Recently, due to an acquisition that occurred three years ago, the relationship between Arm, the most important chip design architecture company in the industry, and Qualcomm, a major customer it has collaborated with for many years, has broken down.

The fuse for the conflict between the two parties originated from a startup company called Nuvia, which Qualcomm acquired in 2021. Nuvia was founded in 2019 by former Apple engineers and is a chip design architecture company. The company's products compete with Arm, focusing on the server and PC markets. It has claimed that its Phoenix CPU cores can provide 50% to 100% higher peak performance than Arm CPU cores under the same power consumption.

According to media reports, Arm is canceling its chip design license agreement with Qualcomm. This license agreement allows Qualcomm to design its own chips based on Arm's standards. However, regardless of whether Arm agrees to license ALA to Nuvia, it cannot stop Qualcomm's determination to develop its own architecture. Just this October, Qualcomm launched its second-generation Oryon architecture.

In fact, in recent years, mobile phone SoC manufacturers have gradually been exploring self-developed architectures.

01

History of Mobile Phone SoC Development

At the beginning of mobile phones, their functions were limited to simple communication and did not require powerful processors. However, as mobile phone functions became richer, the demand for processors gradually increased, and various mobile phone SoCs began to emerge. OMAP is an open multimedia application platform architecture launched by Texas Instruments, using low-power ARM architecture processors suitable for mobile platforms. For example, Nokia's N70, N95, N900, and N9 use TI OMAP 1710, OMAP 2420, OMAP 3430, and OMAP 3630 processors, respectively.

Another major SoC supplier for Nokia phones is Freescale. Freescale is also an American semiconductor manufacturer, originating from Motorola's semiconductor division, which was spun off from Motorola in 2004. Freescale (Motorola) was also an important mobile phone processor supplier during the feature phone era, with Nokia's 5320, N81, E62, and other popular models using Freescale MXC300-30.

Samsung launched its first SoC, the S3C44B0, in 2000, based on the ARM7 architecture and manufactured using a 250nm process with a clock speed of 66MHz. In 2002, it was used in the world's first true smartphone, the Danger Hiptop.

During the feature phone era, TI OMAP and Freescale processors dominated the market. At this time, SoCs mainly integrated basic processing functions such as CPUs and began attempting to integrate baseband and application processors into a single chip.

With the rise of the iPhone and smartphones, the smartphone industry developed rapidly, ushering in the era of intelligent mobile phones for all. The functional requirements of mobile phones far exceeded those of feature phones, demanding more powerful processors and more efficient graphics processing capabilities. As a result, significant changes occurred in the mobile phone SoC market.

New suppliers such as Qualcomm and MediaTek rapidly emerged and launched their own mobile phone SoCs. At the same time, existing suppliers like Texas Instruments and Freescale continued to invest in research and development, intensifying market competition. Even NVIDIA (Tegra series) and Intel launched their own SoC chip products.

In 2011, Apple's A-series processors stood out in the smartphone market. In 2013, the first 64-bit SoC was born, marking a significant breakthrough in mobile phone SoC technology. Additionally, Qualcomm stood out with its excellent performance, strong communication capabilities, and bundled baseband business strategy, while MediaTek was popular among consumers and smartphone manufacturers for its cost-effectiveness, powerful functionality, and integrated solutions.

In recent years, as the competitiveness of Samsung Exynos has declined and the production of Kirin chips has been restricted, the mobile phone SoC market has gradually formed a tripartite confrontation among Qualcomm Snapdragon, MediaTek Dimensity, and Apple A-series processors.

In October 2024, Qualcomm released the new flagship mobile phone SoC Snapdragon 8 Elite, adopting TSMC's second-generation 3nm process, significantly enhancing performance. MediaTek also released its new flagship 5G AI chip, the Dimensity 9400, also using advanced 3nm technology and excelling in AI and gaming performance.

With the continuous development of technologies such as 5G and artificial intelligence, mobile phone SoCs are being applied in an increasingly wide range of scenarios. For example, in applications such as autonomous driving and intelligent assisted vehicles, the combination of edge computing and machine learning significantly improves operational efficiency. At the same time, the enhanced connectivity features in SoCs (including 5G and Wi-Fi 6 technologies) can meet the demands of a hyperconnected world.

02

Mainstream Mobile Phone SoC Manufacturers Currently

Semiconductor SoC manufacturer, Nokia processor driver, self-developed chip