To be honest, in the future, domestic chips will depend on Xiaomi

Is there a new trend in Xiaomi's self-developed chips?On May 24th, at Xiaomi's Q1 2023 financial report communication meeting, Xiaomi President Lu Weibing stated that Xiaomi's determination to invest in chips has not wavered.It should be noted that the recent closure of OPPO's chip company Zheku has had a significant impact on the domestic chip industry, and there are concerns about whether Xiaomi's self-developed chips will be affected

Is there a new trend in Xiaomi's self-developed chips?

On May 24th, at Xiaomi's Q1 2023 financial report communication meeting, Xiaomi President Lu Weibing stated that Xiaomi's determination to invest in chips has not wavered.

It should be noted that the recent closure of OPPO's chip company Zheku has had a significant impact on the domestic chip industry, and there are concerns about whether Xiaomi's self-developed chips will be affected.

Mr. Lu's words seem to stabilize the morale of the military, after all, the current domestic self-developed chips have gone very difficult, and Xiaomi's path of self-developed chips has been quite tortuous.

Xiaomi has been developing its own chips since a long time ago. As early as 2014, it collaborated with Lianxin to establish Pineapple Electronics, which is the third year of Xiaomi's establishment.

In February 2017, Lei Jun officially released Xiaomi's first independently developed mobile phone SoC chip, the surging S1. Xiaomi became the fourth mobile phone manufacturer with chip self-developed capabilities after Apple, Samsung, and Huawei.

The Pengpai S1 is a mid-range chip mounted on the Xiaomi 5C, with 8 high-performance cores and 3 high-efficiency cores, with a core frequency of up to 2.84GHz.

But from the results, the surging S1 is undoubtedly a failure.

Due to Qualcomm's baseband chip monopoly, the surging S1 only supports mobile 4G, 3G, 2G, and China Unicom 2G networks, and does not support all networks of China Unicom 3G, 4G, and telecommunications.

In a situation where mainstream mobile phones are mostly all connected to the internet, and some are not connected to the internet, the sales of the Xiaomi 5C have been severely affected.

In addition, the process of the surging S1 was 28nm, but at that time, 16nm chips had become mainstream, and the performance of the surging S1 was also very weak.

Not fully connected, with weak performance, the final outcome can be imagined. The failure of the surging S1 even had a serious impact on the development progress of the surging series of chips.

From 2017 to 2018, rumors of the R&D failure of the Pengpai S2 were constantly circulating. By the end of 2018, the Pengpai S2 had failed 5 times in chip development, resulting in losses of tens of millions of yuan each time.

Xiaomi, whose research and development have been constantly frustrated, can only choose to switch tracks and abandon the development of integrated chip SoC in favor of others.

In March 2021, Xiaomi MIXFOLD launched its own self-developed imaging chip, the surging C1. The research and development of the surging C1 lasted for two years, with a funding investment of nearly 140 million yuan. This is also Xiaomi's second product launched since its involvement in self-developed chips.

On December 28, 2021, Xiaomi held a new product launch event and released its first self-developed charging chip, the surging P1, which achieved a 120W single cell charging solution for the first time.

In July 2022, Xiaomi launched the surging G1 chip for its own gaming phone, which adopts 5nm technology and has 8 high-performance cores and 3 high-efficiency cores.

Although the launch efficiency of Xiaomi's self-developed chips has been quite high in recent years, it can be seen that these chips only focus on certain functions, not SoC chips.

It seems that Xiaomi has strategically given up on SoC research and development, but instead started with developing independent chips, which are easy first and difficult later. Once there is sufficient technological accumulation, they can conquer SoC chips.

The path of Xiaomi's chips is undoubtedly winding, while the path of other manufacturers' self-developed chips is not smooth.

At the time when Xiaomi's development of the Pengbai S2 suffered setbacks, OPPO and vivo took over and became the backbone of the self-developed chip army.

In August 2019, Zheku was officially established. As a company under OPPO that independently developed chips, Zheku was once regarded by the outside world as the "second best of Hisense".

OPPO's chip development has been very smooth. In 2021, OPPO released two chips: Mariana MariSiliconX and Mariana MariSiliconY.

Mariana MariSiliconX is OPPO's first independently designed and developed imaging specific NPU chip.

The Mariana X chip has a shipment volume of tens of millions, and has been successfully applied online in OPPO and multiple mobile phone products under its umbrella, becoming one of the main selling points of mobile phones.

Mariana MariSiliconY is a flagship Bluetooth audio SoC chip based on the TSMC N6RF process.

These two chips, OPPO, both use advanced process chips and have unique features in specific applications, thus receiving special attention.

When people were still waiting for the third Mariana chip, Zheku suddenly announced its shutdown, causing great shock to the industry as there were almost no signs before.

Why Zheku was shut down is still a matter of debate. Some people believe that OPPO directly rushed towards 4nm chips, but the pace was too large, causing huge research and development to be lost.

But some people also believe that the reason for the closure of the Zheku may be due to external interference or even internal leaks.

Some media speculate that the data generated by the EDA software used by Zheku will be obtained in some way by the United States. The leaked information on Zheku online is likely to be made by non domestic EDA design software.

In addition, OPPO is not Huawei and has other businesses to support profits. Once OPPO's phones encounter risks, they may be dragged down by Zheku, causing catastrophic consequences.

Shutting down Zheku is more like a heroic act, as the result is that OPPO's chips are self-developed and can only be forced to stop. It's hard to say when they can be restarted.

Just as OPPO released the Mariana series of chips, vivo also released its first self-developed ISP chip V1 in September 2021.

Vivo's research and development strategy coincides with Xiaomi's decision to choose a lower development threshold imaging chip for its first product, which is also related to Vivo's phone focus on photography.

In November 2022, at the Dual Core Imaging Technology Communication Conference, vivo unveiled the second-generation self-developed imaging chip V2, which significantly upgraded the on-chip memory unit, Al computing unit, and image processing unit.

Compared to its competitors, vivo's core making plan has been announced later and with a lower profile. Both its investment and promotion in the semiconductor field are very cautious.

Why keep a low profile? It may be due to Vivo's weak technical reserves, but it may also be due to avoiding the risk of being "shot at the head" and not wanting to be overly disturbed by the outside world.

Self developed chips have never been a smooth path. Along this path, Huawei, Xiaomi, OPPO, and vivo have all encountered their own problems.

Who can stand out on the path of self-developed chips? It's hard to say yet, I hope they can persevere until the moment of success.

References:

Black Horse Community: Terminate research and development, disband team, the most promising self-developed chip in China, gone!

Master Xin: After the dissolution of OPPO's core bureau, we have thoroughly reviewed the past of Chinese mobile phone manufacturers making cores

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Edit:Chen Zhanxiang

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