On January 11, 2022, Hisense officially released the first self-designed 8K AI picture quality chip in China in Beijing. In recent years, the continuous emergence of trade frictions, so that "independent research and development" and "independent design" has become a hot word of national concern, especially in the domestic semiconductor, chip design and manufacturing industry, which has a large gap, but also set off a wave of "self-research": earlier start, the achievements of Huawei needless to mention, Millet, Vivo and other mobile phone manufacturers have also released self-developed chip products in 2021. Unlike the high-profile publicity in the field of mobile phones, the chip road of Hisense, the leader of China's color TV industry, began to be paved as early as 32 years ago.
The color TV giant who has worked silently has stood at the top of the industry for 32 years
In 1990, Zhou Houjian, chairman of Hisense Group, inspected the United States, when the developed integrated circuit industry in the United States formed a driving force for the electronics industry in the United States, and Hisense, which was in its infancy at that time, strengthened its determination and confidence in independently developing chips.
In 1999, under the leadership of the Ministry of Information Industry, Hisense's chip research and development project was officially launched. At that time, China was already a major color TV country in the world, with 68 color TV production plants and an annual output of 70 million units. However, 70 million TVs do not have a "Chinese core", which means that the function of tv sets is completely in the hands of foreign countries, and color TV products cannot be differentiated. This is unacceptable to any aspiring domestic enterprise, especially Hisense, a technology company. After more than 4 years of silent hard work, in June 2005, Hisense finally successfully developed China's first digital video processing chip with independent intellectual property rights and industrialization", breaking the monopoly position of foreign chips. Once Hisense "Xinxin" came out, the price of foreign chips fell directly from 13 US dollars per piece to 5 US dollars, it can be said that the "Xinxin" is not only the core of Hisense, but also the confidence of China's color TV industry and Chinese color TV people.
Chips are recognized in the industry as a "capital-intensive" industry with large investment scale, high risk and long return cycle, but Hisense is deeply aware of the decisive role played by chips in color TV products and the industry, and has always regarded chip research and development as the top priority to support the company's future industrial development.
R & D level of more than 20 years of continuous investment, thick and thin his hair in the past 7 years in a row of 5 picture quality chips, and constantly refresh the ceiling of domestic display quality chips: In November 2015, Hisense released Hi-ViewPro ultra-high-definition picture quality engine chip generation, filling the gap that domestic TVs do not have high-end picture quality chips, Hisense also took this leap to become a world-class color TV company, becoming the third enterprise in the world that has the ability to independently develop high-end picture quality chips after Sony and Samsung; In 2017, 2018 and 2020, Hisense successively launched the second, third and fourth generation ultra-high-definition image quality engine chips, continuously improving chip integration, enriching image quality functions, and taking the lead in supporting high-end technologies such as 10,000-level partition backlight control, MEMC, and contrast optimization, reaching the world's advanced level.
On January 11, 2022, Hisense officially released the fifth-generation picture quality chip in Beijing. It is the first self-designed 8K AI picture quality chip in China, and it is also a new milestone product in the development process of picture quality chip. It has set a benchmark for Chinese picture quality chips.
How the "core" is refined
Television is an entertainment appliance that provides consumers with picture quality enjoyment, and chips are an important factor in determining the final presentation effect of TV picture quality. In fact, now the TV supply chain has been extremely mature, and many domestic and foreign manufacturers choose to take out general-purpose picture quality chips provided by third-party manufacturers. However, as mentioned before, the lack of picture quality chips, there is no right to define color TV products, and products cannot form differentiated competitiveness. Therefore, in the global display industry, for more than a decade, only Japan's Sony and China's Hisense have been systematically developing TV chips as key projects. For Hisense, despite experiencing many twists and turns and difficulties, the chip plate has always remained.
8K compared to 4K, the picture details increased by 4 times, compared with 1080p increased by 16 times, the multiplied pixels, the demand for chip performance is even more exponential growth. It can be said that in the era of 8K TV, chips have become the most important factor that determines the performance of TV pictures.
The advent of 8K AI picture quality chips not only makes Hisense once again a TV manufacturer with leading technical level in the industry, but also allows domestic 8K picture quality chips and TVs to have the strength to compete with Japanese and Korean brands. Hisense display scientist Charing once said: "The 8K picture quality chip project has given us a lot of confidence."
But the birth of a small chip has taken two years, hundreds of millions of dollars of investment, and the unremitting efforts of hundreds of engineers.
