BYD took a stake in Baidu's core manufacturing company.
Tianyan inspection shows that Kunlun Core recently completed a B round of financing, and BYD is among the investors.
Kunlun Core originated from Baidu Intelligent Chip and Architecture Department, and has made rapid progress in core manufacturing in recent years.
The company's first-generation and second-generation general-purpose chips have achieved mass production, with a commercial layout of more than 20,000 pieces; The third generation is under development and will be specifically designed for advanced autonomous driving systems.
As we all know, BYD's cars are not outstanding in terms of intelligence.
However, BYD is accelerating to catch up.
BYD invests in Kunlun
Kunlun's new financing has not been officially announced, but the equity business information has changed, and the B round of financing includes BYD and Zhongguancun Science City.
After the change of industry and commerce, the registered capital of Kunlun Core increased from 17.6777 million yuan to 17.8525 million yuan, BYD and Chuangqi Kaiying were new shareholders, and BYD's shareholding ratio was 0.33%.
Up to now, Kunlun has completed a total of 3 rounds of financing. Although the amount of financing was not disclosed, after the first publicly disclosed round of financing, Kunlunchip's valuation was about 13 billion.
What kind of company is Kunlun? Why did BYD vote for Kunlun Chip?
Who is Kunlun Chip
Kunlun Chip, formerly known as Baidu Intelligent Chip and Architecture Department, is the core department of Baidu Core.
As early as 2011, Baidu entered the core manufacturing and launched the FPGA AI accelerator project.
An FPGA is a semi-custom circuit in an application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) that can be quickly finished and supports unlimited reprogramming with relatively low debug costs.
In 2017, Baidu FPGA deployed more than 12,000 pieces. Based on the understanding and practice of FPGA, Baidu began to develop its own XPU architecture and launched China's first cloud AI chip - Baidu Kunlun 1 in 2018.
Baidu Kunlun 1 adopts 14nm process, HBM 16GB high-speed video memory, 512GB/s access bandwidth, and 0.43TFlops per watt of computing power, which can be used in cloud data centers and intelligent edges.
In 2020, Baidu Kunlun 1 was mass-produced and achieved large-scale deployment, with a scale of more than 20,000 pieces.
In April 2021, Baidu's smart chip and architecture department completed independent financing, with a valuation of about 13 billion; In June of the same year, the department was spun off, and now this Kunlun chip was established.
In August 2021, Kunlun Core 2 was unveiled, based on Baidu's self-developed 2nd generation XPU architecture, 7nm process, GDDR6 high-performance video memory, computing power per watt of 1.07TFlops, the overall performance is 2-3 times higher than the previous generation, and mass production is achieved.
In addition, the design time of the two generations of Kunlun Core products is no more than one and a half years, and they are both successful in one tape-out.
It can be said that in terms of manufacturing and producing general-purpose AI chips and commercializing them, Baidu has been ahead of most Internet companies.
With Baidu's progress in autonomous driving, Kunlun Core 2 and Baidu Robotaxi have also been adapted, and the chip can operate normally in high-end autonomous driving systems.
Kunlun chip CEO Ouyang Jian said that the company is developing the third generation of AI chips, and for high-end autonomous driving systems, it is expected to be mass-produced in 2024, and is also considering launching automotive-grade SoCs.
The automatic driving system, Baidu has Apollo, and there is ANP for smart cars, plus Kunlun Core, which is almost a combination of software and hardware.
For BYD, such a plan is a move to quench thirst, and the cooperation between BYD and Baidu Apollo has long been officially announced.
BYD doesn't want to be left behind
Talking about most people's impression of BYD, the first thing that may come to mind is blade battery, super hybrid technology, high-end brands look up to show "easy sifang" technology, and recently there is also the label of "roll price".
From the perspective of chips, BYD independently develops automotive-grade IGBTs to achieve self-design, manufacturing and packaging; The self-developed SiC power module was launched on the Han EV launched in 2020, and the acceleration reached 3.9s per 100 km/h.
But these are power chips, not functional chip MCUs or SoCs required for autonomous driving and human-computer interaction.
And in terms of intelligence, BYD is not prominent in the industry.
BYD's DiPilot intelligent driver assistance system, sensors include up to 12 ultrasonic radars, 5 millimeter wave radars and 5 cameras, supporting basic L2 level assisted driving functions.
The urban assisted driving system has three stages: parking lot ADAS, high-speed ADAS, and urban ADAS, that is, whether autonomous driving can be realized in these three scenarios.
In the industry, Tesla FSD and Ford BlueCruise have achieved high-speed ADAS, and there are NIO NAD and ideal NOA in China that can achieve high-speed ADAS, and Xpeng XNGP and Momo NOH have reached the urban ADAS stage.
BYD's DiPilot supports automatic parking on some models, which belongs to the parking lot ADAS function, and the high-speed HWA assisted driving includes cruise control, lane centering and lever lane change, which is less than the level of high-speed ADAS.
But this investment in Kunlun Core means that BYD wants to make up for the shortcomings of intelligence.
In addition, BYD has recently reached cooperation with NVIDIA and Horizon. Models equipped with the Horizon Journey 5 and NVIDIA DRIVE Hyperion platforms will be available this year.
For reference, the ideal model, also equipped with the Horizon Journey 5, already has the capability of high-speed ADAS.
Wang Chuanfu once said, "The first half of new energy vehicles is electrification, and the second half is intelligence." "Although BYD's intelligence is insufficient, it is already catching up in the layout.
As for the effect of the layout investment, you can wait for BYD's new model to be launched.
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