From the pioneer of dual-camera mobile phones to edge vision AI solutions, see the transformation of Huajing Technology

Jiwei.com reported that it is called the "pioneer" of dual-camera solutions for mobile phones!

It provides image processing hardware and software solutions for a number of popular mobile phones at home and abroad!

Now it is shining in the field of edge vision AI and has won the favor of Amazon, Intel, Microsoft and others!

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Yes, people in the mobile phone industry can guess it right away - "Altek Technology". As a behind-the-scenes hero, Altek Technology has been silently providing support services behind the industry chain over the years, and rarely comes to the front to introduce itself.

With the increasing maturity of the smartphone industry chain and the new scenarios and product changes brought about by 5G and AI, Huajing Technology is also making strategic arrangements towards the larger IoT field.

Recently, Jiwei.com visited Huajing Technology's Shanghai subsidiary "Juhaojing Imaging Technology", where they disclosed their new strategy and product planning to the public for the first time.

Visual imaging expert, the originator of dual-camera solutions for mobile phones

It is no exaggeration to call Huajing Technology a "visual imaging expert"!

Founded in 1996, Huajing Technology has been focusing on the research and development and manufacturing of digital imaging products since its inception. It is not only a professional visual imaging expert, but also one of the few companies in China with core chip development capabilities. Over the years, Huajing Technology has been committed to continuous transformation and upgrading, and now provides a full range of solutions including edge vision AI, 3D sensing, and dual-lens/triple-camera optical zoom camera modules.

As a comprehensive visual technology provider, Huajing Technology has been committed to developing its own chips to build core competitiveness since its founding, such as early digital cameras, and later automotive electronics ADAS systems and mobile phone dedicated imaging chips ISP, to recent mobile phone collaborative chips and ultra-low power AI chips, 3D sensing depth chips, etc. It can be said that self-developed chips have always been the core competitiveness of Huajing Technology.

In the early days of digital cameras, Huajing Technology was one of the world's largest digital camera ODM suppliers and the only company with self-developed image processing (ISP) chips. All cameras it produced use image processing chips independently developed by Huajing Technology. It was not until 2012 that Huajing Technology separated its image processing chip department and established Juhaojing Imaging Technology, a fabless IC design company that focuses on digital image solutions for various industries.

In recent years, one of the most commendable areas in the industry is that their solutions have opened the era of "dual-camera mobile phones" and the current triple-camera optical zoom solutions.

Many people still remember that as early as 2014, HTC launched the One M8, which was the industry's first dual-lens Duo depth camera, which could detect the distance of the scene when shooting, so as to change the depth of field of the photo by changing the focus point of the photo. It is worth mentioning that Huajing Technology provided the dual-camera solution for this HTC phone.

More than a decade of professional experience in the field of digital cameras has undoubtedly laid a solid foundation for Huajing Technology to enter the smartphone market. In 2015, Huajing Technology became a partner of Huawei and provided mobile phone dedicated imaging chip ISP for Huawei P7 and P8, and later provided the first mobile phone collaborative (DSP) chip based on deep learning for Huawei P9.

Taking advantage of the transformation, expanding edge vision AI and making it flourish again

The success in the smartphone field has also allowed Huajing Technology to see the huge market for vision in edge computing in the upcoming 5G and AI era.

Especially in the past two years, domestic AI vision companies have sprung up like mushrooms after a rain, and Huajing Technology has also taken advantage of this opportunity to start early layout in the field of edge vision AI.

Thanks to the application prospects of visual AI in security, medical care, unmanned driving, new retail, smart manufacturing and other fields, Huajing Technology has begun to actively expand the edge vision AI market, mainly to solve the three major difficulties of visual applications in edge computing: long latency, high cloud connection costs, and poor security and confidentiality.

At present, Huajing Technology has launched edge vision AI chips and commercial and smart home AI security systems with high resolution and intelligent monitoring features. Through advanced AI human recognition, object detection, event detection and motion recognition, data can be transmitted to edge devices for intelligent analysis and then issued warnings. These solutions reduce the bandwidth demand for cloud data transmission and speed up the response speed. They are suitable for diversified application scenarios, such as ordering in restaurants, shopping in stores, registering in hospitals, etc., which can greatly reduce manpower requirements and costs.

In order to push edge vision AI to industrial applications faster, Huajing Technology has also launched extensive cooperation with many international manufacturers. Among them, Huajing Technology has cooperated with Qualcomm to develop commercial surveillance network cameras, which are not only equipped with QCS603 chipsets, which can quickly identify people and objects in the area, but also support Amazon KVS services in the Amazon cloud and Alibaba Cloud in China, allowing users to easily access and process images and perform edge computing and analysis in an efficient and secure cloud background processing mode.

In addition, Huajing Technology has also worked with Microsoft to develop the Azure IoT Edge Vision AI developer kit. By combining Qualcomm® AI Engine, it can enhance Azure machine learning services, provide ultra-high-resolution image quality, and meet the optimization needs of various applications for edge vision AI processing capabilities.

Quick response, providing complete solutions from chip to algorithm

According to Xia Zuyu, general manager of Huajing Technology's mainland subsidiary, Juhaojing Imaging Technology (Shanghai), as of now, Huajing Technology's independently developed chips have shipped more than 100 million units, including image processing chips and collaborative chips.

The chip industry has its own fixed cycle. Under normal circumstances, it takes at least two and a half to three years of technical development to make an original chip. However, as one of Huajing Technology's important product lines, the mobile phone collaborative chip has the advantage of only 9 to 12 months to develop a collaborative chip, greatly reducing R&D costs and cycles.

Of course, with the rapid development of emerging technologies such as automotive electronics, IoT, AI and 5G, Huajing Technology has also been constantly transforming to follow the pace of market development, developing and launching chips that meet market demand. Among them, in the field of automotive electronics, imaging applications will become one of the important development projects of the Internet of Vehicles. Huajing Technology has more than 10 years of experience in developing automotive imaging applications and will actively deploy in the Internet of Vehicles market, and will continue to develop intelligent vehicle systems and advanced driver assistance systems based on IoT intelligent Internet of Vehicles imaging solutions.

In the field of 3D sensing, thanks to Huajing Technology's many years of experience in 3D sensing technology, it can provide a system integration solution from 3D sensing modules to chips to software and hardware. Among them, Huajing Technology's 3D depth sensing chip AL 6100 combined with infrared light control can greatly improve the quality of image depth information and instruction cycle; at the same time, the AI ​​face recognition module jointly created by Huajing Technology and CyberLink Technology uses Huajing Technology's 3D depth sensing solution and imports FaceMe® real-time face recognition service, which can provide excellent face protection detection functions for applications under various environments and light source conditions. In addition, 3D sensing solutions can also be used in common functions of AR/VR and robots, such as gesture recognition, SLAM, obstacle avoidance, etc.

In the field of AI, Huajing Technology is developing ultra-low power AI chips, which are expected to be launched in the second half of this year. The chips will be mainly used in the Internet of Things and next-generation notebook computer markets.

Summarize

The successive outbreaks of the ZTE and Huawei incidents have undoubtedly made China highly aware of the importance of independent research and development of chips. For any chip company, developing a small chip requires not only strong technical strength, but also huge R&D investment and long-term experience accumulation, which is more difficult than you can imagine. As a chip company that has long focused on the field of visual imaging, Huajing Technology has been able to grow and develop in the fiercely competitive chip industry and gain the trust of top global customers. Naturally, this is inseparable from the company's nearly 20 years of R&D experience accumulation and successful market testing.