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UNISOC Announces T7520 SoC for 5G Smartphones

posted by martyb on Wednesday March 04 2020, @11:19PM   Printer-friendly
from the unisoc---what-you-have-after-the-dryer-finishes dept.
Mobile Hardware

takyon writes:

UNISOC Unveils T7520 SoC for 5G Smartphones: Octa-Core, 6nm EUV

UNISOC, formerly Spreadtrum Semiconductor, has announced its first mobile application processor with an integrated 5G modem. Dubbed the T7520, the SoC also happens to be one of the world's first chips to be made using TSMC's 6 nm process technology, which uses extreme ultraviolet lithography (EUVL) for several layers.

The UNISOC T7520 application processor packs four high-performance Arm Cortex-A76 cores, four energy-efficient Arm Cortex-A55 cores, as well as an Arm Mali-G57 GPU with a display engine that supports multiple screens with a 4K resolution and HDR10+. Furthermore, the SoC integrates a new NPU that is said to offer a 50% higher TOPS-per-Watt rate than the company's previous-generation NPU. In addition, the chip features a four-core ISP that supports up to 100 MP sensors and multi-camera processing capability. Finally, the AP also features the company's latest Secure Element processor that supports 'most of crypto algorithms' and can handle compute-intensive security scenarios, such as encrypted video calls.

Unisoc processors have been used in cheaper smartphones.

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 04 2020, @11:26PM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 04 2020, @11:26PM (#966746)

    Doesn't matter how many cores it has, if I can't use it to hand all my data over to our corporate overlord.

  • (Score: 1) by petecox on Thursday March 05 2020, @12:34AM

    by petecox (3228) on Thursday March 05 2020, @12:34AM (#966765)

    I've previously only seen Speedtrum used in bargain bin carrier-locked prepaid handsets.

  • (Score: 2) by Snotnose on Thursday March 05 2020, @01:34AM (2 children)

    by Snotnose (1623) on Thursday March 05 2020, @01:34AM (#966778)

    5G is mainly in the RF chip, which isn't usually part of the SOC (mixing analog and digital on a single chip creates heartburn).

    The analog chip will decode the 5G signal and feed digital data to the SOC. Likewise, the SOC will feed digital data to the analog chip.

    Point is, the SOC doesn't know, nor care, if it's dealing with a 1200 baud modem, 4G, LTE, or 5G. The only difference is the data rate.

    Disclaimer: I retired 10 years ago, wouldn't surprise me if things have changed since then. Back then you had a baseband chip (what's called a SOC today), an RF chip, and a Power Management IC (pmic). Stick a display, keypad, and battery to those 3 and you had a phone.

    --
    Relationship status: Available for curbside pickup.

    • (Score: 4, Informative) by takyon on Thursday March 05 2020, @01:49AM (1 child)

      by takyon (881) <{takyon} {at} {soylentnews.org}> on Thursday March 05 2020, @01:49AM (#966787) Journal

      From TFS:

      UNISOC, formerly Spreadtrum Semiconductor, has announced its first mobile application processor with an integrated 5G modem.

      There was some fuss about Qualcomm's Snapdragon 865 not integrating a 5G modem directly into the SoC:

      Qualcomm Announces Snapdragon 865 and 765(G): 5G For All in 2020, All The Details [anandtech.com]

      We’ll start off with the whole story on the Snapdragon 865, and in particular one surprising aspect what we didn’t expect from the SoC this year; its lack of an integrated modem, and what the story behind the design choice.

      No Modem Integration This Year?

      The one aspect of the new Snapdragon 865 that overshadows all other new characteristics is the fact that Qualcomm designed it without an integrated modem. Qualcomm already announced this change yesterday during the day 1 of the event, without much context into the matter. It’s been fun seeing the reactions of various media and commenters theorising as to why this would be. It’s also one of the very first aspects that we wanted to have clarified by Qualcomm:

      The choice to not integrate the modem this year was a highly practical one, stemming from the complexity of 5G and the platform. There are actually more nuances to this though, and one thing that Qualcomm wants to make clear, is that this isn’t just a matter of the company's technical ability to actually create a chip with an integrated 5G modem; it’s keen to point out the Snapdragon 765, also announced today, which does exactly this.

      Instead, the technical difficulty of the 5G modem platform is actually on the platform and device side itself. As this will be the very first wide-range 5G implementation of a lot of OEM vendors who use Qualcomm’s chips, there will be a large number of designs who will be integrating 5G for the first time. The problem is that this requires a quite large development increase for the vendors creating the devices: they need to make sure their RF systems, antenna designs, as well as certifications of the systems are in full order. The nature of the 5G design complexity means that this process in a device’s development cycle this time around is actually quite a lot more complicated and more time-consuming than what we’ve seen from past 4G phones.

      Qualcomm’s solution to the problem, in order to facilitate the vendor’s device development cycle, is to separate the modem from the rest of the application processor, at least for this generation. The X55 modem has had a lead time to market, being available earlier than the Snapdragon 865 SoC by several months. OEM vendors thus would have been able to already start developing their 2020 handset designs on the X55+S855 platform, focusing on getting the RF subsystems right, and then once the S865 becomes available, it would be a rather simple integration of the new AP without having to do much changes to the connectivity components of the new device design.

      --
      [SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]

      • (Score: 2) by driverless on Thursday March 05 2020, @10:46AM

        by driverless (4770) on Thursday March 05 2020, @10:46AM (#966913)

        For people who have never heard of either UNISOC or Spreadtrum, which I assume is almost everyone, it's a Chinese fabless mobile phone chipset vendor.

  • (Score: 2) by Mojibake Tengu on Thursday March 05 2020, @10:10AM

    by Mojibake Tengu (8598) on Thursday March 05 2020, @10:10AM (#966909) Journal

    Secure Element processor that supports ‘most of crypto algorithms’

    That's quite a strong statement. We all know, that Japan, Russia, China and some other states with good math academic background have their own crypto algorithms, often legally binding for devices purposed for government or military operations. Yet we still see only funny AES crypto algorithmic primitives as instructions in consumer grade processors. With such a dedicated coprocessor for cryptography, it would be interesting if divergence from AES is really possible in common hardware.
    Encrypted 4K video is quite a good metric for crypto performance, certainly suitable for robotics signalling.

    But, if the design of said Secure Element is related to http://secelements.com/ [secelements.com] than I am in very doubts, for those guys cannot even secure their website... How can they expect anyone trust their processor design?

    --
    The edge of 太玄 cannot be defined, for it is beyond every aspect of design
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