Written by | Wen Yehao
Edit | Wu Xianzhi
In 2021, mobile phone manufacturers have begun to make chips again:
Xiaomi released the ISP chip surging C1, vivo released the ISP chip vivo V1, OPPO released the NPU chip MariSilicon X, and the propaganda words of the three chips all pointed to self-research.
Self-developed chips have become another battlefield for domestic mobile phones.
But standing at this point in time in 2021, domestic chips do not seem to be anything new, and stories have become commonplace. In this context, various mobile phone manufacturers have made cores, what kind of medicine is sold in the stomach?
Xiaomi Mi OV re-battle image
Looking at the self-developed chips taken out by Xiaomi OV three this year, they are inseparable from images.
Among them, Xiaomi Surging C1 and vivo V1 are ISP image signal processing chips, and OPPO MariSilicon X is advertised as an NPU, but according to Jiang Bo, senior director of its chip products, MariSilicon X is mainly an image-specific NPU that coordinates with the SoC main platform.
It can be seen that the core of the three-way core is inseparable from the fiery image battlefield at this stage.
As we all know, imaging has always been a point that consumers cannot ignore when choosing mobile phones, so major mobile phone manufacturers have launched a protracted arms race around images. From simply increasing pixels, to increasing the number of cameras, co-branded image factories, binocular zoom, telescopic lenses, etc., the specification war seems to have never stopped.
However, the mobile phone is not a camera after all, leaving limited space for imaging hardware, and it is difficult to have the format and lens quality of the camera no matter how strong the specifications are, and no matter how the manufacturers roll in, the mobile phone image will always be restricted by the physical boundary.
Wang Xi, research manager at IDC China, once said that due to the existence of hardware constraints, the image algorithms of various mobile phone manufacturers are increasingly important. In this context, computational imaging has become the focus of the struggle between various manufacturers.
In simple terms, the computed image is the image taken through the post-processing of the mobile phone algorithm to raise the perception. Whether it is Xiaomi, Vivo independent of SoC ISP, or OPPO strong image attribute of NPU, the core of power lies in this.
However, usually, ISPs and NPUs are integrated on the SoC, rather than independently, so it is difficult for mobile phone manufacturers to adjust based on their own needs, and it is naturally impossible to open a gap in the field of computing imaging.
However, with the improvement of the homogenization of the mobile phone market and the bottleneck of hardware, the manufacturers have impacted the high-end market, and naturally cannot be satisfied with the image processing capabilities that the integrated SoC can provide, and self-research has become the most likely way to improve image quality and take its own characteristics.
Taking MariSilicon X as an example, the original data is transferred from CMOS to MariSilicon X for processing, and then handed over to SoC after the processing is completed, MariSilicon X as a transit station, which can process image data and image quality based on OPPO's own needs, rather than falling into a homogeneous spiral nest that relies only on SoC.
Therefore, the xiaomi OV core chooses the image first, not because of pseudo demand, but because of the business. After all, for some users, the persuasiveness of their own samples in PPT is better than that of competitors, which is far more obvious than the simple difference in hardware specifications.
With Xiaomi, vivo, and OPPO entering the game one after another, the three parties must be short-term in the field of computing imaging, and on the other hand, the marketing dark war has also started.
The virtual and real behind "self-research"
Whether it is Xiaomi or OV, they all show their muscles before and after the debut of their own chips. This in itself is not wrong, but as a systematic project, mobile phone imaging involves CMOS, lenses, lens modules and other aspects, and self-developed cores do not have the ability to kill with one blow.
Therefore, even if you are on a seemingly correct path, it is always difficult to ignore the marketing implications of such a large effort to show self-developed chips.
Why is the dark side of Xiaomi OV's self-developed chip a marketing war?
First of all, the difficulty of its self-developed chip is still shallow. According to an industry insider, isaP chips and SoC chips are not manufactured in the same order of magnitude.
Taking Huawei as an example, it has been involved in the research and development of mobile phone chips as early as 2004, but it is more than ten years since the final outflow, of which k3v2 and Kirin 910 have been frustrated one after another, no one thinks that core manufacturing is good business, and Huawei has been ridiculed repeatedly.
Although Huawei later took off the hat of "Jazz does not play games" with the strength of the Kirin 980, for xiaomi OV, which has a relatively weak research and development gene, it is no longer the era of Huawei going to the sea in 2004, and it is difficult to get involved in SoC.
On the other hand, SoC chips involve multiple segments, many core technical barriers, and extreme dependence on the upstream and downstream industry chain cooperation, Xiaomi OV, as a new player, does not have the ability to be in place in one step.
Compared with SoCs, it is relatively easy to design ISPs and NPUs. A chip industry practitioner said: "Now many so-called chip design companies are taking the road of buying IP, developing and designing based on external IP, and then handing it over to cooperative manufacturers to manufacture and test, and some even dig a team to do it." ”
Based on this, for now, the path of Xiaomi OV's self-developed chip seems to be far less difficult than imagined.
In addition, can players with self-developed chips really afford to develop the word self-development?
Taking Xiaomi Surging C1 as an example, some netizens dug deep into its kernel code and found that it was similar to the chip code of a certain enterprise.
