Xiaomi's Surge chip research and development work since 2014 has encountered "great difficulties" but continues, Xiaomi Group founder, chairman, and CEO Lei Jun said on Weibo today.
"We started working on the Surge chip in 2014 and released the first generation product in 2017, and then we did encounter huge difficulties," Lei said, adding that fans should rest assured that the project is still going on. "I'll tell everyone when there's new progress."
As the most core components of mobile devices, chip research and development has been an important standard to measure the technical strength of manufacturers and the ability to integrate the industry chain.
Lei Jun's remarks countered media reports in March that After the failure of Pinecone Electronics, Xiaomi has put an end to its ambition of application processor (AP) development.
Instead, Xiaomi has turned to develop peripheral components such as Bluetooth and RF chips with lower thresholds to gradually expanded the technological mastery of its own products, the report said.
This also means that Xiaomi has abandoned the development of smartphone processors, and the rumored Surge S2 chip has no possibility of launch, the report said.
Behind the scenes of Xiaomi's thwarted chip-making ambitions
Earlier this year, OPPO also announced its self-developed chip plan, codenamed "Mariana", meaning that this is an extremely difficult task.
Mariana is the deepest trench in the world, and OPPO used it to describe the hardest thing to do "top-level chip".
Based on current information, the Mariana Plan is a separate project internally, and its senior director of product planning is Jiang Bo.
The Mariana plan had already begun last year. The name of the plan appeared in internal documents in November last year, but it is only now being notified to all employees.
OPPO says decision to make chips and will not change relationship with partners
