Huawei mobile phones have surpassed Apple to become the world’s second largest mobile phone manufacturer after Samsung. The most important thing is Huawei's research and development efforts. Photography, communication, and fast charging are all in a leading position. Of course, I think the most critical thing is still Huawei’s Kirin chip. From being controversial to being on par with Qualcomm and Apple. With the Kirin chip, Huawei's mobile phone research and development can not be constrained by chip manufacturers, and it can also deploy its flagship chips in mid- to low-end models. Make products more competitive.
It has made a strong breakthrough under the long-term monopoly of foreign manufacturers such as Texas Instruments (TI) and NXP (NXP), completely rewriting the history of Chinese smart TV manufacturers relying on foreign chips, and monopolizing more than half of the domestic market;
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In the field of video surveillance, it has captured 70% of the global share, helping Hikvision and Dahua become a duopoly in the global security market;
As the main players in H.265 codec technology Contributors and the industry with the most core patents are redefining the world's video technology standards and laying the foundation for 4K/8K ultra-high-definition video;
What created all of this is an extremely low-key company under Huawei— —Hisilicon Semiconductor. In just a dozen years, it has quietly grown from an unknown small chip factory to China's largest semiconductor company. In 2018, it surpassed AMD and entered the top five chip design companies in the world.
Compared to HiSilicon’s low profile, what is even more low-key and even mysterious is its head, He Tingbo. In 2004, Ren Zhengfei gave He Tingbo a "scary" task. This mission later changed Huawei. Many years later, Ren Zhengfei said that Huawei insists on making systems and chips so that "when others cut off our food supply," we have a backup system that can be used.
According to Huawei veteran Dai Hui, Ren Zhengfei originally set a goal for HiSilicon: to recruit 2,000 people and sell 4 billion yuan in exports within three years. As a result, the first goal was quickly achieved, and the second goal was far away.
In fact, in the first three years, HiSilicon achieved almost nothing except small gains in data cards, set-top boxes, and video codec chips. Progress in core mobile phone chips was slow, and it was not until 2009 that the first application processor K3V1 was released. K3 is the mountaineering community’s code for Broad Peak, the third highest peak in the Karakoram and the 12th highest peak in the world.
In the end, K3V1 ended in a disastrous defeat. After repeated testing and improvement, in August 2012, K3V2, which had high hopes from HiSilicon, was born. Known as the world's smallest quad-core A9 processor, this processor uses a 40nm process and was considered a relatively mature product at the time. The first D1 quad-core mobile phone equipped with K3V2 chip was nicknamed "hand warmer" by netizens because of its high heat generation. What's even more terrible is that after K3V2, there was no upgrade for two years, resulting in a series of mobile phones released subsequently, such as D2 and P6, which have always used old chips.
In the market, cynicism and ridicule arose one after another, and the ridicule of "Wannian Haisi" was very popular for a while. Many people even gloated: This is the result of challenging Qualcomm and Apple! Faced with overwhelming doubts from the outside world, HiSilicon was surprisingly quiet inside, with only the lights in the laboratory staying on all night. This light is just for a counterattack.
In early 2014, HiSilicon released the Kirin 910 chip, which for the first time integrated the baseband chip and application processor into a SOC (system-on-chip). In terms of technology, it has also been upgraded to 28nm, tying Qualcomm. Starting from Kirin 910, HiSilicon began a magnificent counterattack in the history of mobile phone chips.
HiSilicon chips, once disliked by his own family, eventually transformed into a key force for Huawei's mobile phones to become the second largest in the world. From P6 to P30, and then from Mate 7 to Mate 20, Huawei mobile phones equipped with HiSilicon chips have continued to become hot products and have repeatedly triggered panic buying around the world.
For this transformation, HiSilicon has gone through all kinds of hardships, sometimes even at the cost of life. When Kirin 910 was released, Wang Jin, the R&D man who tore through Qualcomm's defense line, suddenly fell into a coma and unfortunately passed away. Throughout human history, there have always been some people who were so crazy that they believed they could change the world.
Starting from the first optical communication chip in 1996, He Tingbo embarked on the journey of "siege lion". During this period, he experienced hardships, pain, loneliness and misunderstandings, but never changed his original intention.
He Tingbo’s belief is also the same belief as Wang Jin, who died young, and even Xu Wenwei, Zheng Baoyong, Li Zheng, Gao Ji and other founders of Huawei’s chip industry. What supports them is not the high salary that the outside world envies, but seeing the chips they design make the world around them different bit by bit. It is this belief in never being satisfied and changing the world that has finally made HiSilicon what it is today: in the semiconductor field that outsiders think the Chinese cannot do well, it has carved a bloody path and continues to create history.
My opinion: With the previous generation Kirin 970, after the sales profits of Huawei’s P series and Mate series gradually exceed the R&D costs, Huawei can deploy the flagship 970 on mid-range mobile phones such as Honor Play to make it more powerful. competitiveness. Moreover, Huawei's self-developed Kirin chips have unique advantages in terms of layout and modifications, such as the NPU processing unit and GPU Turbo of Kirin 970. In 2019, it was Kirin 980’s turn to show off its capabilities. Honor 20 series, Huawei nova5 series, tablet M6 series, etc. are very worth looking forward to.