The OPPO, which has been rumored to have been digging up semiconductor talent since last year, has finally announced its plans for self-developed chips.
36 氪 Report , on the evening of February 16, the special assistant of the CEO of OPPO released Internal article “Some Thoughts on Building Core Technology”, which proposes three major plans, including software development, cloud, and the “Mariana Plan” on chips.
The report mentioned that in November last year OPPO mentioned the “Mariana Plan” in its internal documents. The chip TMG (Technical Committee) was officially announced in October last year to ensure technical investment. The head of the committee It is Chen Yan, the director of the chip platform department. Previously, he was the head of the Software Research Center of the OPPO Research Institute, and once served as the technical director of Qualcomm. Earlier this year, Realme and OnePlus technicians also joined this core making program.
Responding to the media’s chip development plan, OPPO Response a> said that the core strategy is to make a good product, and any investment in research and development is to enhance product competitiveness and enhance user experience. At the same time, OPPO emphasized that the self-developed chip work is by no means “short, fast and quick,” and OPPO will not change the current relationship with partners.
I have to say that OPPO is very well-known. The Mariana Trench is the deepest known trench on earth. OPPO uses it to describe the self-developed chip as a bottomless “big pit.” But Rao is so, OPPO jumped in willingly.
OPPO has a core track to follow
For the design of incoming chips, OPPO has been silently laid out for two years.
As early as the end of 2017, OPPO registered “Shanghai Jinsheng Communication Technology Co., Ltd.” in Shanghai”, The registered capital of 3 million yuan, 100% owned by OPPO Guangdong Mobile Communications Co., Ltd., the legal person is OPPO co-founder and senior vice president Jin Leqin, In September 2018, the company’s operating business was updated and joined “Integrated Circuit Chip Design and Service”. According to social security data, Jinsheng Communications is registered in Xuhui District, Shanghai. At present, there are 146 people insured, and the number of published patents has reached 47, mainly focusing on images, Audio, data processing, etc.
From SkyEye Check
Incoming chip business represents OPPO’s intensive R & D efforts. At the end of 2018, at the first Future Technology Conference of OPPO, founder and CEO Chen Mingyong said, “OPPO ’s R & D investment next year will increase from 4 billion to 10 billion, and it will increase investment year by year in the future.”
In August 2019, Jiwei had Report , a number of headhunters and industry insiders of the chip industry revealed, “OPPO recently released a lot of positions as chip design engineers. They set up a company in Shanghai and dug a group of basic engineers from Spreadtrum and MediaTek.” OPPO also A small number of chip engineer positions have been released for fresh graduates, and candidates are required to have internship experience in a chip company.
A senior headhunter in the report said: “ OPPO’s recruitment information clearly communicates the signal of mobile phone chips. For example, the position of SoC design engineer requires the SoC architecture definition , Functional design and subsystem level architecture design, familiar with ARM series CPU chips, proficient in EDA, and some requireDesign experience below 28nm. There are also positions such as chip digital circuit design engineer, chip verification engineer, and chip front-end design engineer, which are obviously aimed at mobile phone chips. “
In November 2019, Dutch technology media LetsGoDigital Report , the “OPPO M1” trademark has been approved by the European Union Intellectual Property Office (EUIPO). The trademark description includes chip integrated circuits, semiconductor chips, electronic chips for integrated circuit manufacturing, and smart phones.
For this chip, Liu Chang, Vice President and Dean of the Research Institute at the OPPO Future Technology Conference at the end of 2019, accepted the media Interview said that OPPO has chip-level capabilities, and the previously rumored M1 chip may be used in OPPO products in the future.
As for research and development, Chen Mingyong said that in the next three years, OPPO’s total R & D investment in technology will reach 50 billion : “OPPO will invest in the most core hardware underlying technology and software Engineering architecture capabilities, which will be decomposed later.
At present, it seems that most of OPPO’s R & D investment is preparing to plunge into the “bottom hole” of self-developed chips.
Although it is a pit, I have to step on it p>
At present, there are only three mobile phone manufacturers capable of self-developed chips worldwide: Huawei, Samsung and Apple. These three are the top three in global shipments. In simple terms, only those who have a strong career and a large wealth are eligible to enter the chip R & D and manufacturing.
from IDC
The chip is a bottomless pit for burning money. OPPO obviously understands this and will use the Mariana Trench to name this project. Earlier, Zhao Weiguo, the chairman of Ziguang Group, stated publicly: “To be an integrated circuit, if you want to enter the first group, you need to invest a large amount of capital. If you don’t invest 10 billion dollars a year, you cannot enter the first group.” p>
Apart from money, it takes time. Huawei’s K3V2 was launched in 2009. The early experience was “disastrous”, so there was a rumor like “Ren Zhengfei smashed his phone on Yu Chengdong’s face.” In more than ten years, Huawei has invested a total of more than 480 billion yuan in research and development, which has given Hisense a high-end market and the opportunity for Qualcomm to beat its wrist.
The chip is a deep hole, but manufacturers are scrambling to jump in.
From the point of view of products, if it can be deeply integrated into the chip design, the integration of software and hardware will be greatly improved, and the initiative to control the rhythm of the product will also fall into its own hands. Many features of the iPhone’s artificial intelligence, imaging, and security can be traced back to the chip design. With self-developed chips, there will be a moat and differentiation. In addition, in the AIoT era, self-developed chips can also allow their own Better integration of ecology.
Of course, the more important time to prepare the “spare tire” strategy, the physical inventory storm in 2019, has sounded the alarm for all domestic companies. Only by having more cards in your hand can you deal with all kinds of unexpected situations.