Author | Xiao is not leaving
AI is emerging, and the future is here.
With the rapid expansion of various AI models and application scenarios, the blue planet under our feet has begun to enter the AI era.
After a year of planning, the fixed increase plan of Jingjiawei (300474.SZ), a leading domestic GPU graphics display, with a total amount of 3.974 billion, has finally been approved for registration and entered the implementation stage.
This time, Jingjiawei is aiming at the AI computing chip market.
According to the announcement released by Jingjiawei, the nearly 4 billion funds to be raised this time will be mainly used for the independent development of high-performance GPU chips for applications in the field of image processing and computing, as well as the research and development of advanced architecture of general-purpose GPU.
As we all know, the foundation of AI is computing power, whether it is the training and inference of large AI models, or various applications, they need strong computing power.
Jingjiawei's fixed increase in the layout of higher-performance general-purpose GPU chips is an inevitable choice in the AI era.
According to the company, through this fixed increase, Jingjiawei will continue to deepen the existing GPU product system, enhance product competitiveness, further expand the application direction of GPU products, improve product layout, and consolidate the company's leading position and innovation ability in the domestic GPU market.
In fact, for Jing Jiawei, this matter is not only a matter of victory or defeat, but also a matter of life and death in the future.
Domestic GPU, from "0" to "1"
Before the text begins, let's start with a little popular science.
GPU, also known as display core, visual processor, and display chip, is a microprocessor that specializes in image and graphics-related operations.
Just as the West cannot afford to lose Jerusalem, the IT industry cannot afford to live without GPUs.
However, GPU is one of the areas where the mainland has been stuck by Europe and the United States for a long time.
Due to the high capital and technical barriers to the R&D and production of GPUs, the global GPU market has long been monopolized by a few foreign companies such as NVIDIA and AMD.
For example, in the past, the domestic military sector relied heavily on the graphics processing chip M9 launched by ATI. However, it is extremely difficult to purchase M9 chips in the market, and domestic companies, including Jingjiawei, can only use indirect procurement, a large number of reserves, and phased use to ensure supply.
That didn't change until 2014.
At that time, Jingjiawei, which was established in 2006, developed the first generation of graphics processing chip JM5400 with independent intellectual property rights, filling the domestic gap. Subsequently, the ATI M96 chip was replaced in the special field, which established Jingjiawei's leading position in the domestic graphic display and control field.
In 2016, Jingjiawei was listed as a leading GPU company in China.
With the help of the capital market, Jingjia Micro Investment Research has accelerated, and gradually narrowed the gap between chip performance and multinational oligopoly enterprises under the premise of full autonomy of technology and industrial chain.
From 2016 to 2023, Jingjiawei's R&D investment will be 50.1353 million yuan, 58.0372 million yuan, 80.7061 million yuan, 117 million yuan, 177 million yuan, 253 million yuan, 312 million yuan, and 331 million yuan, showing a stable and rapid growth trend.
Correspondingly, in 2018, Jingjiawei launched the JM7 series GPU, which provides a strong guarantee for the aviation intelligence of the mainland's special industries.
In 2021, Jingjiawei came up with a blockbuster new product that reached the high-performance field - JM9 series GPU. Relying on a fully independent supply chain, the product achieves a performance close to that of low-end graphics cards from overseas mainstream chip manufacturers, and has certain advantages in terms of energy consumption.
In the civilian market, Jingjiawei gave full play to the first-mover advantage of the independent information innovation market, and completed the adaptation with the mainstream domestic CPU and operating system during the JM7 series period.
With the leapfrog improvement of product performance, the JM9 series has been widely used in the civilian field.
It is understood that the two products of the JM9 series have completed the adaptation of GIS, media processing, CAD-aided design, games, virtualization and other complex domestic applications, which can meet the needs of domestic computers in high-performance display and artificial intelligence computing to a certain extent.
Nearly 4 billion fixed increments to create high-performance general-purpose GPUs
With the advancement of technology and the development of the times, GPUs are not limited to traditional image processing, but are increasingly taking on the function of providing computing power.
Currently, there are two main branches of GPUs.
One is the traditional graphics GPU, which focuses on image processing functions and is used on the computer side, which is responsible for the display and processing of images. The current key application areas of Jingjia micro products are here.
The other is the general-purpose GPU, which plays a central role in the inference and training of large models, especially in the concept of AI computing chips, also known as GPGPU, and downstream applications are mainly in data centers.
The high-performance general-purpose GPU chip developed by Jingjiawei this time is aimed at the latter.
On June 4, 2024, Jingjiawei disclosed the prospectus (registration draft) for the issuance of A-shares to specific targets.
Source: Prospectus (Registration Draft)
According to the prospectus, Jingjiawei plans to issue no more than 137 million shares, raise 3.974 billion yuan, and invest in the "high-performance general-purpose GPU chip R&D and industrialization project" (3.029 billion yuan) and the "general-purpose GPU advanced architecture R&D center construction project" (945 million yuan).
Among them, Changsha Jingmei is the undertaker of the high-performance general-purpose GPU chip project. The project independently develops high-performance GPU chips for graphics processing and computing applications, and realizes supporting applications in large-scale games, professional graphics rendering, data centers, artificial intelligence, autonomous driving and other fields.
