On August 28, the “3rd Dishui Lake China RISC-V Industry Forum” hosted by Chip Origin Co., Ltd. was held at the InterContinental Hotel in Dishui Lake, Shanghai. Nanjing Chuangxin Huilian Technology Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as “Chuangxin Huilian”) introduced its newly launched global first 4G Cat.1 wide-area IoT chip LM600 based on RISC-V architecture.
In the era of the Internet of Everything, data and computing power are the two core elements. Having only computing power without data is not sufficient. Data transmission relies on communication technology, especially for long-distance wireless transmission, which is heavily dependent on cellular wireless technology. According to industry estimates, the distribution of cellular IoT connections is roughly: high-speed 10%, medium-speed 30%, low-speed 60%. Technically, NB-IoT and eMTC are mainly targeted at the low-speed IoT market; for medium-speed network application needs, LTE Cat.1 is currently the mainstream choice; 5G targets high-speed network applications.
Chuangxin Huilian believes that Cat.1 is a technology aimed at the Internet of Everything, capable of helping massive IoT devices connect and aggregate the huge amounts of data generated by these IoT devices. After processing this data with high-performance chips, it also needs to be transmitted through high-speed 5G networks. Therefore, from the beginning, Chuangxin Huilian has been committed to developing 4G Cat.1 chips and 5G chips.
“Although we have now entered the 5G era, the actual network demand has not increased that quickly. Under the trend of the Internet of Everything, 4G still has a huge market space. Chuangxin Huilian’s development of 4G Cat.1 chips aims to achieve ‘ubiquitous network connectivity’. We believe it will have a long-tail market of 20 to 30 years. Especially with the enhancement of 4G Cat.1’s performance and the reduction of cost and power consumption, it will bring more application scenarios (indoor scenarios mainly choose Bluetooth and WiFi), so this is a point we are very optimistic about. Of course, in the area of higher-speed 5G base station chips, Chuangxin Huilian also has corresponding product layouts,” said Zhou Jin, Vice President of Chuangxin Huilian.
According to reports, Chuangxin Huilian was established in 2019 and is a national high-tech enterprise focusing on the R&D, design, and application of integrated circuits in the mobile communication field. With rich experience in chip industrialization, it is committed to becoming a leading domestic communication chip supplier. The company is composed of executives and technical experts from well-known companies at home and abroad, with deep accumulation in the design and commercialization of wireless communication baseband chip products, and rich mass production experience in world mainstream chip processes. The entire process from chip product definition, chip architecture, algorithms, SoC design, to mass production is completely controlled by the company, possessing complete independent intellectual property rights and being fully domestically produced. The company has received investments from several funds and institutions, including China Mobile, Dinghui Capital, Yida Capital, Red Dot Ventures, Nanjing Jucheng, Jiangbei Intelligent Manufacturing, Shanghai Jinpu, and Guozhong Capital.
In terms of products, Chuangxin Huilian has already mass-produced two chips, namely the 5G base station chip Thunder LT600 and the 4G Cat.1 chip Firefly LM600. Among them, Firefly LM600 is the world’s first 4G Cat.1 chip based on RISC-V architecture.
The First RISC-V Architecture 4G Cat.1 Chip
It is reported that Firefly LM600, as the world’s first 4G Cat.1 chip based on RISC-V architecture, has three major advantages: ultra-low power consumption, high integration, and high sensitivity. It integrates baseband, RF, storage, power supply, and eSIM card into one chip, achieving the industry’s first “five-in-one” highest level of integration; in DRX state, the standby current can be as low as 0.9mA, only 50% of that of competing products; the reception sensitivity at 700~900MHz can reach as low as -99.9dBm. It can fully meet the low power consumption, high reliability, small size, and anytime, anywhere wireless networking needs of different sub-segment scenarios such as POS, IPC, PoC, DTU, locators, water and gas meters, and smartwatches.
Zhou Jin told Xinzhi News: “The demand for communication in the era of the Internet of Everything is very high. Many devices cannot run around with wires; most are powered by batteries. Therefore, chip power consumption needs to be very low. The power consumption of our current generation of chips is already at the top level in the industry, and the next generation of chips will have power consumption reduced to half of what it is now. So, I can proudly tell everyone that when we launch our new generation of chips next year, it will have the lowest power consumption in the world among similar products, it will be ‘number one’, not ‘number two’.”
For communication chips, in addition to power consumption, transmission speed is also very important. Although Cat.1 technology is defined as “low-speed application”, its theoretical downlink speed can reach 10Mbps, and the uplink speed can also reach 5Mbps. Therefore, if the transmission speed can be maximized, Cat.1 will not be limited to low-speed applications.
It is reported that Chuangxin Huilian’s Firefly LM600 has achieved a downlink speed of about 8Mbps and an uplink speed of about 4Mbps, making it the first company in the world to bring the transmission speed of Cat.1 chips close to the theoretical limit.
“Such transmission speed is already sufficient for transmitting 1080P video. In terms of applications, if this chip is used in network cameras, there will be no need to pull network cables anymore. In the future, mobile phones and computers can also directly access cloud content through this Cat.1 chip while watching 1080P videos,” Zhou Jin exemplified.
Why Use RISC-V?
Previously, many communication chips were basically based on Arm architecture, so why did Chuangxin Huilian choose RISC-V architecture?
