Amazon is apparently working on a custom silicon chip for its hardware networking switches. These chips will help make the company’s internal infrastructure as well as its AWS (Amazon Web Services).

According to TheInformation (Via TheVerge), the chip that the e-commerce giant is reportedly working on, which is the result of its 350 million US Dollar acquisition of Israeli chip making firm, Annapurna Labs, back in 2015. Furthermore, the company working on building the chips for its switches could help it solve bottlenecks and issues in its infrastructure. This would be even more useful if it also makes a custom built software for further optimization.

At the moment, Amazon has been building its own switches, although, it relies on Broadcom for the silicon that powers these chips. Thus, it comes as no surprise that the company seeks to completely control and build its own silicons, especially considering the scale and importance of its web services. Notably, the move from the company might also enable it to offer services that it was previously unable to offer, thanks to the new switches.

Unfortunately, this is still an unconfirmed report so take it with a pinch of salt, however, this is not the first time the company made its own custom silicon product. The company has previously partnered with MediaTek to create a chip for its Echo smart speakers, which were to make its Alexa voice assistant respond faster. Hence, it makes sense that the company seek to build its own silicon that powers the backbone of its networking infrastructure.

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Samsung Electronics has just announced earlier today (13th July 2020) that it would be spending 100 billion won (roughly 83 million US Dollars) this year for cooperation within the industry and academia to improve chip and display technology.

For those unaware, Samsung had opened its industry-academia cooperation center back in 2018. This center has supported research projects in the chip and display sectors by more than 700 professors and students. The latest investment from the South Korean tech giant is to boost development for future technology in both chip and display technology.

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According to official notes, “The latest investment is likely to help researchers at local universities whose projects have been delayed or suspended amid the COVID-19 pandemic.” Through this initiative, local universities can use the company’s advanced chip equipment for research projects; with Samsung having plans to expands its industry-academia cooperation program in multiple different fields.

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(Via)

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Since Huawei had its chip supply from TSMC cut off by the US government, the company has been heavily investing in other alternative suppliers. It has urged various local semiconductors to step up and even reportedly had deals signed with other key suppliers. Now, it looks like the Chinese tech giant is taking things a step further with a new spree of hirings of professionals.

Huawei’s chip subsidiary HiSilicon is recruiting fresh IT graduates and others in the field from across the globe. The company has launched a new global recruitment program, which apparently promises salaries up to 5 times what you were earning or would be offered as a new post-graduate. Huawei shared a posted image, which revealed its efforts in seeking new blood and fresh talent.

According to the poster, post-graduates or people with a master’s degree that graduated from 1 January 2017 to 31 December 2021 are eligible to join the new recruitment program. The purpose of this recruitment is to tackle obstacles in various fields including computer software architecture, semiconductor and chipset technology, and more, with a hefty 5x salary promise.

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The official poster reads, “WE HAVE BEEN LOOKING FOR TALENTS WITH A “CORE STAR” TO SHINE. WE’RE LOOKING FOR BRAVE PEOPLE WHO ARE BRAVE TO CHALLENGE IN THE NEW WORLD AND WANT TO DIVE INTO THE NEW KNOWLEDGE. MOREOVER, THEY WILL DEAL WITH THE LIMITS OF MOORE’S LAW, VON NEUMANN’S BOTTLENECK, AND ETC. WE HOPE THAT OUR PEERS WILL EXPLORE THE WORLD-CLASS PROBLEMS THAT WILL EVENTUALLY FACE. THEY’LL FIND METHODS AND PATHS OF COMPUTING ARCHITECTURE, AND JOINTLY EXPAND THE BOUNDARIES OF CIVILIZATION AND PROGRESS.”

For those unaware, HiSilicon is behind Huawei’s Kirin processors that are found in the company’s smartphones and tablets. In other words, its chip department is looking for innovative minds in the field of mobile computing. Thus, if you’re interested, definitely check out this opportunity. The recruitment process is underway and will last another year. So stay tuned as we will be providing more updates when more details are available.

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(Source)

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The popular Chinese smartphone vendor, Oppo, is pushing forward with its efforts to design its proprietary mobile chipsets. It had initially begun focus on chip development back in 2019 when Huawei was hit with the trade ban. Now, the company is aggressively pushing for the self-made chips after recent sanctions have effectively cutoff Huawei’s chip supply from TSMC.

With the US and China trade disputes on the rise, various companies caught in between the crossfires will have to take precautionary measures. Huawei losing its chip supplier and losing Google support is a clear indication of what the US is capable of enforcing against those it considers a threat. Thus, Oppo is heavily investing in chips to reduce its reliance on US suppliers and expanding its presence in other western regions like Europe.

