Xiaomi's path of chip self-development

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Material source | The Internet

Coordinating editor | My fruit is so cute

Mention Xiaomi mobile phone , Many early Android fans basically participated in the rush purchase of that year ,2012 In February, there were a total of Xiaomi mobile phones in the telecom version 90 Ten thousand people rushed to buy , Then half an hour 15 Ten thousand units are directly booked , From that spring , Xiaomi mobile phone and MIUI Then ushered in their own spring .

Time to go back to 2022 year , Recently, Xiaomi official announced the self-developed “ Surging G1” Battery management chip , And will be in 7 month 4 At seven o'clock on the evening of the th in Xiaomi 12S The series press conference ushered in its debut , Previous surging series P1( Self developed charging chip )、 Surging C1( Self developed ISP Professional video mobile phone chip ) And surging S1( nucleus 64 Bit processor ) It forms the preliminary chip layout of Xiaomi , Now a new battery management chip has been added “ Surging G1”. Now let's sort out this family “ get both praise and blame ” The company's path of self-development chip .

About millet pinecone Electronics

In fact as early as 2014 year 10 Xiaomi pinecone Electronics was established , Until three years later 2017 year 2 On the last day of the month, Xiaomi 5C It's the first time to carry surging S1 Just to meet everyone , Surging S1 From project initiation to mass production , after 28 months , It is the first medium and high-end chip developed by Xiaomi .

At the beginning of release, many evaluation websites have made detailed comparisons to us , At that time, pinecones did not choose the most advanced 14nm Process , Using TSMC 28nm HPC+, The reason is that it was established earlier 28nm Also in line with expectations , And once the new process is launched, the production capacity will be divided up , It's hard to get .

CPU Choose the more conventional one with the main energy consumption ratio Cortex-A53 framework , And adopted big.LITTLE Big and small core design , By four high frequency Cortex-A53 The core + Four low frequency Cortex-A53 Core structure ,GPU Then chose. ARM Of Mail-T860 MP4; Especially the camera dual 14bit Of ISP Support 3600 10 megapixel dual camera , At that time, the middle and low-end market was still very bright .

Of course, it's hard to eat crabs for the first time , So surging S1 It's also controversial , Many evaluations show that Xiaomi S1 Real experience “ range ”, Popular games in those days 《NBA 2k》 At the same price, Xiaolong 625 The mobile phone can still keep 30 Around the frame , And when it comes to surging S1 After the temperature of the mobile phone rises , Chip frequency locking is serious , The game frame rate fell to single digits . In this way CPU Obviously, it can't meet the entertainment experience of the public , therefore S1 There are successes and failures .

thereafter , millet S1 Your debut is not ideal , Also let surging S2 And there is no following , We have developed a new one SoC It's not just technology accumulation , There are also many problems such as patents and technical barriers , But pinecones turned to development ISP Affect chip C1 And battery management chip P1, Surging C1 Have filter configuration , High and low frequency signal parallel processing can be realized , The efficiency of signal processing is improved 100%, With self-developed algorithm , The image will be 3A(AF、AWB、AE) The performance has been greatly improved . Surging C1 Better auto focus (AF), Greatly enhance the dark light 、 Focusing ability of small objects and flat areas ; More precise white balance (AWB) , Complex mixed ambient light is also fully steered ; And more accurate automatic exposure (AE) Strategy .

Surging C1 Carried in Xiaomi MIX FOLD On , The main camera is 1 Megapixel ultra clear lens , The other two are telephoto lens and ultra wide angle lens , Three shots of blessing with self-developed “ Surging C1” It's really popular on the Internet for a while .

IoT And special chips may be the way out

S1 The unsatisfactory pinecone electronic surging series so far has no following , It was last April , Xiaomi group announced the organizational structure adjustment , Pineal electronic recombination , Some teams joined Nanjing big fish semiconductor , Team ownership 75% Independent financing and development , And focus on AI and IoT And other chip R & D and manufacturing . There is also a lot of speculation from the outside that Xiaomi is internally laissez faire “ Since the research SoC” project , In order to attract external investment and opportunities , They are also constantly selling shares . And big fish semiconductor mainly focuses on IOT chips , It just fits the Xiaomi ecological chain , The future is 5G The age of the Internet of things , Xiaomi gave up not making money or shouting “ Hard bone ”, Instead, enter AI and IoT Blue ocean of , It must also be a deliberate strategy .

Just as everyone is being banned by Huawei and apple Iphone14 When sighing at the news of rising prices , all-new “ Surging G1” Battery management chip , Start with endurance , Directly created a new intelligent battery management system . According to official information , The team transplanted the concept of battery management system, which originally belongs to the field of electric vehicles, to mobile phones , For millet 12S Ultra The fast charging field complements the last piece of the puzzle .G1 and P1 Double blessing has made great efforts in wired fast charging and wireless fast charging , Let Xiaomi 12S Ultra It has become the longest endurance digital flagship mobile phone in the history of Xiaomi .

Of course, how to experience the real machine still needs to be tested by major evaluation studios , But with the technology accumulation of previous generations of chips , Surely the new chip will be greatly improved .

Orders for domestic mobile phones fell ( Smart phones reproduce the rumors of cutting orders , Industrial structural challenges are coming ?) And car companies everywhere “ Lack of core and less power ”( The chip market is hot and cold ： Consumption level IC Cut a bill , Car gauge level IC Still in short supply ) In the case of , Self developed chips in the field of segmentation may be a good way out , No matter what , Continuous new attempts and technological accumulation will lead to continuous progress , Let's look forward to the day when domestic self-developed chips bloom .

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