Tencent hiring for its entry into chip design

After Baidu and Alibaba, Chinese tech giant Tencent is also starting to enter the chip design field.

Tencent is hiring chip architects, chip verification engineers, chip design engineers, and other positions.

In the chip architect position released on July 9, the responsibilities are responsible for AI chip and general processor requirements analysis, responsible for processor chip architecture design.

Job requirements for familiar with AI chip and general processor architecture and circuit design, design companies first-line technical experts are preferred.

Tencent has invested in Shanghai-based AI chip company Suiyuan Technology, which focuses on general AI training and reasoning products, mainly by way of investment.

In March this year, Shenzhen Baoan Bay Tencent Cloud Computing Co was incorporated, with business scope including integrated circuit design, research, and development, triggering speculation that Tencent is ready to participate in chip design.

Based on some business needs, the company has some attempts at chip development in specific areas, such as AI acceleration and video codecs, non-generic chips, Tencent responded at the time.

In 2018, Baidu released Kunlun, a cloud-based full-featured AI chip, which Baidu CEO Robin Li said at the time was China's first cloud-based full-featured AI chip.

Baidu's first-generation Kunlun chip was mass-produced in early 2020 and has been scaled up to deploy more than 20,000 pieces.

The second-generation Kunlun chip has successfully taped out and will be mass-produced in the second half of 2021.

In June this year, Baidu announced the establishment of a new independent company for Kunlun chip business, and Kunlun chip has completed independent financing in March, valued at about RMB 13 billion($2billion).

Alibaba announced in September 2018 into Pingtouge Semiconductor, the main task is to engage in self-research and development of chips and strategic layout.

In September 2019, Alibaba's first self-research chip AI reasoning chip containing light 800 was released.