Smartphones are hampered by thermals and batteries. They work best when specially designed hardware is used to do the heavy lifting. Hardware like Oppo’s MariSiliconX ISP as well as the brand new MariSilicon Y Bluetooth chip. Of obviously, these are just not the only options, but for the optimal results, a custom chip is required. It seems like that is the plan of Oppo headquarters according to Ice Universe reports that the company plans to release its own smartphone chip in 2024.
Oppo has claimed to have employed thousands of employees to participate in the project however, more details are not available for the moment. It’s likely to be an ARM-based device, meaning it will make use of Cortex CPUs , as well as Mali GPUs that incorporate MariSilicon designs that will be used for things such as the ISP as well as parts of wireless connectivity.
It is the MariSilicon X ISP is made by TSMC’s foundries for 6nm. MariSilicon X ISP is made by TSMC’s foundries that use 6nm.
We’ll be watching closely to find out which company Oppo selects as its partner in this project. Google chose Samsung since the process of designing a chipset from scratch isn’t an easy task even with ready-made parts. However, if the team at Oppo is truly that large, an open-source design isn’t possible.
In the year 2000, MediaTek released it was launching the Dimensity 5G Open Resource Architecture and also opened its chipsets up to modifications by smartphone makers, however, we’ve yet to see anything as expansive like it is the Tensor chip.
A little over a year ago, we read about a rumor that Oppo is considering building an exclusive chipset that is built on TSMC’s 3nm. The report at the time stated that the first smartphones with the new silicon would be available in 2023. However, the 3nm foundries of TSMC have had some delays that could have caused some hiccups in the plans. In any case, it’s true that the MariSilicon X chip is fabbed in TSMC’s foundries with a 6nm process, which means that the two companies have a relationship.
There’s a chance of an Cambrian growth of custom-designed chipsets, even Samsung Electronics reportedly wants to create a custom chip independent of the Exynos chips made by its subsidiary business Samsung System LSI. The plan doesn’t always work however, Xiaomi tried it last year with its Surge S1, but that failed quickly.
