On May 12 this year, OPPO announced an infinitely embarrassing news, immediately stopping all its self-developed chip business and disbanding the ZEKU team. The news was like a bombshell, causing unprecedented buzz throughout the industry, and as time progressed, more behind-the-scenes news came to light, and an engineer told the story behind the research and development.
A few days ago, Dr. Nhon Quach, a senior member of IEEE and chief SOC architect of Zheku Technology on an overseas social platform, posted an article telling some unknown stories behind the scenes of OPPO's self-developed chips, and netizens commented that it was a pity after seeing it.
Dr. Nhon Quach pointed out that Nhon Quach's announcement of the closure of the self-developed Zheku team is a very regrettable thing, in fact, the Zheku team has been working crazy before this, and it took less than 10 months to complete the development of the second-generation core SOC. To achieve this, Zheku worked intensely for 16 hours a day, and the design team completed a highly competitive architecture in just over 4 months and a performance and functional acceptance in 16 months.
Assuming that there is no sudden shutdown, OPPO's second-generation core SOC will be recorded in the first quarter of next year, and it is based on the 3nm process platform, and Apple's upcoming A17 processor uses the same foundry. Assuming that this chip can really be mass-produced, OPPO will become the second domestic manufacturer with an independently designed flagship chip, and its domestic cognition and status will be second only to Huawei.
Unfortunately, there is no point in discussing this now, Dr. Nhon Quach said that he has no regrets at all, and joining the Zheku team is a very meaningful project. Right now, there is only one wish, to have a company that absorbs Zheku's team in the United States, has hard work in multiple parts of the United States, and deserves more companies to hire them.
Until now, some people do not understand, why should OPPO close Zheku? And industry insiders revealed that OPPO's earliest goal for Zheku has 7 years of research and development tasks, from 2019 to now only 4 years, research and development funds have not been used up at all, it seems that it is not because of "money" to close this business. Shen Yiren, former vice president of OPPO, also seemed to point out in his personal name that "the problems that can be solved with money are not problems", and some problems cannot be solved with money.
In the face of the hard pursuit of netizens, BBK founder Duan Yongping also said: "Historically, BBK has closed many businesses, some of which are even in the profitable stage and were not understood at the time of closure, but history proved to be the right choice after the closure." That's all that can be said, some things can no longer be said, and if you continue to ask, you will block the questioner." Since the official is unwilling to make more explanations, we don't need to ask hard, I believe that the decision made by OPPO must be well thought out, and this decision must be the best choice for the company.
Friends, what do you think of OPPO's closure of the Zheku chip business?