Domestic processor chips start the battle for computing power!

At present, a new wave of artificial intelligence is breaking out, and the importance of super computing power as the crown jewel of the "AI arms race" is highlighted. With the rise of supercomputing centers and large-scale data center construction and upgrade projects in many places, the demand for processor chips such as CPU, GPU, DPU, and FPGA is also expanding.

Taking high-end GPU chips as an example, NVIDIA is unable to sell some high-performance GPU products to domestic companies due to relevant U.S. bans. Yunxiu Capital data shows that the domestic GPU market is expanding, but the localization rate is still less than 10%. It is urgent to develop domestic high-end processors and accelerate domestic substitution.

In the face of huge market demand and the tightening of relevant bans in the United States, domestic processor manufacturers have been thrust into the spotlight and are expected to usher in a golden period of development.

The fifth "Hard Core Annual Event" organized by the world's leading industry community and content-driven media, Chip Master, brought together more than a hundred well-known and potential companies in China's semiconductor chip industry. This article selects 15 processor chip products that will participate in the evaluation in 2023, with a view to providing the market with a high-quality product selection guide.

*The following products are listed in no particular order

Unisoc is the world's leading platform chip design company and one of the few companies in the world that fully masters all-scenario communication technologies such as 2G/3G/4G/5G, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, TV FM, and satellite communications. In the core 5G field, Unisoc is one of the three 5G chip companies in the global public market.

UNISOC has large-scale chip integration and chip packaging capabilities. Its products include mobile communication central processors, baseband chips, AI chips, RF front-end chips, RF chips and other communication, computing and control chips. Field testing covers 133 countries around the world. , has passed the shipping certification of 260+ operators around the world, and has more than 500 customers including Honor, Realme, vivo, Samsung, Motorola, Hisense, ZTE, JD.com, UnionPay, and Gree.

Domestic independent industrial control core, Jiangxinchuang D21x is the first domestic industrial application processor based on 64bit RISC-V architecture.

●Independently developed Luban SDK, a domestic operating system based on the Linux kernel, which achieves open full-stack technology, reliable underlying technology, and efficient development environment;

●Integrate ARTHSM hardware security module to build the hardware foundation for China’s industrial application information security;

●Temperature sensor: supports high/low temperature alarm and over-temperature protection; ESD: HBM>4000V.CDM>500V; junction temperature: -40°C~125°C, with high reliability performance;

●Has a fully functional human-computer interaction system, including six human-computer interaction modules: Graphics Engine, Display Engine, Video Engine, Audio Out, Video ln, and RTP;

●High-performance hardware startup acceleration, Linux starts in seconds, displays the boot logo in 200ms, system starts in 1s, displays the first page of the APP in 3s, supports Linux/RTOS systems.

Zhongke Yihai Microelectronics Technology (Suzhou) Co., Ltd. is a scientific research and industrialization team in the research field of "Programmable Chips and Systems" of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. In accordance with the national innovation-driven development strategy, it initiated the establishment of "Programmable Logic Chips and Programmable Systems". "Reconstruction System" is a high-tech enterprise with technical characteristics. The company was registered and established in Suzhou in January 2017.

The company adheres to the full forward design technology route, independently develops highly reliable embedded programmable circuit IP cores, programmable logic chips, EDA software and reconfigurable systems, and provides industry solutions and solutions with high performance and adaptive computing. Integrated circuit design services meet the application needs of smart manufacturing, modern communications, energy and electricity, rail transit, automotive electronics, radio and television media, data centers, financial technology, e-government, medical equipment, testing and measurement and other business fields.

Xinchi Technology is the leader in all-scenario smart car chips. It focuses on providing high-performance and highly reliable car-standard chips. Its products cover smart cockpits, smart driving, gateways and high-performance MCUs, covering the core chips of future automotive electronic and electrical architectures. Category, thereby realizing "four cores integrated into one to give the car a soul".

All four series of Xinchi chips have been put into mass production, with shipments exceeding one million pieces in 2022. Xinchi currently has nearly 200 designated projects and serves more than 260 customers, covering more than 90% of domestic OEMs and some international mainstream car companies, including SAIC, Chery, Changan, Dongfeng, FAW, Nissan, Honda, Volkswagen, Ideal, etc.

Thanks to the full-scenario product layout, Xinchi has become one of the few chip companies in China that has begun to explore the central computing architecture of the car core. Globally, Xinchi is also one of the first chip companies to release a complete central computing architecture solution. Xinchi took the lead in releasing the central computing architecture SCCA1.0 in April 2022, and launched the second-generation central computing architecture SCCA2.0 at the Shanghai Auto Show in April 2023, helping car manufacturers evolve to a central computing architecture faster.

Shenzhen China Microelectronics Technology Co., Ltd. was founded in April 2009 and is affiliated to China Electronics Information Industry Group Co., Ltd. The company is headquartered in Shenzhen, with wholly-owned subsidiaries in Shanghai, Nanjing, Chengdu, and Xi'an. It is the national team for GPU R&D in the Xinchuang industry chain.

