Has the AR industry reached an inflection point where it needs a dedicated chip?
Recently, the news that Rokid and Anmou Technology have jointly made cores has thrown this topic into the industry spotlight.
In 2017, just as Apple was winning the fruits of success with the self-developed chips in the iPhone and Apple Watch, its Mac products encountered bottlenecks in the process of performance optimization and upgrade.
Since joining Apple, chip engineer Johny Srouji has been working to design chips based on the specific needs of Apple devices, rather than using chips that meet common requirements.
At the time, Sluge launched a risky project: replacing the Intel processors apple laptops and desktops they had used for 15 years with a self-developed M1 chip.
This decision, which shocked the PC industry, not only gave Apple a huge lead with other competitors, but also laid the foundation for its entry into potential future products such as automobiles and VR.
The AR industry is about to open the road of dedicated chips, will it continue the myth of Apple's game-breaking?
Universal chips in the mobile era cannot support the future of AR glasses
From the plane interaction of mobile phones to the virtual reality interaction of VR, and then to the virtual and real fusion interaction of AR, the demand for chip computing power at each level is growing exponentially.
Meta's Oculus main VR scene, the chip computing power requirements are much higher than mobile phones, but the volume of VR devices is relatively larger than AR, and the demand for chip power consumption and volume is not urgent.
Microsoft's Hololens focuses on the use of specific AR scenarios, rather than daily wear, so theoretically as long as the head is within the load-bearing range, the chip can be continuously added to meet its functional needs.
Even so, in the third generation of products, Hololens has also joined hands with Samsung to start customizing chips.
In 2012, Google Glass, which adopted a prism scheme, achieved a lightweight level of 50g, but the information display was limited, the screen imaging effect was not ideal, and it could not meet the diverse scene needs of the C-end.
△ Photo: Rokid Air AR glasses
In 2021, Rokid launched the AR glasses Rokid Air with a weight of 83g, leading the industry to a big step forward in lightweight. But there's still room to go before the weight of a pair of glasses you wear every day.
△ The picture shows the mainstream chip solution of AR glasses on the market at present; the current common "chip building mode" not only brings a larger PCB area, but also causes higher power consumption and a larger wearing size
Comparable to the weight of a pair of sunglasses, providing the ultimate interactive experience to meet the needs of daily wear, I believe this is the future evolution direction of AR glasses.
However, it is clear that the current general-purpose chips can no longer meet the development needs of portable AR glasses in the future in terms of processing power, power consumption and performance.
Chips in the PC and mobile era can no longer support future-oriented AR glasses.
△ According to the forecast of the research agency, the shipment of AR glasses products will show a new high point in 2025
A new heterogeneous chip design for future-proof AR glasses
With the prevalence of meta-universe, as one of the largest chip design IP development and service providers in China, It is not surprising that Anmou Technology has been involved in meta-universe chips.
It is reported that the special chip to be developed by Rokid and Anmou Technology will adopt a heterogeneous design scheme with high integration, small package, low power consumption, low latency and high performance to improve the quality of image and sensor data and achieve a better AR experience.
It is expected that the overall power consumption of this AR chip will be several hundred milliwatts, and the size will be the size of the small thumb nail cover.
Rokid will empower at the OS (YodaOS-XR) and algorithmic engines (SLAM, gestures, digital people, etc.) to bet on truly lightweight, comfortable augmented reality AR glasses for the future.
It is worth noting that this custom AR chip is not just a simple integration of several small chips.
Instead, through the low-latency design of the chip pipeline, it accelerates the reading, transmission and processing of data, and quickly transfers all data to Rokid Station or mobile phone to complete calculations to ensure better real-time performance, such as SLAM requires lower MTP (motion to photon) latency.
Bravely break into the AR-made "core" no-man's land, where is Rokid's confidence?
"First and foremost, if we do, can we offer a better product?" Speaking about the debate over Apple's M1 chip, Sluge said, "That's the number one issue. This has nothing to do with the chip. Apple is not a chip company. ”
Compared with manufacturers who cross-border into the chip field, it is more natural for AR glasses manufacturers to launch their own chips.
We noticed that as early as 2018, Rokid released its self-developed AI chip KAMINOO18, which is close to the size of the 1 yuan coin.
