Since Xiaomi embarked on the chip journey in 2014, it has been 5 years since Xiaomi made the core.
After the frustration of the Surge chip, Xiaomi began to bet on multiple parties. The investment and self-research were carried out simultaneously, and the dual-engine mobile phone and AIoT started.
At the beginning of spring 2020, we will review the five years of Xiaomi's core making to see where they will go in the future.
Blockbuster Surge Chip
On October 16, 2014, Xiaomi and Lianhe joined forces to quietly open a wholly-owned subsidiary called Pinecone Electronics; on July 6, 2015, the chip hardware design was completed, the first tape-out, and chip samples in September Back to the film, at 1:48 am on September 24th, Xiaomi Pinecone made the first call.
After 28 months, Surge S1 was officially launched.
At the moment of Penggai on February 28, 2017, Xiaomi officially released its first-generation mobile phone chip "Surge S1".
This move has also become the fourth mobile phone manufacturer with independent research and development of mobile phone chips after Apple, Samsung, and Huawei.
Indeed, if you want to be a great company, the lifeblood of chips must be in your hands to be insured.
Surge S1 uses an eight-core 64-bit processor and has a 28nm process. It includes four 2.2GHz A53 cores and four 1.4GHz A53 cores. The GPU is a quad-core Mali-T860. Because the image compression technology is also added, memory bandwidth can be reduced.
However, due to too many defects in this processor, the sales of Xiaomi Mi 5C equipped with this processor is not very good. After that, the Pengpa processor never appeared in Xiaomi phones.
Since the Surge S1, the industry is quite looking forward to the next generation of products. In November 2018, the Surge S2 reported five consecutive failed tapeouts. It also said that it might be used on drones. The lack of release has also made everyone guess Whether Xiaomi has abandoned research and development.
However, according to Xiaomi executives, the Penpgai chip is still being made, and it is worth looking forward to. The difficulty of the mobile phone SoC chip is beyond imagination, the technical requirements are very high, and the positioning of the Surge S2 is a high-end processor, which is more difficult.
After entering the era of 5G explosion, the market has put forward higher requirements for SoC baseband, which is extremely unfriendly to new players. Although there is very little news about Pengpa chips in these two years, chip companies invested by Xiaomi have sprung up.
Investment
The chip companies invested by Xiaomi mainly include Jingchen Co., Ltd., Eslite Technology, Stone Technology, Juchen Co., Core Micro, Wuxi Haoda, Hengxuan Technology, Ankai Micro, and Fangbang. These companies each have their own advantages, such as Espressif's IoT Wi-Fi MCU communication chip, Jingchen's multimedia intelligent terminal SoC chip, and so on.
The chip companies invested by Xiaomi are invested by Hubei Xiaomi Changjiang Industry Fund Partnership (Limited Partnership), which is owned by Xiaomi. Xiaomi has also invested in 6 new chip companies, which are Xi'an Zhipoly Microelectronics, Zhuhai Yiwei Semiconductor, and Suzhou. Sutong Semiconductor, Ankai Microelectronics, Diao Microelectronics, Guangxi Xinbaite Microelectronics.
On September 1, 2019, after the equity change of Xi'an Zhipoly Crystal Microelectronics Investors, a Hubei Xiaomi Yangtze River Industrial Fund Partnership (Limited Partnership) was added, with a shareholding of 9.26%.
Xi'an Zhipoly Microelectronics was established in 2012. The company focuses on the research and development of programmable logic circuit device technology and provides system manufacturers with highly integrated and cost-effective programmable logic devices, programmable logic device IP cores, and related software designs. Tools and system solutions.
At present, mass production of density FPGAs in 55nm and 40nm processes has been achieved, and integrated solutions such as embedded Flash and SDRAM have been targeted. As of 2018, 2KK chips have been shipped in batches.
On October 31, 2019, Xiaomi participated in the investment in a round B financing of a micro-semiconductor in Zhuhai, with a stake of 7.41%.
A micro-semiconductor is an innovative high-tech enterprise mainly based on robotics technology and large-scale highly integrated digital-analog mixed chip design.
The company was founded in 2014. It is the world's first SoC chip design company dedicated to robot motion control and synchronous positioning and navigation (SLAM). It is the only company in the industry that can provide inertial navigation (ESLAM), laser (Lidar SLAM) navigation and visual navigation (VSLAM) supplier of chips, algorithms and complete solutions.
On November 19, 2019, Xiaomi invested in Suzhou Sutong Semiconductor, the specific amount of which was not disclosed.
Suzhou Sutong Semiconductor Technology Co., Ltd. was established in 2018, focusing on the development of next-generation wireless system-on-chip fabless semiconductors.
On November 4, 2019, Xiaomi invested in Ankai Microelectronics Technology (Guangzhou) Co., Ltd., subscribed for 737,000 yuan, and held a 4.33% shareholding.
Ankai Microelectronics was founded in 2000. Its main products currently include core chips for IoT cameras, Bluetooth chips, and application processor chips.
On January 16, 2020, SkyEye revealed that Xiaomi had invested in Diao Microelectronics, a chip company, and its shareholding ratio was not disclosed.
Diao Microelectronics Co., Ltd. is a mixed analog semiconductor IC design and manufacturing company specializing in providing high-performance analog mixed-signal semiconductor industry solutions.
