Oppo Produces MariSilicon X Chip That Can Improve Photo And Video Quality

Oppo phones will have a new type of chip. (photo; unsplash)

JAKARTA - The Chinese mobile phone maker, Oppo, on Tuesday, December 14 launched a new chip developed by itself. This hardware company continues to move further into the semiconductor sector industry.

The chip, called MariSilicon X, is a neural processing unit (NPU) that enhances images for videos and photography captured on mobile phones.

According to a Reuters report, this chip will be manufactured using Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co Ltd (TSMC) 6 nanometer process technology and will be housed in the Find X series of phones, which Oppo will launch to the market in early 2022.

Oppo is one of China's top smartphone brands, occupying 21% of the domestic market in the third quarter of 2021, according to research firm Canalys.

The company is owned by BBK Electronics, which also owns Vivo, another best-selling Chinese mobile phone brand. The two companies compete for customers, but have overlapping supply chains.

Both companies are investing heavily in the chip sector. Apart from MariSilicon X, Oppo is also developing a power management chip used for some of its chargers.

In September, Vivo announced it had developed an image signal processor (ISP) chip to be used in its phones.

The chip efforts match the government's push for Chinese companies to boost the country's domestic chip sector, which has for decades lagged behind the United States and other East Asian nations.

The need for a self-sufficient chip industry came to light last year when US sanctions on Shenzhen-based Huawei Technologies Co Ltd prevented the company from procuring key components.

The moves crippled the company's mobile phone division as well as HiSilicon's in-house chip division, which was once the only unit in China to develop mobile phone processors that could rival Qualcomm Inc.

Governments and companies around the world have been scrambling to ramp up semiconductor production after global shortages hit manufacturing in the wake of the COVID-19 crisis.