In the 1960s, a small transistor was born, and the silicon base entered the vision of carbon-based organisms, quietly changing the world with its own operating logic.
In later developments, the global semiconductor industry caused by silicon underwent two shifts, from the United States to Japan in the 1970s and to South Korea and Taiwan in the 1980s.
Nowadays, when the world's semiconductor industry chain is mature, Chinese mainland has ushered in its own opportunities in the international political situation, and tens of thousands of semiconductor companies that have lined up overnight have encountered a fanatical capital market, which seems to bring the dawn of hope for the rise of China's chip industry.
But what needs to be constantly vigilant is that the chip industry has high barriers and technical difficulties, but with a passion and capital pursuit, it can only end in a dismal end. Under the tide, it is more necessary to see the situation clearly, and chip companies that can truly solve the application landing as the industry light can faster walk out of a chip road that belongs to China.
In order to explore the direction, Leifeng Network specially launched the "2021 Best AI Digital Intelligence Annual List".
The "2021 Best AI Digital Intelligence Annual List", formerly known as the "AI Best Nugget Annual List", was officially launched in 2017 and is the first ai-powered business project list selection activity in China.
In this selection, Leifeng Network from AI + intelligent driving, enterprise services, future cities, finance, medical care, chips and other more than 10 industries more than 1,000 registered companies, after four months of research, finally selected 91 digital intelligence pilot enterprises, and their digital intelligence benchmarking projects, to commend.
In this selection of "chips" list, we selected 5 outstanding companies from different chip fields. YITU Technology, Tsinghua Unigroup Zhanrui, Pingtou Brother, Silver Bull Microelectronics, and Quanzhi Technology have made positive contributions to China's chip industry in the fields of cloud, 5G+AI, RISC-V commercial, intelligent sensors, and AI vision, respectively.
Best Cloud Chip Award: YITU Technology
Founded in 2012, YITU Technology, a company engaged in innovative research on artificial intelligence, in the practice of promoting the landing of artificial intelligence technology and products, combined artificial intelligence algorithms with computing power in the early days of its establishment, and released the world's first cloud visual reasoning chip "Quest" in 2019 after years of research and development.
At present, the AI computing power products based on YITU's self-developed chips have also achieved large-scale commercial landing and application, with ultra-low power consumption and super computing power, helping artificial intelligence algorithms to be widely used in various scenarios, and reducing the investment and operation and maintenance costs in the field of user IT infrastructure.
In the past two years, YITU's self-developed artificial intelligence chip has been applied to the construction of Shanghai's "one network unified management" system, and the high-density artificial intelligence computing power has greatly released the possibility of large-scale landing of AI computing power in urban management, empowering Shanghai's modern urban governance.
In 2021, the "Yitu Intelligent Vehicle" equipped with yitu artificial intelligence chip was put on the post in the Pudong New Area Construction and Communications Commission, doing "3D inspection" for the road network once a day, from the passenger flow detection of Lujiazui Square to the 2 mm width crack on the road surface, which can be accurately perceived. It is reported that yitu's next-generation chip products have also been successfully tape-out.
Best 5G+AI Chip Award: Unigroup Zhanrui
Tsinghua Unigroup Zhanrui is a leading enterprise of integrated circuit design enterprises in China. With ecology as the core strategy, hold high the two technical banners of 5G and AI, and take value, future and service as the three directions to serve the intelligence of individuals and society.
As one of the few enterprises in the world that fully grasps the full-scenario communication technologies such as 2G/3G/4G/5G, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, TV FM, satellite communication, etc., TSINGHUA Unigroup zhanrui has scarce large-scale chip integration and set capabilities. Products include mobile communications central processing unit, baseband chip, AI chip, RF front-end chip, RF chip and other communication, computing and control chips.
In terms of 5G, UNIGroup has three 5G mobile platforms, The Tanggula T770, T760 and T740, which are designed for multimedia and gaming, battery life and performance, 5G high-speed connectivity and AI performance. Among them, the T740 5G set has sold more than one million sets, and the number of commercial terminal products has exceeded 100.
