Last week, TSMC confirmed that it stopped accepting new chip orders from Huawei from May 15 after the new US government regulations. But still, the Chinese telecom giant’s silicon division HiSilicon officially unveiled a new 28m ATV (Advanced Television) chip with support for in-house LiteOS on July 24.
Huawei is known for its HiSilicon chipsets, which power almost all the hardware the company makes like network equipment and smartphones to name a few. Also, most of the firm’s chips are manufactured by TSMC, the world’s largest semiconductor manufacturing company.
Unfortunately, the US cut off Huawei’s business with TSMC with new rules in May. Thus, the company is now left without a high-end chipmaker. It does have a domestic partner by the name of SMIC, which currently mass produces the 14nm Kirin 710F chipset.
We think the same company could be manufacturing the brand-new HiSilicon 28nm ATV chip. Just like its manufacturer, the details about this chipset is bleak as well.
According to ITHome, this new silicon from Huawei is targeted at non-smart TVs with 1080p (FHD) or lower resolution displays. It is said to be 20% powerful than other conventional chips that are mostly based on 40nm architecture.
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Further, this HiSilicon chip also includes an integrated TCON (Timing Control) module to further reduce the overall cost of the TV. Additionally, it also supports the company’s real-time operating system called LiteOS.
For those unaware, this OS based on ultra-small kernel (< 10KB) requires low memory to operate and therefore, it is energy efficient. It boots up faster within certain milliseconds as well as supports multi-process synchronization, dynamic loading, access to different cloud platforms, and more. It is normally found on Huawei wearables and IoT products.
Also, this Huawei ATV chip supports various input ports such as analog, HDMI, VGA, CVBS, USB, and others. Last but not least, it also includes support for the company’s SWS (Super Wide Sound) sound effects to offer better audio experience.
Having said that, the availability of this new 28nm HiSilicon ATV chip is not known. Mostly, it will be limited to the Chinese market given the current situation.
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