PCB manufacturers talk about the significance and stakes of independent research and development of chips

At the end of the year, the major manufacturers made a self-evaluation of their overall performance in 2015, and also looked forward to the development and trend of the industry in 2016, among which the independent research and development of chips has become the development theme of the major manufacturers.

As we all know, there will be many branches of the chip industry, among which PC chips represented by intel and AMD and mobile terminal chips represented by Qualcomm, Samsung, NVIDIA, Mediatek Technology and Huawei Hisilicon occupy most of the market share, and are also some well-known chip manufacturers that we are familiar with.

In 2015, due to the major manufacturers' mobile phone sales share was greatly reduced, and then the mobile phone star factories gradually fell into the "winter" season, and the major manufacturers turned to the independent research and development of chips.

In China, ZTE, Lenovo and Xiaomi have begun to develop their own chips. Zte is supported by China's National Integrated Circuit Industry Investment Fund, which undoubtedly speeds up the process of ZTE's independent research and development of chips; Before this, Huawei has launched its own Kirin 950 chip, which intends to compete with Qualcomm Snapdragon 820 and Samsung Orion in the international market. In addition, Lenovo is also intensively preparing for the development of independent chips; Xiaomi, which has been standing at the forefront of public opinion, has reached a strategic alliance with chip manufacturer Liancore Technology to launch its own ARM architecture chip in 2016.

In China, it is mainly based on independent research and development of chips, in foreign countries, Apple's A9 processor in mobile phone graphics processing performance is exceeded by Qualcomm, this phenomenon is not allowed as Apple is keen on independent research and development of chips, so Apple also began to design a new chip within the year, while Apple's system and chip are independent research and development, which also makes the combination of hardware and software more perfect. It is also the capital that Apple can occupy a majority of the sales share in the world market.

In the already declining mobile phone market, whether the independent development of chips can become a way out of the predicament of major manufacturers? This still needs time to determine, but one thing can be sure is that no matter which manufacturer independently developed mobile phone chips, the biggest winner still belongs to ARM and google, after all, most chips are based on ARM core and architecture production.

Since ARM launched the first self-developed chip in 1985, this 32-bit high-end microprocessor has quickly occupied the world market, from the simplest embedded devices to handheld devices, ARM's contribution to its contribution can not be ignored. So far, major manufacturers have chosen to independently develop chips, or to conduct independent research and development based on the ARM kernel and architecture.

From the current status of the industry, independent research and development may be a way out, but it may not be able to completely save the entire industry, but no matter when science and technology is the driving force for development, when science and technology are in their own hands, there will be completely their own products.

In terms of the current industry, upstream chip suppliers can fully meet the chip requirements of handheld manufacturers, but as a terminal manufacturer, his independent research and development of their own chips and systems can be better integrated together, in the past two years of Android system research and development, almost every manufacturer has its own Android system. But how to make hardware and software better together, and according to the needs of consumers to change the deployment of hardware and software. From this perspective, independent research and development of chips is very necessary, and not only to better cater to consumers, but also to manufacturers no longer rely on traditional chip suppliers, or can provide a choice and reduce the purchase price, these are undoubtedly the advantages of independent research and development. Of course, there will be certain advantages, and it remains to be seen whether the independently developed chip can reach the level of chips provided by traditional manufacturers.

From the point of view of state and technology

Independent innovation and research and development are indispensable. For example: before the Loongson was not produced, the chips that our computers had were foreign brand chips, when the self-developed Loongson came out, the national security agencies would choose foreign chips? The answer is no, only self-produced is the safest. For example, Linux is an open source operating system, but there are not know how many versions of Linux in the world, China also has its own Linux, which is like the independent research and development of chips, ARM kernel and architecture need to be purchased from ARM, but the manufactured chips are tailored to their own needs.

From many aspects, the independent research and development of chips is still conducive to the development of science and technology, but this requires a mature process, so you can not blindly rush to develop and produce.