Since recent years, more and more manufacturers have entered the field of cross-border core manufacturing, and traditional core manufacturers such as Intel, Nvidia and other companies have gradually launched other chip products. What are the actions of the big manufacturers in the field of chips, and what is the significance of the core manufacturing of each manufacturer?
The actions of various manufacturers are frequent:
In the field of mobile phone manufacturers, among many enterprises, there are Apple, Huawei, Samsung, among which Apple has achieved relative advantages in the field of mobile phones and computers through its own design of A series chips and M series chips, and is closely integrated with its own ecology. Huawei has also successfully created its own uniqueness by launching a Kirin series chip improved from Arm, and has a strong market share in the high-end machine market, but huawei has been repeatedly suppressed from the United States, and the current Kirin series chips are in a state where they cannot be re-produced, and other related parts of the RF chips cannot be supplied. Samsung has launched the orion series of chips in the early years, but in recent years it has performed poorly, and there are very few mobile phone products using the Orion series.
Among other mobile phone manufacturers, Xiaomi launched the surging S1 chip as early as a few years ago, as a SoC applied to the Xiaomi 5C mobile phone, but since then, Xiaomi has not launched its self-developed chip products again. Until the release of its brand C1 chip in 2021, and the release of the surging P1 chip in 2022. In addition to Xiaomi, the mobile phone manufacturers that have launched self-developed chips in recent times are OPPO and vivo, of which OPPO has launched a Mariana image NPU, which can provide noise reduction, brightness and other effects when shooting, and can be targeted development to adapt to various hardware platforms. Vivo launched its self-developed V1 image chip, which can improve the processing power of ISPs and obtain higher processing bandwidth, including real-time preview of finished films, manual adjustment of exposure and night video selection. Foreign Google is launched in 21 years of Pixel 6 series mobile phones equipped with Google's self-developed Tensor chip, but there are claims that Google's Tensor chip is customized and improved on Samsung's Orion series chips.
In addition to mobile phone manufacturers, two traditional computer chip providers such as NVIDIA and Intel have also opened cross-border core manufacturing, and these two companies have entered the in-vehicle chip business, and Nvidia has launched the Drive Orin chip system. Intel has launched a series of products such as the self-driving chip EyeQ Ultra.
Automakers are not idle, like Tesla companies have adopted their own chips, and because of the continuous shortage of supply of chip suppliers such as Renesas, NXP, Infineon, Cypress, Microchip Technology, ST (STMicroelectronics) and other car chip suppliers since 2020, it is also reported that many companies such as Weilai, Ideal, Volkswagen, Geely, saic-GM-Wuling and so on have also been laying out automotive chips, with the intention of filling and replacing the gap in traditional automotive chip suppliers and regaining the supply of chips. Internet companies such as Ali, Tencent, and ByteDance have also laid out in the chip field, such as investing in semiconductor companies.
△ Intel released an autonomous driving chip at CES 2022
△ NVIDIA's autonomous driving solution launched at CES 2022
△ Qualcomm's autonomous driving program launched in CES 2022
It can be seen that various companies are frequently moving in the field of chips, and "core making" has become a major strategy for enterprises, so why do big manufacturers want to get involved in the field of core making?
What are the benefits of large factory core making?
01/ Get your own unique advantages and enhance market feedback
Apple has formed a strong binding relationship with its mobile phone products after launching its own A-series chips, and the strong performance of A-series chips on iPhone products has further combined with the iOS system it adopts, leaving good feedback in the market. In the consumer perception of the mobile phone market, the general impression that the A series chip + iOS system is equal to stable and smooth performance is created, which enhances the influence of its brand products and supports the product premium. Huawei has also gained a good influence in the domestic mobile phone market with the strong binding of the Kirin series chips before, and supported its unique advantages in the high-end mobile phone market, creating a high-end impression of Huawei series mobile phones. At this stage, Huawei's mobile phone business has been hit and the high-end mobile phone market is empty, and various mobile phone manufacturers also want to exert efforts in the high-end market and gain market share.
Therefore, at this stage, mobile phone companies are also using self-developed chips to promote their impact on the high-end mobile phone market, through self-developed chips to enhance the consumer market's awareness of the brand, and through the blessing of their own chips to create different differentiated selling points. According to OPPO's official statement, the Mariana chip can carry out vertical integration of the whole link in the field of computational photography, linking key nodes such as chips, algorithms, sensors, etc., and achieving improvements such as night effects on different platforms through the OPPO 3A algorithm written by Mariana. In addition to OPPO, the chips launched by Vivo and Xiaomi are also used on their flagship and sub-flagship mobile phones, which improve the performance of imaging, charging and other aspects, and provide a foothold for market publicity and premium promotion for the entry into the high-end market.
