On December 14, the first day of oppo Future Technology Conference 2021, the highly anticipated OPPO's first self-developed NPU chip "Mariana MariSilicon X" was officially released. Mariana MariSilicon X is OPPO's self-designed and self-developed image-specific NPU chip, using a 6nm process, the first independent imaging-specific NPU chip on the mobile terminal will be launched in the first quarter of 2022 in OPPO's high-end flagship Find X series.
"Mariana is the deepest trench in the world, representing the hardships of self-developed chips." OPPO founder and CEO Chen Mingyong said at the press conference that it is reported that OPPO set up a chip research and development team as early as 2019, and at the Future Technology Conference at the end of 2019, OPPO announced that it would invest 50 billion yuan in research and development in the next three years.
In Chen Mingyong's view, there is no flagship product of the underlying core technology, just the aerial attic, and Mariana X is only a small step in OPPO's self-developed chip, OPPO will continue to invest resources in the future, with a team of thousands of people, to do self-developed chips in a down-to-earth manner.
Jiang Bo, senior director of OPPO chip products, and Xu Yi, technical director of OPPO XR
After the conference, Jiang Bo, senior director of OPPO chip products, and Xu Yi, technical director of OPPO XR, accepted group interviews from IT Home and other media, and conducted in-depth discussions on topics such as Mariana MariSilicon X and the new generation of smart glasses OPPO Air Glass.
About Mariana MariSilicon X
According to Jiang Bo, senior director of OPPO chip products, he joined OPPO's chip team in 2019, and the concept that is important after coming to OPPO is the pursuit of the ultimate product, which involves the chip team's own products, including some performance indicators, power consumption indicators, and also research and development schedules and progress. The Mariana MariSilicon X chip includes IP, front-end and back-end, all of which are self-developed, which is a very big challenge in itself.
When talking about the success of Mariana MariSilicon X tape, Jiang Bo was very excited, "When the tapes were released, after taking them back, they were quickly whipped, without an hour delay, and sent directly to the laboratory for lighting." "We measured it at the time, then we went out to tape, and that was the decision." After coming back, not only were we more surprised, but even our partners were more surprised, saying that OPPO really did not change? I said no change, a direct hardware on the mass production. Jiang Bo said.
According to OPPO official information, Mariana MariSilicon X is the world's first mobile independent NPU using a 6nm advanced process, with four major technological breakthroughs:
Unprecedented power efficiency for AI computing, industry-leading Ultra HDR, lossless real-time RAW computing, and RGBW Pro that maximizes sensor capabilities. Especially in terms of AI computing energy efficiency, Mariana MariSilicon X adopts the new golden architecture concept for the future AI era - DSA (Domain Specific Architecture), which realizes "dedicated core", and its AI hashrate can reach up to 18TOPS, while the power consumption is controlled to 11.6TOPS per watt, creating an energy efficiency milestone for mobile phone NPU.
In addition, Mariana MariSilicon X also integrates the self-developed MariLumi image processing unit, which further raises the upper limit of mobile phone image HDR, it is reported that the MariLumi image processing unit supports up to 20bit processing bit width, and supports the amazing 20bit Ultra HDR, which is 4 times the current flagship platform HDR capability. In the picture presented instantly, the brightness contrast between the brightest and darkest places reaches 1 million to 1, almost no different from the real feeling of the human eye.
Around the "20bit" this key data, Jiang Bo told the media that the tensor released by Google before is 19bit, OPPO to make a chip, it is going to define it as a new standard for HDR, we think that 20Bit is the new standard for HDR high-end mobile phones in the future. "Today before our Mariana X came out, the high-end was 18Bit, and we think 20Bit is the new standard." Jiang Bo said.
In the interview, Jiang Bo admitted that making chips, time investment and talents are very critical, experienced people are very important, in addition to having experience, the same concept is also the most important. The Mariana chip team, we all came together for the same idea - to make the ultimate product. Jiang Bo said that this is a cool thing, a very remarkable thing. OPPO is a company with a strong commitment to product ideas. Back to our product itself, we hope that through such a type of chip to this image track, computing image to the extreme, to achieve a new standard, if this new standard to the entire industry to contribute, this is good for the entire industry for consumers.
About OPPO Air Glass
In addition to the self-developed chip Mariana MariSilicon X, OPPO has also released a new generation of smart glasses - OPPO Air Glass.
According to the official introduction, OPPO Air Glass adopts a monocular split solution, and the custom frame can be adapted to a variety of optical lenses, regardless of myopia, it can have its own choices, so that daily wear is no longer an obstacle.
In the interview, OPPO XR technical director Xu Yi told IT Home and other media that OPPO has released AR glasses in the past two years of INNO DAY, and in the first year of INNO DAY, we released it as one. At that time, we were more of a know-how, and in the process we understood ar, we were going to do something, and then how it was done. Last year, in the research and development process, we made targeted improvements for the first generation of this wearable experience, and launched the form of our split structure, using mobile phones to provide computing power and batteries, and then at least convenient for users to wear.
This year released OPPO Air Glass, we feel that on the basis of last year is still not satisfied, feel that still can not wear out, we hope to really be able to provide users with a can wear out, really easy to use functional glasses, so in the end OPPO Air Glass chose such a form.
Yi Xu, Technical Director of OPPO XR
"OPPO Air Glass was designed to bring information to users quickly in a very concise way, and eventually we streamlined it to its current form." Xu Yi said that OPPO Air Glass is an auxiliary reality, it is linked with the mobile phone as an accessory to assist the user's information extraction.
On the issue of privacy, Xu Yi said that OPPO Air Glass is not fundamentally different from ordinary mobile phones and will not bring additional privacy. It's actually a display, through some of the sensors on the phone, most of the functions achieved are already on our phones, including navigation, including translation, no privacy on the additional need to worry about.
According to IT House, OPPO Air Glass lenses use thin and light diffracted light waveguide technology to achieve an average eye brightness of 1400 nits. Silicon-based Micro LED displays with a single pixel of just 4 microns can achieve a maximum brightness of 3 million nits. Using the self-developed Spark micro light machine, only the size of a coffee bean, in a tiny space of less than 0.5 cubic centimeters, there are 5 customized high-resolution optical glass, which can effectively improve the light transmittance and reduce stray light interference.
In terms of performance, OPPO Air Glass is equipped with the Snapdragon 4100 wearable device platform, with a portable charging base, and the battery life can reach 10.5 hours. In terms of specific functions, OPPO Air Glass supports weather reminders, schedule reminders, speech inscriptions, real-time translation, and step-by-step navigation. As the third generation of smart glasses launched by OPPO in three years, the birth of OPPO Air Glass marks the true evolution of smart glasses from toys to tools.
At present, OPPO has not yet announced the price of OPPO Air Glass, OPPO Air Glass will launch two colors, namely silver wing and black mirror, together with two custom frame kits, will be released to the Chinese market in the spring of 2022.
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