According to industry chain sourcesAccording to industry chain sources

The smartphone Application processor (AP) developed by OPPO has been officially released and will be manufactured by TSMC 4nm process, with 5G baseband chips attached to MediaTek. It is expected to be in mass production by the end of 2023 and be available in 2024.

Especially at a time when the smartphone market has become saturated and product homogenization is becoming more and more serious, self-developed chips can not only better help manufacturers solve the pain points that users care about, but also bring more differentiation. at the same time, it can also better achieve the coordination of software and hardware, and enhance the user experience.

OPPO CEO Chen Mingyong once said in an internal speech: & if ldquo;OPPO wants to become a global technology company, the future product is not just mobile phones, it will be a set of solutions for people-centered intelligent life scenarios, which requires us to have our own capabilities on the underlying hardware.The most important thing is to make a good chip.The most important thing is to make a good chip.

Obviously, for OPPO, to do self-research chip is not on a whim, but through long-term industry insight and judgment, just decided to long-term power chip, hoping to empower products and users with underlying technology.

Obviously, for OPPO, to do self-research chip is not on a whim, but through long-term industry insight and judgment, just decided to long-term power chip, hoping to empower products and users with underlying technology.

In December 2021, OPPO successfully launched the first self-developed chip Mariana MariSilicon X, which is a powerful image NPU chip, which is carried by many flagship mobile phones of OPPO to enhance & ldquo; computing image & rdquo; capability.

In December 2022 OPPO launched the second self-developed chip MariSilicon Y which is a flagship Bluetooth audio SoC chip aiming at the field of ldquo; computing audio & rdquo; which can bring a significant improvement in sound quality for Bluetooth audio devices.

It is understood thatOPPO established a chip research and development subsidiary, mdash;— Zuku Technology (Shanghai) Co., Ltd., in 2019, and set up a chip research and development team of up to 2000 people.The determination and investment in self-research chip is very large.

Obviously, to set up such a huge chip research and development team, the goal of OPPO is not only the peripheral chips such as image NPU and Bluetooth audio SoC, but also the smartphone SoC chip must be the key that OPPO hopes to break through.

However, it should be pointed out that for smartphone SoC, communication baseband chip is an unavoidable hurdle.

For OPPO, it is very difficult to develop a baseband chip independently, and if you want to use it in a smartphone, in addition to supporting 5G, it is also necessary to be compatible with 2Gap, 3G, 4G technology, which involves a large number of communication technology research and development and patent threshold. In addition, it will also involve field testing with global operators. This is not only a huge investment, but also a very long investment cycle.

Although OPPO has increased its R & D investment in the field of communication technology in recent years, the number of related patents has also increased rapidly. According to a report released by IPlytics, a German patent information analysis institution, as of February 2021, OPPP ranked ninth in the ranking of necessary patent claims for 5G standards in the world, accounting for 3.47 per cent.

But even so, there is still a huge gap between OPPO's technology accumulation in the communication field and Huawei, Qualcomm and other leading manufacturers. Even if we can successfully develop a self-developed 5G baseband chip, I am afraid there will be a big gap in performance, and it may also face patent constraints from head communication technology manufacturers.

therefore, Even if OPPO is going to develop its own baseband chip, it is more likely that it will first choose to cooperate with existing 5G baseband technology manufacturers.

You know, even better than Apple, it has suffered many twists and turns in its own baseband chip, which was not accelerated until it acquired Intel's mobile phone baseband chip business in 2019, but Apple is still a plug-in Qualcomm 5G baseband chip.

For OPPO's self-developed mobile phone AP, if you want to choose a third-party 5G baseband chip, because Huawei's own chip manufacturing is restricted by US sanctions, then the only choice is Qualcomm, MediaTek, Ziguang Zhanrui and Samsung.

In terms of performance, the 5G baseband chips of Qualcomm and MediaTek are better. If you consider the cost, choose MediaTek's baseband chip, the performance-to-price ratio is higher.

Although OPPO and Huawei announced a global patent cross-licensing agreement in December 2022, the agreement covers basic patents for cellular communications standards, including the 5G standard.

Based on this news, some netizens thought that OPPO might choose Huawei's 5G baseband chip technology license to do its own 5G baseband chip.

However, given the ongoing US sanctions on Huawei and the continued crackdown on China's semiconductor industry, OPPO is unlikely to try to do so.

So, this is really just a basic patent cross-license for cellular communication standards. Of course, with patent cross-licensing, even if OPPO develops its own baseband chips, it will reduce patent disputes.

As for OPPO's self-developed AP kernel, it is likely that Arm's CPU and GPU kernel IP will be selected, and then it is possible to integrate MariSilicon X and MariSilicon Y kernel IP, which have been successfully launched before. after all, the cost of a single chip is lower than that of multi-chips, and it takes up less space for the mobile phone motherboard, which helps to improve battery capacity and battery life.

As for the process of AP, it has been rumored that it is using 6nm process, and I think it is relatively reliable to use 4nm. On the one hand, because OPPO has the successful experience of 6nm process chip, the risk of chip failure is relatively low; on the other hand, the performance-to-price ratio of 6nm is significantly higher than that of 4nm, even if the loss of failure is relatively small. Another factor is that, in view of the current US crackdown on China's semiconductor industry, not choosing the current cutting-edge process will to some extent avoid stimulating the sensitive nerves of the United States.