On December 14, OPPO held the 2021 Future Technology Conference, showing a number of technical achievements, including the first self-developed chip, and the first smart glasses.
In terms of chips, unlike Xiaomi's self-developed ISP chip (image signal processor), OPPO's self-developed chip starts from NPU (neural network processor) and is manufactured using TSMC's 6nm advanced process.
According to reports, Mariana MariSilicon X has four core breakthroughs: improving the energy efficiency of AI computing, HDR mode, lossless RAW computing, and RGBW Pro mode that maximizes sensor capabilities.
Jiang Bo, Senior Director of OPPO Chip Products
First of all, in terms of AI computing energy efficiency, OPPO's NPU mainly uses the architecture of DSA (Domain Specific Architecture) to achieve "dedicated core", under this architecture, Jiang Bo, senior director of OPPO chip products, introduced that the AI computing power of the chip can reach 18TOPS, compared with the data of Apple chip 15.8TOPS.
However, the improvement of the chip AI computing power is not difficult to some extent, which can be achieved by calculating the area and main frequency of the stack chip, and OPPO's NPU also reduces the energy consumption of the chip, and the power consumption is controlled at 11.6TOPS/W.
As an image chip, OPPO's Mariana MariSilicon X mainly improves image expression from HDR, RAW and other aspects.
According to reports, Mariana MariSilicon X integrates OPPO's self-developed MariLumi image processing unit, which supports up to 20 bits of processing bit width and also supports 20bit Ultra HDR - which is also 4 times the current flagship platform HDR capability.
Taking the dark shooting scene as an example, for the ordinary mobile phone camera, the image difference between the focus on the brightest and the darkest place is obvious, and according to oppo data, this self-developed chip in the dark scene, the brightness contrast between the brightest and the darkest place is only 1 million to 1, almost the level of the human eye.
Secondly, the light information of the physical scene will have a certain loss before forming the shooting screen, and the traditional computational photography is to do AI calculations at the end of the impact link (that is, the YUV domain), but multiple conversions in the link will cause the image data to lose a lot of information and details. OPPO's Mariana MariSilicon X pushes this process to the RAW domain further up, reducing the problem of image original information loss.
MariSilicon X
Finally, the fourth technological breakthrough is that through the dual-path design, the Mariana MariSilicon X chip internally realizes the separation of RGB and W pixels, maximizing the use of each pixel characteristic – which also improves the chip's ability to increase the resolution power and signal-to-noise ratio without increasing the sensor size.
However, this chip will not be available until the first quarter of 2022 before it can be launched in oppo's high-end flagship Find X series.
Core building is a key step for OPPO to improve its technical barriers. OPPO founder and CEO Chen Mingyong also said in his speech, "Mariana MariSilicon X is just a small step for OPPO's self-developed chip, OPPO will continue to invest resources in the future, with a team of thousands of people, to do self-developed chips in a down-to-earth manner." ”
In addition to chips, OPPO also released the first smart glasses OPPO Air Glass this time. At the future technology conference in the previous two years, the smart glasses released by OPPO were only concept products.
OPPO Air Glass
Perhaps continuing the thinking of the mobile phone, the biggest selling point of this glasses is still thin and light - the use of a single-purpose split design, the weight is less than 30 grams, and the thickness of the lenses is only 1.3 mm. It is worth noting that perhaps in order to make this product more ToC, the glasses themselves cannot be worn independently, but need to be used with an spectacle frame.
OPPO Air Glass lenses themselves use the most commonly used diffractive light waveguide technology, and the brightness of the eye is about 1400 nits, monochromatic display.
AT present, AR glasses have not been promoted on a large scale on the C side, mainly because they have not yet found a killer application, which is still a problem in front of OPPO. OPPO Air Glass's functions include intelligent translation, real-time teleprompter, navigation, and AR shop exploration, the latter two of which are in cooperation with Baidu Maps. In terms of interaction mode, it supports touch, voice, gesture and head control.
At the hardware level, this glasses is equipped with the Snapdragon 4100 wearable platform, which supports 10.5 hours of battery life and is expected to go on sale during the Spring Festival next year.