Counting up, 7 years have passed since the release of Xiaomi's surging S1 chip in 2017. During this period, the surging S2 could not be released due to various reasons.
This is too scary! You know, the self-development of system-level SoC chips is an extremely difficult task.
How real is Xiaomi's SoC chip?
As we all know, SoC mobile phone chips are the culmination of current technology, with high technology content, high research and development difficulty, and high patent barriers.
Looking at the world, only Huawei, Qualcomm, and MediaTek have this level, even if it is the super giant Apple, his baseband chip is still plug-in, and it can't be built-in at all.
Qualcomm began making chips in 1995 and burned $66 billion, or about 470 billion yuan, before and after. It still maintains an annual R&D investment of 5.6 billion US dollars, or about 40 billion yuan.
Huawei HiSilicon has spent hundreds of billions of dollars on self-developed chips, and some people within Huawei say that "HiSilicon lost a Xiaomi".
OPPO also held the belief of "grinding a sword in ten years", recruited more than 2,000 R&D personnel, established ZEKU to make chips, burned 500 billion in three years, and finally disbanded.
Looking back at Xiaomi, from 2020 to 2022, Xiaomi's total R&D investment is 38.7 billion, which also includes the "gold-swallowing beast" of Xiaomi cars.
The research and development of high-end chips is a long-term project, which not only requires a large number of talents and consumes huge funds, but also requires experience and technology accumulation. Huawei HiSilicon has also been precipitated for more than ten years before it emerged, Xiaomi wants to impact Huawei and Qualcomm through research and development in the past few years?
Qualcomm does not allow Xiaomi to develop its own SoC chips
Xiaomi has always been favored by Qualcomm in the United States, and the latest Snapdragon chips must be given priority to Xiaomi mobile phones.
Imagine, if Xiaomi succeeds in developing SoC chips, it will be a shock to the mainstream Qualcomm Snapdragon chips on the market, will Qualcomm obstruct it in various ways? Or will it give up its own interests to let Xiaomi develop its own SoC chips? After all, Qualcomm is also afraid of the emergence of a second HiSilicon.
In fact, as long as the United States puts pressure on Xiaomi and cuts off the supply of chips, this will undoubtedly be fatal to Xiaomi, which has most of its business composed of mobile phones.
Therefore, Xiaomi currently does not have the foundation and ability to develop high-end mobile phone chips. With Xiaomi's current investment, it may be able to exert force in AI/ISP and other chips with lower difficulty, which should be the limit, but the Soc chip is still not very realistic.
How does Xiaomi quickly realize chip self-development?
Having said that, if Xiaomi wants to achieve self-development of high-end chips in the short term, is there a way?
The first, Qualcomm chips, Xiaomi OEM, and then claimed to be self-developed chips. However, I still believe in Mr. Lei, this is unlikely.
Second, Qualcomm and Xiaomi jointly design chips, and Qualcomm accounts for the majority of profits. This is similar to the image system jointly designed by Leica and Xiaomi on Xiaomi 13, which is a chip exclusively customized by Xiaomi to Qualcomm.
I wonder what Xiaomi will choose, or is there a better alternative?
Finally, I would like to say that doing technology and scientific research is about seeking truth from facts, and any falsehoods and lies will eventually be exposed. We encourage China's science and technology enterprises to continue to explore, and if China wants to achieve the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation, it must also master a large number of core technologies in the field of science and technology.