On the evening of December 14, OPPO released two new "technologies" at the Future Science and Technology Conference, which can also be said to be "new products" - self-developed NPU "Mariana X" and mass-produced AR glasses "OPPO Air Glass". Separately, these two products are called "milestone significance", the gold content of the self-developed chip is needless to say, and the launch of mass-produced AR glasses has also allowed OPPO to smoothly walk in front of a number of domestic manufacturers.
In order to let the outside world better understand these two innovative technologies, OPPO specially organized a self-proclaimed "largest ever" post-conference group visit, respectively, invited OPPO chip product senior director Jiang Bo and OPPO XR technical director Xu Yi, in a exchange we can also understand some of the behind-the-scenes stories of these two products in depth.
Mariana X: It's very difficult and meaningful
As OPPO's first self-developed NPU chip, Mariana X's weight at the conference was very heavy, and even to a certain extent, it determined the direction of OPPO's high-end products in the future. According to Jiang Bo, senior director of OPPO chip products, his team has been formed for only about 3 years, and at the same time, in the process of promoting the project, it also faces problems such as "high specification parameters", "very complex technical concept", "insufficient manpower in the initial team", etc. It can successfully launch self-developed NPU chips today, and its progress has exceeded everyone's expectations.
According to the press conference data, the Mariana X chip can achieve a 20-bit HDR effect, which is the highest demand in the industry, and the HDR bit width that can be achieved in the general SoC is only 18 bits, and the goal of 20bit bit width has been set as early as 2019.
On the other hand, in the case of such a high hardware specification, not only does the design and verification of the chip require a lot of time and cost, but the team in software algorithms has to constantly iterate to cooperate with the hardware team. Jiang Bo, senior director of OPPO chip products, mentioned an interesting phenomenon, because the two team members in the whole project are newly formed, which inevitably has some management embarrassments:
If the algorithm and the hardware are not successful, the hardware people say that the algorithm is the problem, the algorithm people say that the hardware is the problem, often this thing can not be made, or you can not really reach the level of Tier1 after you make it.
Of course, from the results, OPPO is successful, Mariana X self-developed NPU has been successfully launched in a short period of time, and the level of all aspects has reached the top of the industry, especially the energy efficiency ratio of 11.6TOPS/W makes Jiang Bo proud.
At the same time, Jiang Bo also concluded that the success of Mariana X is inseparable from the efforts of the team, as well as the support of "talents", Jiang Bo has repeatedly mentioned the important role of talents in the OPPO team, in addition, the sacrifice and belief of the team are also very important. At the same time, the success of Mariana X also has a certain luck component, after interviews we learned that the original 6-nanometer process to create Mariana X was successful in a tape-out, invisibly greatly accelerating the successful development of the chip.
From the perspective of significance, the emergence of Mariana X is not only "to make OPPO high-end machines available with self-developed chips", "OPPO has a more significant voice in the industry", etc., but also to pave the way for OPPO to pave the way for SELF-development and application of chips in the future.
Jiang Bo mentioned that as an NPU chip, Mariana X is now only used in the image computing of mobile phones, but its excellent capabilities in the future will certainly be able to empower more products. At the same time, Mariana X contains many technical attempts, such as breaking the memory wall, etc., which undoubtedly accumulates valuable experience for the future development of other types of chips. On the whole, Mariana X is a milestone of OPPO's true significance on the road of self-developed chips, the most core technical capabilities of OPPO, and the most critical core competitiveness.
OPPO Air Glass: The positioning is clear and the prospects are promising
AR glasses OPPO Air Glass is another focus at the conference, not only because the AR and VR-related technology discussions around the "metaverse" have reached a climax, but also because the AR glasses have been iterated three times inside OPPO, and the expectations of the outside world have long been full.
However, from the final form, OPPO Air Glass is still so "Air" as its name suggests, whether it is function or configuration (equipped with a Qualcomm Snapdragon Wear4100 chip for wearable devices) is not quite like being able to handle heavy scenes, and there is some discrepancy with expectations.
In response to these questions, OPPO XR technical director Xu Yi publicly said that OPPO Air Glass's own positioning is quite clear, it is an "auxiliary reality" accessory product, originally need to connect with the mobile phone to maximize practical value, combined with the ability of the mobile phone to do some relatively simple function implementation.
It is precisely because of its positioning of "mobile phone accessories" that OPPO Air Glass has the following characteristics.
First of all, the configuration requirements are not high, the power consumption requirements are naturally not high, the official said that the combination of charging base can be used for 10 hours, and the battery life is about 3 hours when used alone. And because it is a functional accessory, it will not be worn for a long time, so if it is used intermittently, the battery life performance will be better in the body feeling.
Secondly, as another extension of the mobile phone, its core data comes from the mobile phone itself, which can effectively avoid the problem of privacy claims. As we all know, the XR devices of Microsoft, Google and other companies are struggling to implement because of privacy protection issues, and OPPO can save a lot of trouble in this regard.
Third, as an extension of the mobile phone, OPPO Air Glass can be better promoted at this stage, without being bound by ecological content. But at the same time, Xu Yi also said that the construction ecosystem has always been the focus of OPPO to build IoT products, and oppo will actively open the Air Glass SDK in the future and build an application ecology with the majority of developers.
Summary: Say goodbye to the name of "OPPT", and the scientific and technological capabilities are impressive
This future technology conference may be the most exciting one for OPPO in recent years, because from the actual performance, OPPO has hardly released any "PPT technology", and the two main technology chips and AR glasses can be commercialized in a short period of time and meet with consumers.
Over the past many years, OPPO actively participated in the head exhibition, held technical lectures, and strengthened its own scientific and technological attributes by forming a highly targeted activity such as the "Future Science and Technology Conference", and it has to be said that in these activities OPPO did come up with enough and enough highlights of the technical solutions, but the technology landing speed is relatively slow, but it is always criticized by netizens.
In fact, OPPO holds various technical activities, more or more in the display of technical reserves, can not directly represent the future product planning, after all, the final landing of commercial products is subject to many factors, as well as market changes also make OPPO have to make many adjustments.
In any case, the gold content of OPPO's future technology conference this time is extremely high, and we hope that this can become the norm for OPPO. In the future, OPPO also needs to continue to let more technology land, in today's more complex market environment, technological backwardness is equal to backwardness everywhere.