed out that, as the development of any chip is based on IP, Wi-Fi6 is no exception. Taking Wi-Fi IP as an example, it is mainly divided into baseband and radio frequency IP. After several baptisms in the market, the baseband IP is mainly supplied by CEVA. The RF IP manufacturer Catena has been acquired by NXP and is no longer licensed. Imagination also provided RF and baseband IP for Wi-Fi5, but this business was Nordic mergers and acquisitions, currently only a few companies such as Cybertek in the United States can provide Wi-Fi5 RF IP, and new companies such as China's Ruicheng Microelectronics and Taiwan's Sirius-Wireless provide Wi-Fi6 RF IP.

In this case, as pointed out by Li Ming, most of the paths chosen by domestic Wi-Fi chip manufacturers are to purchase the baseband IP of CEVA, while the RF IP is mainly solved through self-research, through the integration of MCU, Memory, power management and other designs , in order to quickly introduce chips into end customers.

However, if we take the road of self-research in the research and development of Wi-Fi6 chips, it can be described as "a long road and a long road". Yang Yi mentioned that Wi-Fi6 is much more difficult to develop than the previous generation due to its high density, high throughput and multi-antenna characteristics. Moreover, the Wi-Fi7 standard is about to be introduced, and some indicators of the integration of Wi-Fi7 must be considered. This puts more stringent requirements on RF. It takes a long time for existing Wi-Fi6 chip manufacturers to get Wi-Fi6 RF, and the investment will cost tens of millions or even hundreds of millions, which is economically less cost-effective than purchasing IP.

"First, there are not many RF IPs, and there are too few authorized channels; second, many companies think that RF may have opportunities through reverse engineering, but in fact, this road is difficult to continue." Xu Hao revealed.

It can be said that RF IP has become an obvious constraint. Aiming at this demand, China's Ruicheng Microelectronics and Taiwan's Sirius-Wireless have successively launched Wi-Fi6 RF IP with high performance, low power consumption and high reliability. "As an IP manufacturer, I hope to help Wi-Fi6 manufacturers reduce the difficulty of development and further accelerate product launch." Yang Yi emphasized.

According to industry sources, the RF IP quotations from European and American manufacturers are more than US$2.5 million. Xu Hao suggested that domestic IC design companies should focus on front-end efforts, speed up the time-to-market by adopting IP, and make profits in the mass production and shipment of Wi-Fi chips as soon as possible, which will be more positive for the development of the company and the industry.

Although RF IP seems to have been "broken", Wi-Fi chip manufacturers may still have concerns. Zhong Lin analyzed that SoC chips have more considerations on radio frequency. Radio frequency is strongly related to technology and process. Different processes and processes have a greater impact on RF indicators, while digital baseband is less affected by technology and process. Digital circuits The simulation accuracy is also high, but the RF simulation is difficult to guarantee. IP manufacturers can provide RF IP references for Wi-Fi6 chip manufacturers, but it still takes time to integrate.

Wan Yujing also expressed her opinion on this. On the one hand, domestic manufacturers have market demand for RF IP, but unlike digital IP, RF IP is strongly related to technology. Considering the continuous evolution of technology, RF IP manufacturers are required to provide IP+ ability to serve. On the other hand, if Wi-Fi chip manufacturers rely on third-party IP, they will be more passive in the continuous iteration of products. In the long run, the leading Wi-Fi chip manufacturers may develop their own radio frequency IP, which is technically It will be more controllable and competitive.

From the perspective of SoC chip manufacturers, Li Ming believes that cooperation with RF IP manufacturers may be suitable for some Wi-Fi specifications. For high-performance and complex specifications, deep integration of baseband and RF is required to introduce architecture design. Wi-Fi6 chip solution optimized for both process and process.

Divide troops to attack the leftover is king

It can be said that the technical breakthrough is only the first step of the Long March, and the "attack" of domestic Wi-Fi6 chip manufacturers still needs to be considered in the long run.

In terms of progress, Li Ming said that it is expected that the Wi-Fi Alliance will launch the certification of the Wi-Fi7 standard at the end of 2023, which is about 4.5 years from the release of the Wi-Fi6 certification in September 2019. Major manufacturers will release new products before the official launch of the new standard. The fastest domestic company is Huawei HiSilicon, and its contribution to the Wi-Fi7 standard is the largest among all participants, but it cannot produce Wi-Fi due to sanctions. Fi7 chip.

Therefore, Li Ming further added that at present, other domestic Wi-Fi chip manufacturers should focus on following the Wi-Fi6/6E standard, aiming to launch mass-produced chips, and some chip specifications should integrate some functions of the Wi-Fi7 standard.

It should be pointed out that Wi-Fi chips have different application fields, involving smartphones, routers, Internet of Things, etc. Different sub-applications have different specifications for Wi-Fi6 chips, and Wi-Fi chips have different combinations. , such as pure connection chips, connection chips plus multimedia applications, and a variety of wireless communication combos, all have great development space, and the difficulty of product platform and customer introduction is also very different, and it is necessary to divide and conquer.

From the point of view of the "players", due to the high difficulty of developing Wi-Fi6 chips for routers, only Huawei HiSilicon, Sichang Communication, Langli Semiconductor, Zunpai, and Sutong are making efforts. In addition, the mainland manufacturers of Wi-Fi6 end-side chips mainly include Zhanrui, Sutong, Espressif, ASR, Rockchip, Broadcom Integration, Lianshengde, Southern Silicon Valley, etc. The companies focusing on RF FEM include Kangxi, Xinxin, etc. Baxter, Sanwuwei, etc., coupled with the emerging upstarts, the firepower of domestic manufacturers is waiting to be fully opened.

Regarding the choice, Li Ming's point of view is that the current Wi-Fi6 chip shipments are mainly concentrated in mobile phones, laptops, routers and gateways, and streaming media applications (such as smart TVs, etc.). The performance requirements of the chip are high, and the platform cooperation is strongly bound. It has always been occupied by Qualcomm, Broadcom, MediaTek and Intel, which is relatively difficult.

"The veterans and recruits in the mainland are all developing Wi-Fi6 chips, because the Wi-Fi4 IoT market has been occupied by mainland manufacturers. It is expected that the same situation will continue for Wi-Fi6 IoT. In the face of competition from American manufacturers, especially Taiwanese manufacturers, it will greatly test the technology research and development and customer development capabilities of start-up companies, but I believe that in the next few years, breakthroughs will be made from easy to difficult." Li Ming said optimistically.

For future catch-up, Yang Yi believes that Huawei HiSilicon is one of the few mainland chip companies that masters high-performance Wi-Fi technology. At present, a number of Wi-Fi chip start-ups have emerged in mainland China, and they have both technology and capital. In the foreseeable future, mainland chip companies can catch up in the research and development of advanced Wi-Fi chips. It is expected to be three to five years. , and also need leading companies to carry the banner.

"In the past, there was only one company that stood out, which was not necessarily a good thing for the prosperity of the industry and the security of the supply chain. Now, with a large number of chip companies entering this track, it can be said that a hundred companies are competing, although there will inevitably be some bubbles. , but it will generally help improve the overall level of the industry." Wan Yujing emphasized, "In the future, a hundred flowers may still bloom, but after competition and big waves, there will be integration in the future. Wi-Fi chips are an extremely complex For chips, domestic manufacturers need to continue to iterate, and in the end, only by sinking in, continuing to evolve and iterate step by step, and stick to it, can we achieve that the leftover is king.”