At that time, universal chips were all computed using CPUs, but Rokid's creative choice was to improve performance in a heterogeneous way.
Rokid CEO Misa revealed at the time: "Rokid does not make money through chips, Rokid is not to make chips as a starting point, because for us, people in the industry know that the profit of chips is particularly low, just because there is nothing we need on the market, so we do it, if there is one on the market I will use it."
Rokid is not a chip company, but a human-computer interaction technology company, and rokid's chips will also add machine vision capabilities in the future. ”
△ In 2018, Rokid chose an AI chip with integrated DSP to achieve an order of magnitude improvement in processing voice algorithms; customizing NPU to complete deep learning and neural network algorithms is 30 to 50 times more efficient than simply using CPU to calculate
After 4 years, the growing startup will once again create the myth of AR chips on human-computer interaction products.
In the face of the shortcut of "take-ism", why does Rokid dare to take the "difficult and dangerous road" of self-developed chips?
The first is the mature experience derived from its product iteration and scene landing.
2021 is the first year of the meta-universe, but in the field of AR segmentation, Rokid has been deeply cultivated for at least 5 years, with a complete solution from hardware to software, from the technical bottom to the application scenario.
△ In 2017, Rokid has developed a prototype of AR glasses
Up to now, Rokid has four AR devices to achieve mass production and large-scale applications:
Infrared Temperature Measurement Glasses Rokid Glass Split Array Optical Waveguide AR Glasses Rokid Glass 2 One-Piece Industrial AR Headband Rokid X-Craft Consumer GRADE AR Glasses Rokid Air
It includes a variety of equipment forms from monocular to binocular, from integrated to split, from industrial to consumer, covering a variety of scenes such as oil and gas, electricity, automobile, epidemic prevention, cultural tourism exhibition, retail, and individual consumers.
The accumulation of these experiences makes Rokid's judgment of the market demand and development trend of AR products more accurate, which can provide a more reasonable solution for chip design.
The second is the tight coupling of "self-developed chip + autonomous OS".
Chips cannot evolve in isolation, and a high degree of synergy between hard and soft can maximize computing performance.
Prior to this, Rokid had independently developed an operating system for AR glasses, YodaOS-XR.
It is a cross-platform operating system that supports multimodal interaction.
For Rokid, its own chip is equipped with its own OS and software ecology, the performance of the system and algorithm will be optimal, the power consumption and interaction delay of AR glasses can be further reduced, bringing a more extreme user experience at the same time, the autonomy and imagination space of product innovation will be infinite.
Build barriers to future competition and make up for the last piece of the puzzle of ecology
From 2020 onwards, the world is deeply mired in the crisis of "lack of cores", Chinese technology companies realize that the taste of being "stuck in the neck" in the cutting-edge and core technology field is not good, and car companies, mobile phone manufacturers, and Internet manufacturers have plunged into the "core- making" track one after another.
The emerging AR industry also hangs a "sword of Damocles" hanging high above.
Standing at the window of the meta-universe, Rokid preemptively embarked on the pioneering road of AR core manufacturing, and used "self-developed chip + OS" to create a product moat. Independent research and development of one hard and one soft has become the core of grasping the initiative of scientific and technological competition.
Of course, the current competition in the XR field will become more and more intense, and although the Internet and mobile phone giants have not officially entered the game, they do not rule out the possibility of full entry.
As a pioneer in the industry, Rokid did not evade this problem, but laid out the first chess on the "ecological map" early.
This self-developed chip in Rokid's territory may mean the last link in the ecological chain, and it is also the most critical link.
At this point, Rokid will form a complete ecosystem of "chip + operating system + algorithm engine + platform + hardware" to further build product competition barriers.
From the perspective of the industry, this chip, as the beginning of AR core manufacturing, will accumulate valuable experience for the iteration and upgrading of subsequent AR chips.
Rokid's understanding of AR products, technologies, users, markets, and the entire industry and ecosystem will also be delivered to partners through the landing of this chip.
With the "core" action of Rokid and Anmou Technology, will the meta-universe industry stand on the acceleration period? We'll see.
*This article is published with permission from Qubits and the views expressed are the sole property of the author.
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