The own chips launched by mobile phone manufacturers can be bound to their own devices and systems, and in the case of excellent performance, they can bring positive feedback to the brand, thereby enhancing market reputation and consumption.
Internet companies and cloud service companies such as Google, Alibaba, Tencent, and Amazon can obtain higher ecological chimerism and energy efficiency feedback compared with general chips through customized chips, and improve the cost/benefit ratio of each node through dedicated chips.
02/Improve the ability to master the supply chain and respond to production needs
In addition to the role of its own chips in the consumer market, it can also play an effective feedback in supporting the production of products. For example, in the mobile phone market, Apple has sought a large number of orders from foundries after developing its own chips, so it has a large number of stable supply, and even in the recently launched display products, it uses high-performance A13 chips as support chips, which shows its excellent mastery of the supply chain. Other mobile phone manufacturers can only rely on the upstream enterprises of the chip supply chain such as Qualcomm and MediaTek to dispatch shipments according to orders, so they need to rely on the upstream supply rhythm in the rhythm of products. In addition to mobile phone companies, companies such as car companies, Internet companies, and cloud service companies are also seeking to use their own chips and other means to ensure production and supply demand. Since the epidemic, several major suppliers of automotive-grade chips have entered the stage of short supply of chips, and some automotive products have even had to sell cars in the form of "semi-finished products", that is, in addition to ensuring the installation of necessary chips such as security chips, other non-essential chips and other chips are supplied and then delivered to customers for installation. In this round of the Shanghai epidemic, many automakers have been affected by the shortage of chip supply. Therefore, for some news, a number of auto companies are ready to enter the automotive chip market and build chips.
Internet companies, cloud service providers on the chip layout also for the upstream chip suppliers have a certain substitution effect, especially in the domestic enterprises, due to the changes in the situation in recent years, manufacturers will also be prepared for supply chain replaceability, in the case of can not obtain other chip supply, but also through their own design of chips to find foundries for manufacturing to obtain a certain degree of business recovery capabilities.
For all kinds of enterprises, after launching their own chips and playing a partially alternative role in existing supply chain products, they can also obtain comparative advantages in negotiations with upstream chip supply chain enterprises, such as using their own chips to integrate into more suppliers to reduce costs, or allowing a supplier to provide discounts on products. After the enterprises invest in heavy gold cores, they will surely be happy to see the return brought about by the reduction of costs.
03/ Obtain the attention of the capital market and enhance the market value of the company
CHEN Mingyong, CEO of OPPO, once said at the OPPO 2021 Future Technology Conference: "A technology company has no underlying technology, there is no future, and high-end products have no core technology, which is the loft in the air." "For many enterprises, entering their own chips is the accumulation and output of the underlying technology and core technology."
Its own chips can reflect a series of information such as the resources invested by enterprises, the strength they have, and the future strategic purposes, etc., and the core manufacturing is an area of high technology and high capital investment. A company's involvement in it is usually done without a major crisis. Therefore, for the capital market, companies that enter the core are good potential investment objects. For many companies involved in core manufacturing, most of them are already in the state of listing, through the investment in core manufacturing can obtain its recognition in the capital market, attract investment in the capital market, further increase the company's market value, so as to achieve advantages in the competition of enterprises in the same industry.
Is it really a core or just for the sake of drama?
From the perspective of chip investment, a company's tape-out of a chip often requires tens of millions or even hundreds of millions of dollars in costs, and the investment in core manufacturing is tantamount to a gold-devouring beast. As can be seen from the above content, the actions of each company have been very obvious, and there are also corresponding product outputs. For most enterprises, it is forgivable to expand based on the core in order to obtain multi-faceted benefits, which is also the general trend of many enterprises in the process of competition.
Under the guidance of the current market competition environment and the policies of major economies, there will be more enterprises investing in core manufacturing in the future, the chip industry will also accelerate its development, and this track will also become "hot", and whether there will be companies taking advantage of the situation to make a play, and it is quite difficult to say whether there will be a chicken feather in the place.
Core manufacturing is not a small cost for every enterprise, and for enterprises that produce corresponding chip products, the cost of making a play for the core is too high. But on the whole, the investment in chip design and manufacturing, for enterprises is a large investment, long cycle, slow effect of the option, more need for talent, time and capital accumulation, so for most enterprises, the core is more like a sincere move for the development of enterprises, and further forward under the superposition of various factors.
For many enterprises, the outlet of the core = is a rare opportunity, how to grasp the risks and opportunities to achieve positive development, the need for each enterprise to grasp well, cautious forward.