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However, this major undertaking will come at a hefty cost and could even take Oppo years to achieve. According to sources, the Chinese tech giant is already bringing in top executives from its known chip supplier MediaTek, and UNISOC, which is China’s second largest mobile chip developer. Through this deal, Oppo aims to create an experienced chip team in Shanghai.

MediaTek is the second largest mobile chip developer after the industry giant, Qualcomm, in the US. It is currently based in Taiwan, with Oppo also bringing in its former co-chief operating officer, Jeffery Ju. Additional hires are also said to be underway, with talents being acquired from Qualcomm, Huawei’s HiSilicon, and more.

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(Via)

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MediaTek was founded in 1997, is the world’s leading professional chipset design company. Flourished during functional machine, MediaTek, with low-cost solutions for functional machine created a cottage industry in Shenzhen, even caused by direct or indirect impact on the world’s leading mobile phone manufacturers.

The rise of smart phone, due to mistakes in decision making on the route, MediaTek start becoming downturn. Fortunately, the high-level to reverse direction in a timely manner, launched again to obtain market acceptance for the Android system MT6575/6577 other products.

MediaTek virtue of “Turkey-Solution” this “nanny” chips and software integration, significantly lowering the technical threshold of mobile phone R & D, to attract a large number of mobile phone design companies, terminal manufacturers a MediaTek chip platform-based development of mobile. This practice from the era of functional machine continues to be a major feature.

As Qualcomm, NVIDIA, and other manufacturers have introduced a quad-core chipset on the market today, MediaTek also speed up the research and development of rhythm the MT6589 quad-core architecture fastest expected mass production next year. The MT6589 fomerly known as MT6588, for some reason this name has been renamed, but should be little difference in the general.

The MTK6589 parameter description:

Architecture: Cortex-A7
Core: Quad-coire with 28nm process
Frequency: 1.0GHz ~ 1.2GHz
Memory: LDDR2 memory screen: 720P display resolution
Network: WCDMA / TDSCDMA dual network standard video: 1080P video decoding support HDMI 3D output camera: up to 13 million pixels camera
GPU: PowerVR SGX544, triangular output rate of 55M / s pixel fill rate for the 1600M / s

Cortex-A7
ARM Cortex-A7 processor is part of the Cortex-A series, based on the ARMv7-A architecture,
it features provide excellent low-power performance is based on guaranteed performance.

Cortex-A7 processor and feature set is identical to the Cortex-A15 processor, the different that the Cortex-A7 processor micro architecture is focused on providing the best energy efficiency, both processors in the big LITTLE configuration work together to provide the ultimate combination of high performance and ultra-low power consumption. Five times the energy efficiency of a single Cortex-A7 processor ARM Cortex-A8 processor, the performance increase of 50%, and the size is only one-fifth of the latter.

Imagination PowerVR SGX544
Imagination new generation of mobile graphics core the PowerVR SGX5XT (contains 530/535/540/543/544) belongs to the fifth generation of PowerVR products, unified architecture, support for DX9 SM3.0, OpenGL ES 2.0 is still the use of advanced the TBR rendering mode supports H.264 hardware decoding.

Single-core PowerVR SGX544 is part of the the the GPU PowerVR Series5XT family, is the second member of the series, based on the Second Generation of scalable shaders (USSE2) support 2D, 3D, GPGPU processing, can be configured as a high-performance 4 pipeline can be flexibly configured to dual-core to 16 core (8-64 pipeline), but take into account the power consumption is generally not too practical application.

Product Positioning
Alternative of MT6577 based on past experience, MT6589 will become the next mainstream configuration, the price will be in the range of $100 to $ 00, mainly for low-cost quad-core smart phone market. Products listed, will form a certain impact on the current quad-core pattern, further compression of the market price of the domestic smartphone.

In addition, Qualcomm also for the entry-level market to launch a MSM8225Q/8625Q processor, but it is A5 architecture, and the only support 720p video decoding, the performance advantage is not obvious, the threat of MT6589.

Application examples
The recent exposure of a suspected MT6589 Lenovo’s mobile phone, the specific model is unknown. Screenshots general can be seen, the smartphone is equipped with the MT6589 processor, the highest frequency of 1.2GHz, is a 300MHz graphics core SGX544MP has 1GB RAM memory, equipped with 960X540 resolution screen also supports TD-SCDMA, support dual card and dual standby.

Rumored TCL and othe domestic smartphone manufacturer also has begun the planning of the MediaTek MTK6589 Quad-Core smartphone and even possibly as early as listed in the association. Can imagine, if the quad-core smartphone next year will be available with affordable price will become mainstream in the market.

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