When the global COVID-19 pandemic kept us apart from friends, family, and colleagues at work, we learned how essential communication is to us. We found that it was possible to maintain personal bonds, learn, collaborate, and innovate together linked by digital connections. Now we start to get back together in person, these digital connections show no sign of fading away. If anything, COVID-19 has fundamentally accelerated the digital transformation of every aspect of life.
The digital transformation accelerated by COVID-19 requires the edge devices on our networks to become smarter, better connected, and more mobile. At the edge, we not only value computing power, but also a fast, broad, and reliable data connection. Now that pandemic restrictions are lifting and consumers are looking forwarded to extended mobility, longer battery life is also important. For edge devices, this requires a focus on wireless connection and power efficiency right down to the level of the individual microchip. The specialty technologies of Radio frequency (RF) and ultra-low power are no longer relegated to mature processes but required in advanced semiconductor technologies.
Drivers of these RF and low-power technologies include wearables, smart home applications, smart car, smart cities, industrial applications, and of course 5G telecommunications. The pandemic did not slow down the expansion of 5G deployments, with a recent study finding that 5G is now available in 1,336 cities across 61 countries, with 27 countries adding it in the past year.
Each of these applications have their own opportunities and challenges in terms of expanding communications and technology. As an example, basic automotive wireless connectivity used to support only emergency calls, Bluetooth, and GPS. But as wireless connectivity expands to applications such as smart cars, demand for advanced features like 5G or vehicle-to-everything (V2X) technology has been growing rapidly, driven by government safety regulations, a need for over-the-air (OTA) maintenance by auto equipment manufacturers, and consumer demand for enhanced in-vehicle entertainment. To meet these demands, modern vehicles need more wireless chips with better performance - increasing from 2 chips to 4 or more chips for 4G/5G, V2X, WiFi, Bluetooth and GPS. The data rate requirement may even grow further to support multimedia options like AR and VR.
As cellular, WiFi and Bluetooth circuits migrate from the previous generation into 5G and other new generations of technology, they face big challenges regardless of industry in regards to power consumption, chip size, and integration into digital systems, particularly when it comes to 5G cellular and the coming WiFi7 standard. To address these challenges, a high degree of collaboration between chip designers and silicon technology providers will be a must.
Drawing on our experience in world-leading logic technology, our most advanced RF process has allowed us to achieve 66% better transceiver power efficiency, 217% greater logic density, and 33% transceiver size reduction compared to our previous generation. This technology is positioned squarely for the 5G era. As more components are built into smartphones to meet new application requirements including 5G, more chips will compete for limited space and battery power. Better smartphone user experiences such as fast wireless data rates, longer battery life run time, and global roaming drive a strong need of more advanced semiconductor technologies for RF transceivers. For example, a flagship 5G smartphone will need to incorporate transceivers for both the sub-6 gigahertz and millimeter wave spectrum bands. This will in turn require strong antenna diversity with multiple input-multiple output (MIMO) support to maintain good signal receptions as communication on the edge expands even further.
Elsewhere on the edge, many wearables and home IoT devices such as smart speakers are increasingly incorporating sophisticated artificial intelligence. Smart speakers have evolved from audio-only to multi-dimensional products with display, camera, and sensors. At the same time, vision AI is powering smart cameras with object detection and facial recognition to enable intelligent surveillance. These devices need the computing power to recognize people on sight, or understand natural speech, while drawing minimal power. They call for ultra-low power semiconductor technologies such as TSMC’s N12e that support enhanced computing and increased digital content.
But efficiency at the edge has a lot to do with specialty technologies, which are too important to be left behind in the race to make transistors ever smaller. To match the needs of a population that is smartphone equipped, advanced RF, ultra-low power and ultra-low leakage technologies will be critical to power edge communications, providing stronger computing power, greater energy efficiency and better connectivity to support a 5G-powered future with applications in smart technologies powering cars, factories, cities, and industries.