In addition, 5G modules and CPEs have also achieved mass production and delivery, and Zhanrui 5G solutions have also been commercially implemented in smart medical, logistics, electric power, manufacturing, mining and other fields.
Tsinghua Unigroup Zhanrui has won the National Science and Technology Progress Award five times, including 1 special prize and 2 first prizes, and has applied for more than 7,000 patents, with core patents such as 3G/4G/5G, Doka Multi-standby, and Multi-mode.
Best RISC-V Business Award: Flathead Brother
In 2018, Alibaba acquired ZhongtianWei and integrated with the self-developed chip business of Damo Academy to establish an independent chip company to promote the layout of cloud-integrated chips.
As a part of Alibaba, Pingtou Brother is not only responsible for research and development, but also undertakes a series of tasks such as industrialization promotion and ecological construction, making chips a strategic business of Alibaba. As one of the earliest chip companies with RISC-V architecture, Pingtou Brother has broken through the performance and ecological bottlenecks of this architecture.
In July 2019, Pingtou Brother released the industry's highest performance RISC-V processor Gentetsu 910, which expanded more than 50 instructions on the basis of the RISC-V architecture, reducing the chip cost by half, making it suitable for 5G base stations, artificial intelligence acceleration, automatic driving and other scenarios.
Since then, Pingtou Brother has released a swordless SOC platform and a variety of Gentetsu RISC-V processors to meet the needs of low-power and high-performance computing scenarios. The Flathead Ge Gentetsu series has become the most influential and market share processor product in the domestic RISC-V field, with an annual growth of 50% of the number of licenses.
At present, Pingtou Brother has a rich RISC-V processor product family from low power consumption, low cost to medium and high performance, which are widely used in MCU, Bluetooth, wireless, voice, vision and other application scenarios.
Best Smart Sensor Product Award: Silver Bull Microelectronics
Founded in August 2020, Silver Bull Microelectronics is a high-tech enterprise focusing on 3D and AI chip, module and product design.
In November 2020, Silver Bull Microelectronics completed the acquisition of Israel Inuitive, the world's leading 3D vision chip design company, and successfully incorporated a high-end chip company integrating 3D vision depth engine technology, artificial intelligence and SLAM technology into its subsidiary, aiming to help the industrial upgrading of the Chinese market and lead the global 3D industry transformation.
Not long ago, Silver Bull Microelectronics released the C158 module for the robot industry 3D machine vision module, which is based on the Inuitive NU4000 chip design, tuned for the Chinese market, is a set of 3D depth perception, high-precision attitude tracking, SLAM (real-time positioning and mapping engine), AI artificial intelligence computing power in one, with a single chip to achieve multiple chip functions, can provide the industry with real-time 3D perception, computing to system integration solutions.
Silver Bull's 3D perception chips and modules are widely used in robotics, drones, meta-universes, assisted driving, 3D face recognition, 3D interaction, medical and medical beauty, industrial testing, architectural BIM, AIoT and other industries.
Best AI Vision Chip Award: Quanzhi Technology
Founded in 2007, Quanzhi Technology is a manufacturer of excellent intelligent application processor SoC, high-performance analog devices and wireless interconnection chip.
Quanzhi Technology provides market-outstanding competitive system solutions and intimate services in ultra-high-definition video codec, high-performance CPU/GPU/AI multi-core integration, high integration of advanced processes, ultra-low power consumption, full-stack integration platform, etc., and the business system covers intelligent hardware, consumer electronics, high-definition media, automotive electronics, intelligent video, interconnection, analog products and other fields.
In the field of visual chips, Quanzhi Technology's V833 intelligent vision special processor, as a high-performance, high-integration and high-stability industrial-grade chip, can have humanoid detection, face detection and recognition functions at the same time in multi-channel image encoding and decoding, and maintain high response speed and detection accuracy; at the same time, to meet the industry's intelligent battery cameras and smart home (such as doorbells, door locks) low-power demand, can greatly reduce the customer's development threshold, cycle and cost.
Quanzhi Technology V833 can provide efficient and reliable computing power for image video and visual analysis, and is widely used in intelligent network cameras, intelligent driving recorders, intelligent attendance access control, visual processing modules and other product forms.