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ARM X1 Means Faster Wireless Chips Yearend (First look)

"Impressive" is Linley Gwennap's comment on the new ARM Cortex-X1 design that will appear in top chips late in 2020. The target is "a 30% gain in per-clock performance (IPC)." Nearly all mobile phone processors are built around ARM designs, from Apple to Huawei.

TSMC already is producing millions of 5 nm chips for this year's iPhone and probably for Huawei as well, The advanced process reduces energy, heat, and chip area. That allows ARM to design a larger but more robust chip.

Chips with the X1 design will benchmark 5-25% higher, with an additional boost from the 5 nm process. Speed like this is great marketing and good for gamers, but makes little practical difference for most of what we do. The same is true of 5G itself; very few practical applications can use more than the 75 Mbps common in 4G.

Linley is one of the best chip analysts in the world, someone other experts turn to when they need help. You definitely should subscribe to his free newsletter at https://bit.ly/2XMN9Xb

Apple 5G "Incredible." (Informed opinion)

Skyworks CEO Liam Griffin may already have an Apple 5G phone. (Production is beginning, although the big ramp is late. Some July-August chip orders have been delayed two or three months. )

"The 5G performance is going to be incredible. Consumers are going to line up to get it. It's going to be the biggest incremental performance change that we've seen in cellular." [mmWave 5G will often be a gigabit. However, mmWave will be a minority of locations. Low-band "5G" will be slower than decent 4G. ed]

Skyworks, a $15 billion chipmaker, is the key supplier of the front end radio parts for Apple. Just about everything on the phone except the camera and the display has to work well with the radio front end, so he's been briefed in depth.

Biggest Chip Tool Maker May Produce in Singapore to Evade U.S. China War

Applied Materials maskmaker Gary Dickerson, CEO of Applied Materials, pointed out to investors they might assemble their equipment in Singapore to evade fallout from U.S. sanctions. China is the largest purchaser of chip gear today and has committed over US$100 billion to chipmaking. The world #1 foundry, TSMC, doesn't want to lose orders from Huawei, which buys about $5 billion each year. I'm sure it would prefer that Applied sells it Singapore gear. TSMC needs more flexibility to respond to whatever comes next from the U.S.

Dickerson is confident the U.S. rules will have "minimal impact on our business." His CFO, Dan Durn, added, "We think there's a path forward on this based on our discussions with the ecosystem where it doesn't impact our expectations around the business."

Sensible businessmen from Europe to California are finding ways to protect their businesses from current and possible future U.S. restrictions.

The Big Backbones: Level 3, Orange, AT&T

Telegeography largest backbones 230 Verizon used to claim "half of all Internet messages pass through our network." That's unlikely today, as several carriers have networks as global as what Verizon built after acquiring UUNet. There are many ways to measure size of backbone providers, but this chart from Telegeography is highly suggestive. Level 3/CenturyLink, Orange, and AT&T most frequently offer Direct Internet Access in165 global metros. Cogent, Sprint, Tata, and Deutsche Telekom also are found in more places than Verizon. NTT and BT follow.

Their colleague, Brianna Boudreau, separately looked at the trend in international bandwidth costs. https://blog.telegeography.com/global-bandwidth-prices-are-converging-somewhat

"Across critical global routes, weighted median 10 Gbps and 100 Gbps prices fell an average of 14% and 23% compounded annually since 2016. ... 100 Gbps cost 4.3 times 10 Gbps while delivering 10 times the capacity."

Huge disparities continue. 10 Gbps from Los Angeles to Tokyo (5500 miles) costs ~US$5,000. Los Angeles to Sydney is about 40% further (7500 miles) but costs more than three times as much. I've reported the disparities to Africa are even higher; the cartel-like pricing of transit and backhaul is the largest international factor in high African Internet prices.

Canada Caves to U.S., Blocks Huawei 5G (Inference)

Huawei is the strong favorite of Canadian network builders, for good products and extraordinary support. It displaced the incumbents at Bell Canada years ago and has a joint "Living Lab" in Vancouver with Telus. Huawei had already won the 5G contracts. It has a thousand researchers and spends a quarter billion dollars on Canadian R & D.

It was a government decision. Bell Canada told the Canadian Press, "Huawei has been a reliable and innovative partner in the past and we would consider working with them in 5G if the federal government allows their participation."

I infer that the Telus and Bell decisions to block Huawei from 5G is a political decision made under pressure from the U.S. Canadians are insulted by the many Americans who think Canada is effectively ruled by the U.S., but Canada is deeply dependent.

VZ, T, & TMO Sell 3M $1000+ 5G Samsung Phones Q1

US 5G Q1 2020 All Samsung None of them had a 5G network worth a damn, but buyers of $1,000+ S20 phones are thinking ahead. 93% of 3.4 million 5G phones sold in the first three months were Samsung S20's, the first three bars in the illustration. Other phones were only 7%. T-Mobile is now offering an OnePlus and an LG for $700, so will not continue that dominant. Apple 5G won't be out until late fall.

I'm guessing that Verizon pushed premium buyers to the Samsung 5G and they were willing to spend the extra. One reason my estimate for 5G in 2020 is probably the highest in the world is I believe that many will choose 5G phones as the price gap narrows.

In Europe, 5G phone prices are down to 400 euros. In China, many are under US$300 and falling. The difference between 4G and 5G phones may be as little as $50-75. 90% of Korea is covered with 5G. 50% of China will be covered yearend and most of the U.S. and probably Japan in 2021. In those countries, 5G phones are or soon will be the right choice for all but the poor. Most people keep phones 3-5 years.

China Unicom's Big Edge Claims First in World (Eng Newsbreak)

Greater Bay Area Edge 230 China Unicom is rapidly building an Edge Network covering 71 million people in the Greater Bay Area. It services Guangzhao, Shenzen, Dongguan, and apparently Hong Kong. Unicom is deploying thousands of Edge nodes across the country in 2020, supporting the 230,000 5G cells it will build with China Telecom before the end of the year. No other carrier in the world has revealed an actual network like this, covering more people than live in France or England.

Minister Miao Wei in 2017 set a goal to move the edge closer to over a billion Chinese. (I think I was the first to report that in English,) In 2019, Miao told the telcos to "accelerate 5G." 2020 was originally planned as a testing year, but Unicom also open MEC centers in Beijing, Shanghai, Chongqing, Tianjin, Zhejiang, Fujian, and Jilin.

Huawei, Intel, ZTE, and giant Inspur are providing equipment. Tencent, Country Garden, and Gree are the announced partners and nearly 100 other projects are testing.

Japan: Soon Millions of 5G Users

NTT DOCOMO has set a goal of 2.5 million 5G connections in the next year. It expects 20 million in 2022 or 2023. It has 500 upgraded towers and rapidly will cover more than half the country. 40,000 signed up in the first few weeks.

Capex guidance for the year is 570 billion yen, US$5.35 billion. That's far below the 2017 figure of 643 billion yen, $6 billion. That's consistent with Deutsche Telekom, Verizon, AT&T, and FT/Orange, all building 5G without a significant capex increase.

Softbank and KDDI also have launched some 5G service. Softbank intends to reach 90% of the population in Q1 2022. They are doing competitive builds in the cities but working together in rural areas.

Rakuten, the extremely innovative 4th carrier, intended to turn on 5G in June but is behind schedule.

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