Smart Phone SoC design 2023 trends: AI processor is factoring-in

Smartphone SoC is one of the most complex semiconductor chips in the world. Though they are made in billions, it undergoes huge amount of high-quality chip design processes before it is getting mass produced. The chip needs to consume extreme low power while delivering glitch-free performance consistently. Only few have mastered skill of designing such extremely complex silicon brains in a short timeframe to serve the narrow window of massive global market opportunity.
The Performance of smart phone is directly dependent on the power of processor cores inside SOC. The semiconductor technology node at which these chips were manufactured was a key factor, so that more processor cores can be packed in smaller space. It is a selling point for smartphone vendors to mention foundry and the node the chip was made in the product review articles of popular best selling smart phones. With Samsung and TSMC both having a tough time going beyond 3 nm. The processor performance is expected to be defined more by the AI engines inside the chips. In that sense, AI performance of chip is now a multiplying factor. Huawei started the lead in this area followed by Apple, Qualcomm, Mediatek and Samsung, who are racing against each other in AI-ing their mobile phone SoC chips. For these companies it is ser...