【2021-2022 Topic】Anmou Technology Liangquan: Master the core technology and promote the development of China's core

【Editor's Note】In 2021, the semiconductor industry is still moving forward in challenges. Factors such as the post-epidemic era, production capacity tension, and geopolitics still profoundly affect the global semiconductor industry chain and ecology. How will the global semiconductor industry develop in 2022? Where will new challenges come from? In order to clarify these problems, Jiwei Network specially launched the [2021-2022 Special Topic], focusing on hot topics, hot technologies and applications, major events and other multi-dimensional combing, providing reference mirrors for upstream and downstream enterprises.

Guest of this issue: Liang Quan, Vice President of Marketing and Ecology of Anmou Technology

Self-research business and ecological construction have achieved remarkable results

In the past year, Anmou Technology has continued to base itself on local R&D and innovation, and has made remarkable achievements in self-development business and ecological construction.

According to Liang Quan, in terms of business, Anmou Technology has achieved the landing of the "two-wheel drive" strategy and the release of the "core power" self-developed business brand. On the one hand, Anmou Technology continues to promote the localization and ecological development of Arm CPU architecture; on the other hand, it further focuses on creating XPU products and diversified ecosystems with independent architecture.

"Our full line of products, from CPUs to XPUs, whether contracted customers or mass-produced products, has achieved rapid growth." Liang Quan said.

Up to now, the cumulative chip shipments of Domestic customers of Anmou Technology have exceeded 25 billion pieces, and the shipments of local customers have increased by more than 250 times in the past 10 years. "Core Power" XPU products have achieved nearly 100 local customer IP authorization, and customers have shipped more than 100 million chips based on "Core Power" XPU products.

In terms of ecology, Anmou Technology and leading enterprises and organizations in the industry initiated the establishment of the "Intelligent Computing Industry Technology Innovation Consortium" (ONIA) to jointly build the world's first open source neural network processor instruction set architecture (NPU ISA), and jointly build and share the NPU ecosystem of "China's first release, global open source". ONIA includes representative forces of China's integrated circuit industry, learning, research and other aspects, and the total number of member units has exceeded 100. At the 2021 Wuzhen World Internet Conference, the NPU ISA won the "World Internet Leading Scientific and Technological Achievements" award.

Liang Quan said that in the era of intelligent computing, with the rapid development of AI, 5G, IoT and other technologies, CPU alone can no longer meet the massive and diversified computing needs, and the importance of computing units such as NPU, ISP, VPU, GPU and so on is becoming increasingly prominent; at the same time, in the complex international industrial environment, mastering self-developed core technologies has become the top priority of China's semiconductor industry development. To this end, Anmou Technology conforms to the development trend of the intelligent computing industry, releases new strategies, builds a new XPU ecosystem, and empowers the development of China's semiconductor industry.

Domestic substitution is still the main theme of the industry

In the past year, the semiconductor industry is still facing a grim situation. When talking about the development and changes experienced by the industry in 2021, Liang Quan said that the traditional industrial cooperation model has gradually been broken, and more and more manufacturers have begun to develop their own chips, such as mobile phones, servers, automobiles, system software manufacturers, etc. The problem of "lack of cores" has accelerated this trend.

Taking the automobile industry as an example, under the trend of electrification and intelligence, automakers have also begun to actively explore independent research and development. On the one hand, it optimizes the technical performance and enhances its own differentiated advantages; on the other hand, it reduces the dependence on external chips. In order to better cope with this change, according to Liang Quan, Anmou Technology has established an automotive and infrastructure business group to create an overall solution based on in-depth communication with automakers and its own rich technical experience to meet the differentiated needs of automakers for future chips.

In Liang Quan's view, domestic substitution is still the main theme of the development of the domestic semiconductor industry, to this end, Anmou Technology launched a self-developed business brand "Core Power", to create XPU products and diversified ecology based on independent architecture to meet the needs of the Chinese industry for self-developed chips and local ecology.

At present, the problem of lack of core is definitely a hot spot at present, but the leading enterprises in the industry need to look at it more long-term. Liang Quan said that as a chip design IP development and service provider, Anmou Technology has always believed that "technological innovation" is the main theme of enterprise development, only continuous research and development investment, mastering core technology, polishing advantageous products, in order to respond more flexibly to changes, in the rapidly changing market to always maintain enough competitiveness.