Diao Microelectronics' leading products include: LED lighting semiconductor components, USB2.0/3.0 products, ultra-low power consumption, and low noise amplifiers, high-efficiency power management electronic semiconductor components, and electronic components used in various analog audio /video.
On January 21, 2020, after the change of the industry and commerce of Guangxi Xinbaite Microelectronics, Hubei Xiaomi Changjiang Industrial Fund Partnership (Limited Partnership) was added, with a shareholding ratio of 4.333%.
Guangxi Xinbaite Microelectronics was established in 2018. The company focuses on the increasingly important wireless communication RF device industry and develops products in 5G/WiFi/IOT and other directions. The team has a variety of processes such as CMOS/SOI/GaAs/SiGe/GaN, And the design capabilities of PA/LNA/SW/FEM/Filter/MEMS and other devices.
Overall, Xiaomi's investment strategy is focused on strengthening its own business. The focus is on whether it can drive Xiaomi's business development, and it focuses more on investments in upstream core supply chain companies or technology companies to continuously strengthen its business. The right to speak in the supply chain.
AIoT new track
Many organizations and mobile phone shipment data show that the global mobile phone market has continued to decline since last year due to the prolonged replacement cycle of mobile phones, rising prices, and increasing political and economic uncertainty in many markets.
Xiaomi, who always loves combo boxing, naturally cannot hang on the tree of the mobile phone chip. In addition to the investment, Xiaomi also fancy the AIoT track, and the rapid advancement of artificial intelligence in recent years has made AIoT one of the hottest areas of the moment.
The AIoT chip industry has the same huge market space as smartphones. Internet giant BAT, mobile phone manufacturer Huawei, and some traditional home appliance companies have begun to enter the market.
In fact, as early as 2013, Xiaomi began to deploy IoT. With the MIUI system, after nearly 6 years of accumulation and accumulation, Xiaomi has harvested hundreds of millions of users and accumulated massive data. It can be said that Xiaomi has already established a foothold in the IoT field.
From IoT to AIoT is a process of quantitative change to qualitative change, from graphic interactions to voice/visual interactions; from individuals to the whole; from interconnections to human-centric intelligent services. Xiaomi is also deeply integrating AI and IoT capabilities.
At the Xiaomi Developer Conference in November last year, the main theme was 5G + AIoT. Lei Jun said that as a leader in smart life, Xiaomi will not only work on 5G terminals, but also plan to launch more than 10 5G mobile phones in 2020.
As the 5G era is approaching, the mobile phone + AIoT dual engine will help Xiaomi enter a new fast-track fast-track development.
The development from IoT to AIoT is a trend that Xiaomi has accumulated over the years, not just a future plan.
In terms of software and hardware, Xiaomi has formed a scale advantage. From the perspective of the entire industry, Xiaomi is in the next banner. Big Fish Semiconductor is the best proof of Xiaomi's efforts in AIoT.
In April 2019, the team of Pinecone Electronics, a wholly owned subsidiary of Xiaomi, split up to form a new company, Nanjing Big Fish Semiconductor.
Nanjing Big Fish Semiconductor will focus on the technology research and development of AI and IoT chips and solutions in the semiconductor field, while Pinecone will continue to focus on mobile phone SoC chips and AI chip development.
At the World Semiconductor Conference 2019 in May last year, Big Fish Semiconductor joined hands with Pinto to launch the world ’s first NB-IoT dual-mode chip with built-in GPS/Beidou for the Internet of Things Big Fish U1.
Big Fish Semiconductor integrates GPS and PA at the same time on a die. It is highly integrated to create an ultra-small NB module, which has both high energy efficiency and cost-effective low power consumption. It is safe with its AP + CP + SP three-core architecture design. Guarantee, powerful computing power, sufficient storage space, low BOM cost design, and flexible customization features.
In general, it is a product-level SoC with complete software and hardware, which can meet the reliable requirements of low-power positioning in the era of the Internet of Things.
Big Fish Semiconductor also does video transmission. Its drone video transmission kit is a high-definition video transmission system based on Big Fish Semiconductor's self-developed SoC chip. It uses advanced SDR technology to achieve 20 kilometers of high-definition stable video transmission. It can reach 40 kilometers.
It adopts the product form of sky-end PCBA and ground-end remote control with screen. It has abundant external interfaces and can be widely used in the image transmission applications of fixed-wing and multi-rotor drones, unmanned vehicles, unmanned ships and robots.
After the split, Xiaomi gave the Big Fish semiconductor team a controlling position and encouraged independent financing. It is the latest exploration of Xiaomi's continuous development in the deepwater area in the field of research and development technology investment, which is intended to enable it to develop faster and better and accelerate the AIoT chip. Research and development.
On November 15, 2019, Big Fish Semiconductor Round A received an investment from Lanjing Capital. The specific amount was not disclosed. From mobile phones to IoT, Xiaomi has obvious first-mover advantages in the fields of smart home and wear.
On the highly competitive track of AIoT, as a team that has successfully created product-level chips, Big Fish Semiconductor has its natural advantages and unique genes in how to quickly commercialize this industry pain point.
If based on its own Big Fish U1 chip and investment in upstream supply chain chip companies, coupled with financing support, Xiaomi can consolidate its position in the AIoT market, and it will be crucial to get stuck in the next trillion track.
For Xiaomi, a new journey is starting.
