The future of AR chip is customization
2022-05-05
The news about Apple's augmented reality (AR) head display is one of the most concerned industry hotspots in the field of electronic information and consumption. It was previously reported that it would be released by the end of 2022. Haitong international securities predicted in a report released recently that the release of the equipment may be postponed to the first quarter of 2023. Although it was postponed again, the attention of Apple's ar head display remained unabated. The industry generally expects that with Apple's strong customized self-developed chip ability, this product may open a rising channel for the AR device market. This situation also shows from another side that customized chips play an important role in the development of AR equipment - under the wave of yuancosmos, customized chips have become one of the important forces to promote the large-scale implementation of AR equipment. Why should ar chips be customized? Under the background of meta universe, AR head display device returns to the center of people's vision. At CES in 2022, Samsung showed how AR was incorporated into the car's windshield to display weather, tire pressure level, map and other information. Microsoft continues to polish hololens. At present, the industrial version of hololens 2 has been launched. Google is developing the next generation ar head display device, project code "project iris", and the product is expected to be launched as soon as 2024. As for the disclosure information of Apple ar glasses, it is frequently seen in the network. However, the re warming under the meta cosmic wave has not completely solved the problems existing in AR equipment. Some experts pointed out that the equipment is too bulky, the surrounding application environment is not mature enough, the transmission data is not perfect, and the product use restrictions are too large, which still restricts the enthusiasm of users, especially consumer electronics users, to use AR devices. According to the data, due to the failure of AR equipment to reach the consumption level, the current shipment volume of AR equipment is relatively small. In 2021, the shipment volume of AR equipment in the global market was 280000 units. How to make ar close to the needs of users as soon as possible is the top priority of AR equipment manufacturers. In view of the fact that most ar devices in the market still use general chips, Wang Yang, senior vice president of business operation of Xinyuan Co., Ltd., pointed out: "AR is a new product that has only begun to develop in recent years. There are many general-purpose computing chips on the market, which are generally deeply optimized and bound for applications such as mobile phones, tablets and PCs. when applied to AR devices, there are often some problems such as redundancy of functions, inability to meet some specific functions, and poor display performance or power consumption, which greatly limits the use of AR devices. The use of these devices The poor experience is not conducive to the opening of the market and hinders the further iteration of AR technology and equipment. " The development of customized chips for AR equipment may provide a favorable opportunity for the development of AR. Shang Deming, CO head of anmou technology intelligent Internet of things business group, said that AR products have new application scenarios, which not only meet the weight requirements of daily wear, but also create the ultimate interactive experience. This makes customized chips more important in practical applications. Zhu Mingming, founder and CEO of rokid, pointed out that the evolution of AR glasses depends on the support of core components and ecosystem, including optics and chips. Different from computer and mobile phone chips, AR chip has higher requirements for computing power and low power consumption, involving high development cost and technical threshold. The tight coupling of "self-developed chip + independent OS" is the future evolution direction of AR chip. The chip cannot evolve in isolation, and the high cooperation of software and hardware can maximize the computing performance. What do ar chips need to be customized? In fact, more and more large international terminal equipment manufacturers are choosing to customize ar chips independently. At the 2022 International Consumer Electronics Show (CES), Qualcomm said it was cooperating with Microsoft to develop customized chips for AR glasses. Cristiano Amon, chief executive of Qualcomm, said in his speech: "we announce that we are developing a customized augmented reality snapdragon chip for the next generation, energy-efficient and ultra light ar glasses for the Microsoft ecosystem." In addition, international technology giants such as apple, Amazon and meta have plans to start their own core making. Domestic terminal manufacturers such as Xiaomi and oppo also began to design their own chips. These self-developed chip projects will not rule out corresponding development for AR products in the future. The so-called customized chip business, also known as ASIC (special application integrated circuit), refers to a kind of integrated circuit designed and manufactured according to the requirements of specific customers and the needs of specific electronic systems. Compared with the familiar general-purpose chips, such as CPU, GPU, baseband, Bluetooth, WiFi, etc., ASIC has stronger pertinence to the application needs of customers. Because it is specially customized, the performance of customized chips in a specific field is generally stronger than that of general-purpose chips. At the same time, it can also help ar equipment manufacturers reflect the advantages of differentiation in products. Syed alam, global semiconductor director of Accenture, said that large ar equipment development companies increasingly want to use customized chips rather than the same chips as competitors to meet the specific needs of their products and applications. This gives them more control over the integration of software and hardware, and helps them stand out from the competition. How to customize ar chip? However, it is not easy to make a customized ar chip. It is reported that meta originally hoped to develop a customized ar chip, the project code is "barsilia". But the latest news is that the project has turned to cooperation with Qualcomm. Alex Himmel, head of meta augmented reality business, believes that carrying self-developed components at this stage will lead to "ticket skipping" of products originally scheduled to be launched next year. In this regard, some experts believe that as more and more domestic enterprises enter the AR field, customized development of AR chips will be a great challenge. In this case, IP manufacturers may play an important role. As a highly complex product, AR chip must rely on external IP to achieve results in the short term. If domestic manufacturers want to quickly launch relevant products, they need to purchase IP cores to a large extent. The so-called IP core refers to those circuit modules that have specific functions and can be reused in chip design. By purchasing mature and reliable IP authorization, chip design companies can realize various specific functions in the chip, so there is no need to design every detail of the chip by themselves. This development mode can greatly shorten the time of chip development, reduce the development risk and improve the reliability of the chip. In fact, more and more IP supply enterprises have noticed this demand. Recently, Xinyuan Co., Ltd. said on the investor interaction platform that the company actively arranges smart glasses for "meta universe" related AR / VR technology. At present, the company has provided a well-known Internet enterprise with one-stop chip customization service of AR glasses. Anmou technology also announced a strategic cooperation agreement with rokid for AR equipment terminal chip and ecological construction. Dai Weimin, chairman and President of Xinyuan shares, said in an interview that the company, in cooperation with the world's leading Internet enterprises, is customizing an AR glasses chip containing Xinyuan's core IP. The characteristics of ultra-low power consumption have high requirements for the design ability and interface adaptation of IP customization, and there is a large market demand in the future. IP chip and chip platform will be the long-term development trend of the industry. Shang Deming also believes that AR products have new application scenarios, which not only meet the weight requirements of daily wear, but also create the ultimate interactive experience, and have higher requirements for the type and quantity of sensors and the transmission and processing of massive data. How to maintain low power consumption while ensuring performance is also the core element to be considered in the design of chip architecture. Shang Deming emphasized several issues that should be paid special attention to in the customized design of AR chip: first, the configuration of computing power and performance of each IP should be reasonable and balanced; The second is the improvement of integration. The multi chip scheme will be replaced by a single chip; Finally, the power consumption of data processing and data transfer is further reduced. Appropriate IP core selection can help solve the above contradiction. (Xinhua News Agency)
Edit：Li Ling Responsible editor：Chen Jie
Source：CHINA ELECTRONICS NEWS
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