It is Wuxi Jinzhiyuan that undertakes the advanced architecture project of general GPU. The project intends to carry out research and development of high-performance computing core architecture and other topics, master the cutting-edge core technologies related to the advanced architecture of general-purpose GPU, enhance the company's further in-depth layout in the field of general-purpose GPU chips, and establish and improve the operation of IT infrastructure equipment and information security management of the R&D center.
Once the private placement project is successfully implemented, Jingjiawei is expected to further improve the market layout and break the foreign monopoly.
There is one thing to say. Jingjiawei's existing GPU products are mainly used in the field of graphics processing, which has some computing application characteristics, but cannot meet the increasing demand for image quality and computing power in downstream application fields.
Although with the efforts of Jingjiawei and other manufacturers, the mainland has achieved a breakthrough in GPU localization, the global high-performance GPU market is still monopolized by a few foreign companies such as NVIDIA. And since 2019, the U.S. Department of Commerce has successively included Jingjiawei, Haiguang Information, Cambrian and other domestic leading AI chip companies in the "Entity List"; In August 2022, the United States suspended sales of Nvidia's A100 and H100 and AMD's M1250 high-performance chips to Chinese customers, and export controls continued to escalate.
In this case, Jingjiawei has carried out research and development of high-performance computing GPU products to meet the growing demand for high-computing power applications in China, which is not only a move for the company to improve the product market layout, but also a need for the domestic GPU industry to break through.
More importantly, Jingjiawei will also take this opportunity to further lay out the forward-looking technology field of the GPU industry and enhance its competitiveness.
In 2023, artificial intelligence technology represented by AIGC will show a blowout development. As the underlying support of artificial intelligence technology, computing power has gradually become a new form of core productivity.
As an computing coprocessor, the technical characteristics of GPGPU products have exceeded the application scope of traditional graphics processing. Therefore, Jingjiawei took the lead in laying out this field and mastering cutting-edge core technologies to enhance the company's long-term market competitiveness and achieve sustainable development.
In addition, it can also strengthen the packaging and testing process of the company's products.
"This fundraising project will build a dedicated packaging and testing production line with third-party chip packaging and testing manufacturers, which will realize the capacity binding of advanced packaging processes, which is conducive to the efficient combination of advanced packaging processes and high-performance GPU product research and development." This is how the prospectus describes it.
The question is, what is the confidence of Jingjiawei to enter the high-performance GPU?
Large fund holdings and strong R&D strength
The answer is: state support + strong R&D strength.
As of the end of the first quarter of 2024, the National Integrated Circuit Industry Fund ranks second in the list of the top ten shareholders of Jingjiawei, with a shareholding ratio of 6.07%.
Needless to say, the existence of big funds is itself an attitude.
As mentioned above, Jingjiawei's R&D investment has been growing, and in recent years, it has spared no expense.
In 2023, the company's R&D expenses will be 331 million yuan, a year-on-year increase of 6.03%, and the revenue will account for 46.44%.
According to the prospectus, most of the core founding team of Jingjiawei are from the National University of Defense Science and Technology, and have been leading the R&D and scientific research management of multiple modules such as software, hardware, structure, chips, FPGA and microwave radio frequency.
Relying on the core team, the company has established a strong R&D team. As of the end of the first quarter of 2024, the company has 706 R&D personnel, accounting for 66.17% of the total number of employees; There are 402 employees with graduate degree or above, accounting for 37.68% of the total number of employees.
In terms of core technology reserves, Jingjiawei has applied for a total of 231 patents, of which 109 invention patents, 29 utility model patents, and 4 appearance patents have been authorized, and 141 software copyrights have been registered, as well as 4 integrated circuit layouts.
After more than ten years of technology precipitation, the company has developed a series of GPU chips represented by JM5400, JM7200 and JM9 series, which solves the problem of "stuck neck" of domestic GPUs and builds a technical moat.
Among them, the "highly reliable embedded JM5400 graphics processor system" won the first prize of Hunan Science and Technology Progress Award, and the "generation of anti-aliasing line segments in GPU based on block rendering" won the Hunan Patent Award.
With profound R&D accumulation, Jingjiawei has won many honorary titles and awards such as National Enterprise Technology Center, National Technological Innovation Demonstration Enterprise, and National High-tech Enterprise.
In 2023, that is, the year when the fixed increase plan was disclosed, Jingjiawei and the Changsha Institute of Computing and Digital Economy of Peking University jointly established the "Advanced Computing" joint laboratory, which is committed to the research and development of efficient basic software such as high-performance basic computing libraries, and researches the architecture design of a new generation of domestic GPU computing architecture.
Obviously, before this fixed increase, Jingjiawei has begun to lay out the field of high-computing power computing chips. Moreover, there have been some results so far.
In 2024, Jingjiawei successfully developed Jinghong series of high-performance intelligent computing modules and complete machine products, filling the company's product gaps in AI training, AI inference and scientific computing.
Of course, in the global GPU field, Jingjiawei is still a "challenger" who is catching up. This fixed increase is like a propellant, which will provide a strong impetus for the development of Jingjiawei and help the company get closer to the world's leading GPU manufacturers.
The sun arches and dies, and the merit is not donated. Relying on nearly 4 billion fixed holdings, Jingjiawei's high-performance general-purpose GPU catch-up journey will be more confident.