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Domestic manufacturers self-developed chips are nothing new, first-line mobile phone manufacturers have their own self-developed chip projects, some do ISP imaging systems, some do NPU embedded neural network processors, in their respective fields to achieve different core manufacturing achievements. However, things are not all smooth sailing, Huawei, OPPO, Xiaomi have come with news, some foreign media said: China's chip line collapsed.
Huawei has always insisted on self-developed chips, and other domestic manufacturers such as OPPO and Xiaomi have also joined the self-developed chip team. This is undoubtedly what the Chinese people want to see, the more manufacturers participate in self-developed chips, the more hope of breaking the game. However, self-developed chips are not so easy, and the difficulty is beyond the imagination of ordinary people.
The first is the problem of high technical threshold, self-developed chips need to have deep technical skills and rich experience, need to master complex circuit design, manufacturing process and testing technology and other fields of expertise. The high technical threshold makes self-developed chips need to invest a lot of manpower, material resources and financial resources in the research and development process.
Secondly, the research and development cycle of self-developed chips is long, and it may take several years to develop successfully. This requires a lot of time and resources for enterprises, and at the same time requires high R&D risks.
In addition, the market demand for self-developed chips is uncertain, requiring enterprises to accurately predict and analyze market demand in the research and development process. If you can overcome these difficulties, you may also face a problem, that is, sanctions by the United States. Once excellent chip results are made, it may be targeted by the United States, thereby suppressing restrictions.
Based on these factors, Huawei, OPPO, and Xiaomi have received news that they have different encounters in the matter of self-developed chips.
Let's look at Huawei first.
Huawei's HiSilicon semiconductor division, a 7,000-strong team, was established in 2004 to develop the chips Huawei needs. The business scope of this department covers all aspects of chip design, production and sales.
Huawei's HiSilicon main products include Kirin series chips, HiSilicon series chips, and Ascend series chips. Huawei's strength in self-developed chips is very strong, and it has become one of the important players in the global chip design field.
However, a US ban prevents Huawei chips from entering the production line, and HiSilicon-designed chips cannot be produced. It can only be converted to inventory consumption, or find US companies to purchase "castrated version" chips, such as the 4G chip provided by Qualcomm for Huawei.
Let's look at the chip status of OPPO.
OPPO is regarded as the most likely chip developer to succeed Huawei after Huawei, because OPPO's Mariana X chip has achieved the 6nm process level and positioned NPU (embedded neural network processor).
This is OPPO's first self-developed chip, released in 2021, followed by the second self-developed chip - Mariana Y in December 2022, this chip is a Bluetooth audio SOC chip. In OPPO's two chip products, it can be seen that the strength of self-developed chips is not bad, there are not many manufacturers in China that can design 6nm chips, and there are few SOC chips.
People are still expecting OPPO to launch a third 4nm process chip product, but OPPO made a decision to abandon the business of its chip research and development company ZEKU. This means that OPPO's self-developed chip project ends here, and there will be no more chip products in the future, and the chip research and development team that has been maintained for many years will be disbanded.
There is also Xiaomi's chip project.
Compared with Huawei, OPPO's self-developed chip project, Xiaomi will go steadily, but the market results may not meet the expectations of the public. Xiaomi's self-developed chip can be traced back to 2017, when Xiaomi released the first self-developed chip product The Paper S1, which is an SOC processor.
However, the performance of this chip is not satisfactory, coupled with the difficulty of SOC chip development, Xiaomi turned to ISP small chip research and development. In March 2021, the second chip, The Paper, was launched, which was applied to mobile phone imaging systems.
Since then, the surging P1, the surging G1, etc. have also been launched, but the fields facing are small functional modules, and there is still a long way to go to master the baseband, CPU, and GPU general SOC.
Some foreign media said: China's chip line collapsed, although Chinese mobile phone manufacturers have participated in self-developed chips, but still failed to change the industry pattern.
Because in the chip market, the mainstream products are almost all American companies, the SOC processor of the mobile phone industry Qualcomm Snapdragon, the CPU of the computer market is Intel and AMD, coupled with NVIDIA dominating the GPU market, it is very difficult for competitors to surpass it.
The United States is the origin of semiconductors, technology research and development earlier, and a large number of core patent support, the chip research and development of the road to block, other manufacturers want to use American technology, and then defeat the United States, in addition to paying high R & D investment, it can not be completed overnight.
However, the matter is man-made, difficulties are not a reason to give up, I hope that domestic manufacturers can regroup, sum up lessons learned, and move forward.
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