For 8K AI picture quality chips, it mainly involves color indicators such as color gamut, color accuracy, and saturation. The 8K picture quality chip added two color management modules for the first time in the industry, but to call up a better picture quality, it requires design engineers to pay attention to manual adjustment of each color. Especially for skin color, sky and other sensitive colors of the human eye, how to make the chip accurately identify the correct color, requires engineers to manually adjust little by little.
In addition, the components of the chip are relatively small and sensitive, so the requirements for the experimental platform are particularly high, how to ensure the stability of the chip experimental platform, can effectively improve the efficiency of research and development. Especially when Hisense is the "first person to eat crabs", the industry does not have ready-made algorithms or process descriptions for reference, and can only rely on the debugging experience accumulated by generations of Hisense people to solve stability problems in one adjustment after another.
In addition to the research in the field of technology, the birth of Hisense picture quality chip is also inseparable from the collision of ideas among engineers. Wang Yedong, director of Hisense Picture Quality Institute, has a vivid expression of this: "The chip team has a better understanding of the underlying theory of picture quality processing; The display department's experience with image quality comes from decades of market experience, most of which are user-oriented. In the development of these generations of picture quality chips, we have had countless confrontations. Wang Yedong said, "At the beginning, the product line would feel that the chip team was too academic and did not understand the market demand; The chip team felt that the display product line did not understand deep technology. Later, through repeated communication, there was a process of teaching and learning, and in the collision of communication, the most extreme picture quality performance was finally obtained. ”
What the self-developed 8K chip means to Hisense
The future is a world of display. Yu Zhitao, president of Hisense Video Technology Company, believes that the TV industry is accelerating into the reshuffle stage. Hisense, which has the ability of chip self-development and has an 8K picture quality chip, has opened up the technology chain of the display industry, and can define specific parameters such as TV brightness and color gamut from the function, make products around the function, and coordinate the industrial chain. The right to speak is stronger, the target is more precise, and the product is more competitive.
Relying on its unique advantages in the field of chips, Hisense has continuously created products with high market competitiveness and technical content such as stacked screen TVs, U7 TVs and broadcast-grade benchmark monitors, forming a complete and vertical industrial chain from chips to complete machines, and the autonomy and stability of the industry continue to increase.
In 2021, through the application of Hisense's self-developed fourth-generation picture quality chip, in conjunction with Hisense ULED backlight control technology, Hisense Video's flagship TV U7G-PRO achieved XDR display. In addition, Hisense's fourth-generation display quality processing chip has also been applied to his own research and development of the benchmark broadcast monitor, as well as the world's first 4K 55-inch Mini-LED endoscopic surgery professional display.
Hisense 8KAI picture quality chip not only realizes the leapfrog development from 4K to 8K, but also increases the AI quality processing function, through AI object detection, high-precision pixel, color, motion compensation, and supports 26880 partition control, adapting to ultra-multi-partition MiniLED products. The MiniLED TV 85U9H, equipped with its self-developed 8K picture quality chip, won the "CES 2022 Innovation Award" during CES 2022 and became a popular product during the exhibition.
The continuous iteration of the picture quality chip not only allows Hisense to have the ability to define TV products, but also continues to extend to commercial display chips, flat panel display chips, MicroLED display chips and vehicle display chips on this basis, forming the core underlying technology of Hisense's big display product matrix. In 2022, Hisense's 5th-generation picture quality chip will also fully cover the large display industry such as Hisense TV, Toshiba TV, broadcast-grade benchmark monitor, and medical professional display, so that 8K ultra-clear services will be more fields.
Yu Zongguang, deputy general manager of Zhongkexin Integrated Circuit Co., Ltd., said: "Chip technology is a great test of the strength, endurance and competitiveness of enterprises, and there are two key breakthrough points in this industry: First, complete the accumulation of technology and launch stable and reliable products; The second is to let the product pass various tests and then push it to the market to achieve commercialization. Hisense has crossed these two stages, which is also rare in the industry. Although there is still a long way to go in the field of Chinese TV chips, what is rare is that the layout and achievements of a group of enterprises like Hisense in chip industrialization have allowed more consumer electronics companies and manufacturers to see the broad space for independent research and development of chips. ”
At the crossroads of the big change in the color TV industry, Hisense has led the industry in strategic adjustment with its profound heritage and keen sense of smell, and is determined to become a world-class system display solution provider in the big future of the big display scene. Under the guidance of the "full display + intelligence" development strategy, Hisense chip focuses on four major chip plates such as display product line, SoC product line, IoT product line and PMU product line, and is committed to providing overall solutions in the display field. It is reported that Hisense currently has the ability to further develop smart TV SoC chips, and will rely on the huge application needs of the home appliance industry to enter the field of intelligent application SoC chips and develop a new blue ocean of intelligent home appliance intelligence.