"Anmou Technology integrates self-developed IP to achieve 'two-wheel drive', and begins to provide diversified, intelligent and customized overall solutions for the needs of manufacturers in different fields such as intelligent vehicles, infrastructure, intelligent Internet of Things, and mobile terminals, including tools, software, and design services." On the one hand, this is a further strategy of Anmou Technology for the existing chip market, and it will continue to explore with domestic chip partners to find opportunities for 'lane change overtaking' in the industry. Liang Quan added.

Multiple measures to promote the development of China's core

Nowadays, domestic chips are facing great development opportunities, as China's largest chip design IP development and service provider, how does Anmou Technology view the development of China's core?

Liang Quan said that in promoting the development of China's core, we should do a good job in three aspects:

The first is to adhere to long-term doctrine. The return cycle of investment in the semiconductor industry is relatively long, which requires capital and enterprises to have a longer-term strategic layout vision, and cannot only pursue short-term investment returns. Anmou Technology has been empowering China's local semiconductor industry for nearly 20 years, and has its own rich technical precipitation, and will increase investment in research and development in the future and polish its own XPU technology. At the same time, Anmou Technology has set up a start-up incubation plan, which not only provides free "ZhouYi" NPU authorization, but also cooperates with Anchuang Accelerator to incubate 10 start-ups based on open source architecture and XPU in the new year, providing them with technical support, industrial docking, venues, funds and other help to promote the innovative development of the intelligent computing ecosystem.

The second is to adhere to localization and internationalization. The semiconductor industry is currently the most thoroughly globalized industry, the development of China's core on the one hand to independent innovation, master the core technology, in order to resist the risks brought by the complex international situation; on the other hand, it must also be in line with international standards, must not be closed doors, which is also the reason why Anmou Technology launched the "two-wheel drive" strategy. Through "two-wheel drive", the CPU continues to be compatible with the international standard Arm architecture, and also through the self-developed customizable XPU architecture, it helps China's chip industry to change lanes and overtake, creating core value for the local semiconductor ecosystem.

The third is to establish a global standard centered on China. With the development of national strength, China's chip industry will undoubtedly become the world's largest semiconductor industry, and it must also have the ambition and determination to establish global standards. Different from the past initiation of foreign and then introduction of domestic applications, ONIA has created the world's first open source neural network processor instruction set architecture (NPU ISA), building an intelligent computing industry ecology initiated by China's local industry and based on the world's leading technology, so that more intelligent chips can achieve ecological unification in applications faster and accelerate the speed of research and development.

Build a high-performance platform to meet the demand for computing power

Looking forward to this year, Liang Quan said that the industry will still provide technical support around emerging market segments such as 5G, AI, IoT, new energy vehicles and cloud computing.

In Liang Quan's view, in the era of intelligence, massive data flow has driven the demand for computing power, and it is necessary to have a high computing power platform to cope with the performance and industrial upgrading needs.

"In the post-Moore era, in the face of explosive growth of massive data streams, Anmou Technology deeply realizes that the traditional CPU or GPU-centered computing architecture can no longer meet the needs of high-density and high-performance computing power, and the industry calls for intelligent and diversified computing architectures that focus on scenarios." Liang Quan said.

Taking autonomous driving as an example, the product characteristics of automobiles represented by performance, cost and safety in the past will be replaced by intelligence, and a platform with high computing power is required to promote the technological upgrading of the entire autonomous driving industry. At present, the computing power and data support of automatic driving are more fragmented, and in the future, customized central computing chips with self-developed systems will be the mainstream development trend of automatic driving computing.

"To this end, Anmou Technology has set up a top team to jointly build a high-performance computing platform for autonomous driving, and through the construction of vehicle-level CPU and XPU unit collaboration, to create an ecosystem including IP layer, subsystem layer and software layer, providing 'core power' for the new future of the car." Liang Quan told Ji Wei Network.

Liang Quan stressed that in the past, Anmou Technology brought arm, a global standard and technology, to China, empowering China's semiconductor industry and creating a complete ecological chain. Adhering to the forward-looking insight into the industry, Anmou Technology released the "two-wheel drive" strategy, in addition to continuing the development strategy of localization and ecology of the Arm CPU architecture, it also focuses more on independent research and development, and relies on core power to provide the market with diversified, intelligent and customized core processor IP technology and open intelligent computing platform to continuously empower the industrial ecology. At the same time, Anmou Technology will work with industry colleagues to create a co-construction and sharing ecology based on the NPU ISA of "China's first launch, global open source" to promote the rapid and healthy development of the industry. (Proofreading/Andrew)