According to Japan's EE Times, Techanarie recently reported the disassembly analysis results of China's latest smartphones Xiaomi 12T Pro and Vivo X90 Pro/Pro+, and found many highlights of the self-developed chips equipped with these two mobile phones. The report analyzed the difference between Qualcomm Snapdragon's Samsung 4nm and TSMC 4nm versions of the chip, and found that the internal structure of the Xiaomi 12T Pro and vivo X90 Pro phones is exactly the same. This article combines the disassembly report of Huawei Imagination 50 to take a look at how the self-research of domestic mobile phones is developing.
Self-developed battery charging IC
Xiaomi Mi 12T Pro
It is reported that the Xiaomi 12T Pro was released in October 2022, equipped with the Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 chipset, using Samsung Electronics 4nm process; Xiaomi 12S was released in July last year, and the whole series is equipped with a new generation of Snapdragon 8+ Gen1, known as Android's strongest core, using TSMC's 4nm process.
Qualcomm switched from Samsung's 4nm to TSMC's 4nm chip, for what reasons? Techanarie unboxed the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 and Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 chips, and the answer became intuitive. Compared with Samsung's 4nm, TSMC's 4nm chip has become smaller, because the amount of silicon is smaller, the amount of silicon obtained from the chip will increase, thereby reducing costs. Among the phones released in the second half of 2022, other manufacturers are also adopting more models of the Snapdragon 8+ Gen 4 using TSMC's 1nm.
The report notes that in addition to the number of chips, there are many other benefits to reducing silicon size. If it can be reduced in millimeters, the clock and power supply as the backbone will also become shorter, so it is easy to contribute to high speed.
Picture: Xiaomi Mi 12T Pro's appearance and content; Source: Techanarie Report
Looking at the internals of the Xiaomi Mi 12T Pro, the triple-lens camera, daughter board, and antenna board are connected to the motherboard. Major semiconductor chips such as processors are lined up on the motherboard, and cameras take up about half of the area. The camera has an OIS (Optical Image Stabilizer) structure.
Pictured: Xiaomi Mi 12T Pro's motherboard and camera; Source: Techanarie Report
Looking at the motherboard of the Xiaomi Mi 12T Pro, the circuit board is divided by function, each function has a metal shield, the shield is used as electromagnetic waves and heat dissipation. When the shield is removed, it can be seen that the chip is filled with chips on the back of one substrate. The Xiaomi Mi 12T Pro has a substrate with a fully packed back. On the left is the processor side, and on the right is the power system that supports the processor from the back. The main processor is implemented in the form of POP (Packet-to-Packet) with DRAM above and processor below. The processor is the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8+Gen 1. The DRAM is located directly above and the transceivers for memory and communications are located next to it.
Pictured: Xiaomi Mi 12T Pro motherboard; Source: Techanarie Report
The report specifically pointed out that the biggest feature of Xiaomi 12T Pro is the use of Xiaomi's self-developed Surge P1 chip. Xiaomi not only developed and adopted battery charging ICs, but also camera AI processors, etc., while Xiaomi 12T Pro continues to use its own chips, greatly shortening the fast charging time.
vivo X90 Pro/Pro+
The agency also disassembled the X90 Pro released by vivo in December 2022 and accidentally found that the internal structure of the phone is almost identical to that of the Xiaomi Mi 12T Pro. But there is a difference, the vivo X90 Pro has two batteries.
Pictured: vivo X90 Pro motherboard motherboard; Source: Techanarie Report
Looking at the circuit board of the vivo X90 Pro, the substrate is a 2-layer structure separated by spacers, attached to the back of the substrate. In addition to separating functions by dividing the floor, it shields electromagnetic waves and heat like Xiaomi models.
Self-developed unicorn returns
On June 6 last year, Huawei released a new machine Enjoy 50, featuring a large battery and long battery life, and also revealed the mysterious "eight-core chip". In the process of disassembling Huawei Enjoy 50, mainland digital blogger "Digital Langzhong" found that it was equipped with a "mysterious" CPU chip HI6260GFCV131H.
AnTuTu identifies Kirin 710A
Various information revealed that Huawei's Changxiang 50 processor is most likely Kirin 710A, manufactured using SMIC's 14nm process, which appeared in early 2020, and because Huawei was sanctioned, this batch is probably inventory. Combined with Huawei's previously announced chip stacking solution, based on 14nm through 3D stacking and packaging technology, Huawei can manufacture chips with better performance than 14nm and close to 7nm process.
It is worth noting that for the Kirin series, Huawei generally adds a string of characters after the model of the chip silkscreen to record the production date and production location of the chip. And Huawei Enjoy 50 did not write other strings except the chip model, apparently Huawei does not want the outside world to know the production date and location of this chip.
From Techinsights' many disassembly of Huawei mobile phones, it can be found that in addition to the Kirin chip of the core SOC, Huawei's various fine chips - RF chips, logic control chips, power management chips, and WiFi chips have been replaced with HiSilicon self-developed chips.
Chinese mobile phone factories focus on special AI chips in subdivided fields
EE Times pointed out that Chinese manufacturers are not only developing dedicated AI processors on smartphones, but also specialized AI processors in many fields, such as the "HV8107" developed by Hisense for REGZA's high-end TVs.
The report pointed out that vivo V2 is manufactured using TSMC's 6nm process and has a high computing performance of 18TOPS. The open-hole analysis of vivo V1 and V2 chips shows that the development and commercialization of the two chips mark the beginning of vivo semiconductors. The main processor of vivo X90 Pro is MediaTek's new processor "Dimensity 9200", which adopts TSMC 4nm process, three-layer CPU configuration, and adopts Arm's current top CPU core "Cortex-X3".
Finally, the report summarizes the internal structure of the three models, as shown below:
(Proofreader/Zhao Yue)