The company's mission is to adhere to the principle of completely independent intellectual property rights, focus on the research and development of graphics processors and GPUs, and provide high-performance computing capabilities for the artificial intelligence era. Through years of hard work in research and development, the company has accumulated rich technology and intellectual property rights in chip R&D and design. The independently developed instruction set MVP ISA has been rated as a "completely independent intellectual property instruction set" by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, and has successfully carried out four SoC chips based on MVP cores. Taped out and obtained 22 core invention patents in the processor field.

"Nanfeng 1" returned the film on July 9, 2022, and was successfully lit on the same day. The chip has completed many independent innovative technological breakthroughs such as MVP core processor architecture, GPU core independent intellectual property IP, MVP instruction set, compiler, verification model, software driver and system adaptation, achieving safe and trustworthy domestic GPU research and development. , the ability to update and iterate.

The current graphics card is fully compatible with Great Wall Xinchuang desktop computers, Kirin operating system, Feiteng processor, QiAnXin trusted browser, etc., and runs stably. It can meet the needs of PC graphics cards for complete computers dedicated to the Xinchuang industry chain such as party and government, finance and security.

Yilingsi is a domestic FPGA company that uses the XLR structure with interchangeable logic and routing and revolutionaryly invented the breakthrough Quantum® architecture. Its PPA advantage is 4 times that of the traditional world's leading FPGA companies. Recently, Yilinsi launched a titanium series FPGA product, which once again increased PPA by 8 times and is very suitable for edge computing, ADAS and AIoT.

The core team members of Yilinsi come from the early experts and management teams of technology companies such as Xilinx, Intel and Microsemi, with an average industry experience of 25 years. From architecture and IC design, process, packaging and testing, cost/quality/delivery control, to EDA tool design, IP and application solution design, marketing and technical support, the company adheres to both quality and quantity, and strives to win the industry crown.

Yilinsi Titanium series FPGA has a logic unit capacity of 35K to 1000K and a performance of up to 300-500MHz.

●1.5Gbps LVDS，2.5Gbps MIPI DPHY

●3733Mbps LPDDR4/4x，16Gbps/25.8Gbps Serdes

●Ultra-small package as low as 3.5mm*3.4mm@60K LE

●Can be widely used in fields such as multi-cameras, high-definition video, AI acceleration, wireless communications, etc.

●Achieve optimal performance and seamless links in machine vision, industry, medical, artificial intelligence, automotive, video, edge computing and other applications.

Founded in 2019, Sietium is a high-tech company that independently designs and develops GPU chips and GPU solutions. Relying on the industry's advanced computing and graphics rendering platforms, it provides cloud and end customers with high-quality products and services. Provide sustainable development of domestic GPU solutions; provide computing power support for innovation and development in the digital era, and build a civilized world with free computing power.

Xintong adheres to the corporate culture and values ​​of "excellent innovation, sincerity and trustworthiness, embracing feedback, and achieving customer success", has established a complete and efficient process system, and has achieved excellent results in the fields of GPU technology, products, ecology, market and other fields. So far, it has applied for nearly 100 invention patents, dozens of software copyrights and multiple integrated circuit layout designs in the field of GPU core technology. Recently, we are focusing on the research and development and promotion of GPU open source technology, and the low-power series of GPUs and high-performance series of GPUs we have developed have gradually entered the market.

Shenzhen Yunbao Intelligent Co., Ltd. was established in 2020. It is the leading company in the domestic DPU industry and the only unicorn company in this industry in China. It is headquartered in Shenzhen and has R&D centers in Shanghai, Beijing, Nanjing, Xi'an, and Chengdu.

The company focuses on the development of cloud computing and data center data processor chips (DPU chips), and provides DPU network card products and software and hardware integrated solutions equipped with the chip. The company's product DPU is one of the three core computing devices alongside the CPU and GPU. One of the most powerful chips, it is mainly used in data centers, intelligent computing centers, operator 5G, traditional Internet and edge computing. Cloud Leopard Intelligence has successively received investment from leading institutions such as Tencent, Sequoia Capital, NIO Capital, Temasek, Sunshine Insurance, SMIC Juyuan, Shenzhen Venture Capital, CMBC International, Wuyuan Capital, Hong Kong Science and Technology Park and Yicun Capital.

Suzhou Runxin Microelectronics Technology Co., Ltd. was established in February 2021. The company’s founder, Dr. Huo Wujun, graduated from Peking University and the Institute of Theoretical Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, and has long been engaged in scientific research and development of communication technology in North America. Technical Director Zhuo Yonghong, Master, has been engaged in the research and development of chip products for a long time and has rich experience in electronic product marketing.

The company focuses on the research and development and industrialization implementation of video recording chips and development kits. Invented a new groundbreaking 2D-GPU architecture technology, designed and developed several video recording, screen display, DDIC, AR glasses chips and other chips, which significantly reduced the cost of related chips and products and greatly improved performance. It will lead to revolutionary changes in related products and industries.

The pioneering 2D-GPU architecture directly drives the screen without frame buffer, and pioneered the invention of pixel synthesis screen drive technology, which has completely independent intellectual property rights. Based on this GPU architecture, several chips have been developed, including smart cockpit processors, DDIC display chips, AR glasses chips, low-power universal screen display chips, etc., which can significantly reduce power consumption by more than 80% and improve display performance. It also significantly reduces screen display costs and wafer manufacturing process requirements. It can be used in display technologies and products such as mobile phones, TVs, and AR glasses, and will form a market size of 100 billion yuan.