With Lenovo's recent investment of 300 million yuan in Shanghai to set up Dingdao Smart Core, its recent semiconductor investment action has finally been "out of the clouds to see the sun."

Tianyan survey data show that from the end of December 2021 to late January 2022, within a short period of less than a month, Lenovo, with Lenovo (Beijing) Co., Ltd. as the main body, has invested intensively in a number of semiconductor companies. including chip manufacturers Shenzhen Yixin Information Technology Co., Ltd., Dongguan memory Storage Technology Co., Ltd., Cambrian Xingsong. On January 17, Lenovo Group also invested a total of 800 million yuan in Aixin Yuanzhi, a developer of AI vision chips, with another major investor, Lenovo Star.

According to incomplete statistics of Star Mine data, Lenovo participated in at least eight integrated circuit-related companies in 2021, including Jet Microelectronics, Voda Semiconductor, Ruisi Smart Core, Fuhanwei and other high-quality targets. Lenovo has earlier invested in more chip companies, such as Cambrian, a listed company of Science and Technology Innovation Board, and BYD Semiconductor, which has just had a meeting on the gem, and other well-known companies.

Industry insiders observe and analyze that Lenovo's investment around various applications in the integrated circuit industry at least includes AI chip, CMOS chip, loT chip, 5G RF chip, IGBT chip, optical chip, single photon sensor chip, semiconductor laser chip, intelligent audio and video processing SoC chip and other fields.

In early October 2021, Lenovo Group lost the board in the public opinion that "the attribute of scientific innovation is not strong". Lenovo has recently made such frequent "big investment" in different areas and links of semiconductors, what is the so-called demand, and is it forced by external pressure? At a time when the market is dreaming, on January 26, Lenovo set up a semiconductor company with a registered capital of 300 million yuan, Dingdao Zhixin, which seems to have announced its determination to make a core.

Once released the self-developed AI chip.

"300 million yuan can't make a splash." After the above news came out, some market participants were so pessimistic about Lenovo on the one hand, and lamented the reality that "it is difficult to make a chip" on the other hand. One thing that has been overlooked by many is that Lenovo released a "self-developed chip" on September 8, 2021, on the eve of submitting Science and Technology Innovation Board's listing materials.

On September 8, 2021, Lenovo Group held TechWorld Lenovo Innovation and Technology Conference 2021, during which the latest technology achievement: Lenovo LA2 intelligent embedded controller was announced.

Jia Zhaohui, senior vice president of Lenovo Group, said that the first LA2 intelligent embedded controller, designed and jointly developed by Lenovo, created an original heterogeneous multi-core hybrid architecture, supported sensor fusion, and achieved efficient and fast intelligent perception and intelligent control. "the release of LA2 is a core technological breakthrough in Lenovo's journey to promote the popularity of super-intelligent computers."

It is understood that the "LA2 embedded controller" is a non-core computing module installed in Lenovo Savior computer brand products, with functions for intelligent identification of external scenes, machine performance optimization and intelligent control. Based on the above introduction, many analysts say bluntly that its essence is an AI chip, in which the core NPU and CPU cooperate to achieve the optimal balance of performance and power consumption.

Zhou Di, an expert at the whale platform think tank and senior engineer of Fang Rong Technology, said: "starting with computers to develop some non-core functions, although this is still a long way from developing the core chips of computers and even mobile phones, it is a path."

At present, intelligent hardware manufacturers, Xiaomi mobile phone SoC chip, try to develop a charging chip P1, image processing chip C1, etc., balance technology to achieve and differentiation competition, accumulation of core kinetic energy; OPPO also chose to enhance the phone image function, and self-developed special NPU chip-Mariana MariSilicon X using the 6nm process.

In addition to "pilot skills" in computer products, the other uses of Lenovo's own AI chip are not clear, but considering that Lenovo intends to open its own mobile phone brand to the high-end market in recent years, it has brought reverie to the outside world.

As early as at the earnings meeting in the third quarter of 2020, Liu Jun, executive vice president and president of Lenovo Group in China, said that Lenovo will cover the business customer base through the Motorola brand in the future, and cover the high-performance customer base-especially game users-through the Savior series.

In the second half of 2020, Lenovo released the Motorola mobile phone priced as high as 12499 yuan and the savior e-sports mobile phone Pro version of 5999 yuan. By the end of December 2021, Lenovo even openly "hit" Xiaomi, halfway cut off Xiaomi 12 Qualcomm 4 nanometer chip Snapdragon 8Gen 1 world debut, released Motorola edgeX30.

In terms of conventional business strategies, high prices do not mean high-end, and the topic of manufacturing is not a long-term solution. For business customers, break the advantages of Xiaomi, Huawei and even Apple in brand, market and technology, and form differentiated competition; at the same time, AI chips may be able to solve hardware performance and heat problems for game users.

Lenovo AI chips join hands with Cambrian?

It is hard not to think of Huawei for manufacturers who have used AI chips in consumer electronics. In 2017, Huawei released the world's first mobile phone AI chip, Kirin 970, with excellent performance.

Some analysts pointed out that this is the first time that a processing unit specially used for artificial intelligence computing has appeared in the mobile phone chip, and the hardware computing acceleration capability of the neural network model has been integrated into the chip at the mobile device level.

The NPU module used in Kirin 970 is from the Cambrian. The Cambrian 1A processor was launched as early as 2016, and the company's IPO documents submitted on the landing Kechuang board revealed that Huawei purchased Cambrian terminal smart processor IP and included it in its flagship mobile phone chip for the whole of 2018, costing as much as 114 million yuan.

On the one hand, it is not surprising that Lenovo plans to develop its own LA2 intelligent embedded controller for its own intelligent hardware, and on the other hand, Lenovo has a strong Cambrian relationship with the supplier of Huawei AI chip NPU modules.

In addition to Lenovo's investment in Cambrian Xingge (Nanjing) Technology Co., Ltd in 2022, Lenovo participated in three equity investments before Cambrian listing as early as July 2018, January and September 2019.

According to the list of the top 10 shareholders disclosed in the Cambrian 2021 semiannual report, although Lenovo has not been seen, the position of Cambrian supervisor is still held by Song Chunyu, a partner of Lenovo venture capital.

Yang Yuanqing, CEO of Lenovo, said some time before the release of the LA2 that he did not rule out the possibility of developing his own chip, nor did he rule out the possibility of cooperating with other partners. After the release of LA2, several analysts even pointed out that what Jia Chaohui said about the joint development of LA2 with Lenovo may be the Cambrian.

In October 2018, Huawei announced the adoption of the self-developed "Da Vinci architecture" and the release of two self-developed cloud AI chips based on the "Da Vinci architecture". The licensing business of Cambrian terminal smart processors IP fell 82.96% in 2020 compared with the same period last year.

Therefore, for Cambrian itself, relying on an intelligent hardware company to continue to promote the development of the above-mentioned business and achieve a turnround is, to some extent, a "break-even" business. Zhou Di analysis said that at present, most of the major customers of the Cambrian are local governments and scientific research institutes, and the degree of marketization really needs to be improved.

However, Bu Rixin, executive director of Chuangdao Consulting, believes that if Lenovo makes AI chips, the best choice may be to buy IP, from a third-party independent IP manufacturer and then develop it on its own, rather than obtaining the authorization of AI chip companies. "NPU belongs to the core of AI chip, the business model authorized by IP, will have stability risk, especially if both parties have the demand of AI chip research and development."

Author: Guo Hui