Time back to February 2017, coinciding with the release of Xiaomi Pinecone Surging S1. Although Xiaomi advertised it as a self-developed SoC, some netizens have successively pulled out the similarity between the surging S1 and the LTE Cat6 SDR SoC chip of the core is close to 96%, which is likely to come for the OEM core, and the so-called self-development seems to be only a word of publicity.
Compared with Xiaomi's "surging "surging ", OV self-developed chip publicity is slightly low-key, Vivo executive vice president Hu Baishan has publicly stated that Vivo's current chip strategy mainly focuses on the conversion of algorithms to IP, chip design and tape-outs are handed over to partners to do.
According to the "Wenxin Voice" report, the vivo V1 cooperation object may not be Samsung Electronics, but Taiwan's panel driver IC manufacturer Lian Yong.
Therefore, the so-called self-research of Xiaomi and Vivo seems to be immature enough to cover the chip design link, and this is only an ISP chip with relatively low research and development difficulties. Although it is not called pseudo-self-research, it is not a milestone leap from 0 to 1.
In contrast, the NPU chip taken out by OPPO is said to have two IP cores, the image calculation unit and the AI calculation unit, which are self-developed, and the PPT specification parameters are also more eye-catching, which seems to be much more reliable.
But despite this, this image-specific NPU for high-end models, independent of SoC, does not have obvious advantages compared with the ISPs integrated by Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 and MediaTek Tianji 9000, except for home tuning.
In addition, some digital chip design engineers pointed out that this NPU for the terminal does not have a particularly large technical obstacle, and only adapts to specific CMOS and sensors, which is less versatile.
At this stage, the tripartite core may still be in the testing stage, and its marketing gimmicks may be far stronger than the practical significance. But in any case, the real money and silver invested by each family is real, and the self-developed core does have its value. Therefore, there is nothing wrong with showing muscles, after all, no one wants to wear the hat of the assembly factory anymore, and has no intention of becoming the former Hanxin No. 1 or the current Association.
Who did you take off your hat and touch?
At this stage, the marketing dark war set off by Xiaomi OV seems to have little effect.
To this end, Photon Planet looked at the evaluation of the self-developed chips of mobile phone manufacturers by users on various platforms. In addition to the obvious atmosphere group, the feedback mainly focused on two factions, one is encouragement and the other is sarcastic. The central thesis of the sarcastics is mostly focused on "why not make SoCs".
It can be seen that players who play self-developed cards cannot come up with a convincing SoC, and it is difficult to fully reach the user's heart. After all, in the era of aesthetic fatigue, everyone is not lacking in sensationalism and emotion.
Can't move the user, then xiaomi OV moved who? Let's not answer this question first, but let's take a look at how the various people who make the core in the next scene go.
As another batch of core makers, although the Internet factory has prospered its business branches, it cannot overcome technical barriers to enter the C-end market, and the chips created are mainly dedicated chips in the 2B direction.
The requirements for technical barriers and industrial chain construction are no less than those of general-purpose chips such as CPUs and GPUs, and their difficulties have been described above.
"Building a core is not to throw money on the line, even if the short-term can raise money, but the path of the final establishment is still not clear, to make up for the technical generation gap needs a long time of accumulation, hard to get on the car either by capital transfusion, or by the shore to G field, or go to the sea to Africa to test," a hard technology entrepreneur told photon planet.
It can be seen that the self-developed SoC gully is still there, and the xiaomi OV three seem to have no reason for anyone to go down.
Xiaomi's "self-developed" SoC chip S1 is only applied on the Xiaomi Mi 5C, and the expected S2 has not been seen for a long time, the reason is high cost, high research and development, but the return is minimal.
Hu Baishan, executive vice president and chief operating officer of Vivo, also said at the release of its self-developed chip strategy: "SoC investment is very large and it is difficult to bring differentiated advantages, and qualcomm, Samsung and other companies in the industry are already doing it, and vivo will not intervene for the time being." ”
So far, only OPPO, which proposed the "Mariana Plan", is still struggling to support volkswagen's domestic SoC vision, in addition to digging people from MediaTek, HiSilicon, and Spreadtrum, it is still recruiting engineers who are familiar with SoC, and the general core road has not stopped.
But from the perspective of efficiency, not to mention the SoC that is still in the air, it is slightly difficult to recover the cost of self-developed image chips that each company focuses on this year, after all, the high-end models equipped with self-developed chips have never been the main force of Xiaomi OV shipments, and it cannot be proved that consumers buy related products and are paying for their own self-developed chips.
Therefore, xiaomi OV, which tries to take off the hat of the assembly plant by relying on its self-developed chip, cannot convince anyone and cannot move anyone.
That being said, as long as it is used to go to the road of self-developed chips, it always deserves respect. Although in the current environment, players who cannot develop and produce themselves do not want to become the focus of attention.
This reminds me of the words of a friend who is committed to public welfare at all costs: "When someone tells you what is a person who does not serve himself and is destroyed by heaven, someone will tell you what is the home country and the world." So I think that even if it is difficult, it should be done. ”
Yes, there are some things in this world that no one may be able to touch, but someone must do it.