To this question, Zhou Jin stated: “We believe RISC-V is a fresh ‘ingredient’, not a ‘pre-packaged dish’, so we have a lot of freedom to achieve very high integration; the second point is, ‘like driving a car’, usually driving an automatic car is fine, but an automatic car will never win an F1 race. I believe RISC-V is an inevitable trend because no one wants to eat pre-packaged dishes every day, and no one dislikes the thrill of racing.”
“In the PC era, x86 architecture is mainstream; in the smartphone market, Arm architecture is mainstream, which is unquestionable. However, the future will be different. I believe that in the future, with the integration of computing power and networks, computers, mobile phones, and cloud services will not just be a single product; they will fully integrate. In the future, you will find that a mobile phone is actually a terminal for ‘cloud services’, and at that time, RISC-V will have tremendous value.”
Specifically, Firefly LM600 adopts the RISC-V ux600 core from Chip Technology, but Chuangxin Huilian does not simply buy a series of IPs to piece together a chip, but rather commercializes development based on the characteristics of Chip Technology’s core IP and self-develops all the peripheral IPs needed.
“We are not a company that directly stacks IPs to form a core. Because if we do that, we can’t sell it. After self-developing many key IPs, we can achieve the lowest power consumption in the industry. While maintaining low power consumption, we can also enhance performance. Moreover, we are the first in the world to directly integrate SIM card chips into cellular communication chips. Making RISC-V chips is not just for the sake of making them; it is about making this chip truly competitive, which is the contribution to RISC-V,” Zhou Jin further explained: “Successfully using RISC-V to produce chips is already very challenging, but successfully selling them is even harder. Because customers will ask countless questions. We cannot rely on sentiment to sell products; products must have excellent performance, cost-effectiveness, and power consumption to be accepted by customers.
The New Challenge Brought by RISC-V: Code Density Issue
Although choosing RISC-V brings many advantages, it also presents some challenges, such as code density being a significant issue.
For memory-constrained embedded chips (including MCUs and cost-constrained AP-class chips), code density is very important. For programs with the same functionality, if the code density is too large, it may lead to an inability to use due to ROM space limitations. Therefore, in the embedded field, the code density problem is one of the most important indicators.
For example, many embedded cores based on Arm architecture are mixed with 16-bit and 32-bit instructions. The same instruction, if it can be compiled into a 16-bit instruction, will clearly occupy less space than being compiled into a 32-bit instruction; for instance, a multiply-accumulate operation, if the instruction set has a multiply-accumulate instruction, it will only require one instruction to achieve the multiply-accumulate operation; if not, it will require at least two instructions to complete the same operation, assuming the instructions are all 32 bits, one instruction will occupy less space. Because the encoding space of the instruction set is limited, the core of instruction set design is to determine which instructions (including the range of instruction operands) to include in the encoding space.
Compared to Arm architecture cores, the code density problem of RISC-V architecture cores has been criticized. According to tests from relevant engineers online, under the same functionality, a RISC-V core may require 100% of the code, while an Arm Cortex-M core only needs about 60% of the code to achieve the same functionality (Arm using AC6 compilation, RISC-V using gcc compilation).
This is why, in the field of communication baseband chips, very few manufacturers adopt RISC-V. Because the algorithms for communication base stations are too complex, it is challenging to optimize the code to the extreme within a limited time. Chuangxin Huilian is the first company to use RISC-V for communication chips and successfully solve the code density problem.
Zhou Jin stated: “When we started this project three years ago, everyone in the industry laughed at us, saying ‘it’s impossible to produce it’. However, based on our 15 years of experience, we knew we could make it. Because we had previously used some RISC-V cores and various other cores, we have enough experience in this area. So, we started with a 64-bit RISC-V core, and our chip achieved very good integration.”
It is understood that “Firefly LM600” is a product jointly defined and developed by Chuangxin Huilian and China Mobile, and it will be mass-produced this year. Zhou Jin also revealed that next month, Chuangxin Huilian will hold the global launch of complete machine products with China Mobile.
Layout of 5G Chips
During the MWCS23 Shanghai exhibition from June 28 to 30 this year, Chuangxin Huilian launched the world’s first 5G expansion small base station dedicated chip “Thunder 600”, which is an ASIC product that can effectively solve the deep coverage problem of 5G high-frequency signals in urban public hotspot areas.
In the research and development of terminal-side 5G baseband chips, Chuangxin Huilian will continue to use RISC-V architecture based on the successful experience with Firefly LM600, and it is expected to officially launch next year.
“If all goes well, next year we will launch the world’s first 5G chip based on RISC-V. Why us? Because we dared to use RISC-V to make Cat.1 chips and successfully solved the code density problem, we can also do well in 5G,” Zhou Jin said.
Zhou Jin believes that with the arrival of the era of the Internet of Everything, medium and low-speed IoT chips will aggregate the massive data generated by IoT devices, but ultimately still need to be transmitted to the cloud through high-speed 5G networks, and will achieve ultra-low latency characteristics, allowing real-time transmission of cloud-processed data to terminal devices such as VR/AR glasses.
“With Chuangxin Huilian’s development capabilities in RISC-V and baseband chips, along with China Mobile’s ‘cloud-network system’, it is possible to establish a new product form of ‘computing-network integration’. We hope to help customers create glasses that are half the weight of Apple’s Vision Pro (by offloading much of the computing to the cloud), but with similar effects and very low costs; this is what we aim to achieve. We hope to use RISC-V as a driving force to accelerate the readiness of the ‘metaverse’,” Zhou Jin concluded.
Editor: Xinzhi News – Langke Jian
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