OPPO’s first in-house AP chip could launch as soon as next year

beijingwalker · Apr 7, 2022

OPPO’s first in-house AP chip could launch as soon as next year

April 6, 2022 5:36am

Qualcomm and MediaTek may soon have some serious competition in the mobile chipset space. The Chinese smartphone maker OPPO is reportedly working on an in-house mobile chipset that will power its future smartphones.

As per a report from the Chinese publication IT Home, OPPO’s IC design subsidiary Shanghai Zheku is developing an application processor (AP). OPPO will reportedly launch the chipset in 2023, with the chipset expected to enter mass production in the same year. The report notes that the chipset will be produced on TSMC’s 6nm process node. It also further adds that a system on a chip (SoC) integrating the application processor and modem is expected to launch in 2024, and it will be built on TSMC’s 4nm process.

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The report doesn’t reveal a whole lot about the chipset itself. It’s unclear if it will be a flagship SoC or a mid-range one. In any case, it’s unlikely that we’ll get to see an OPPO phone powered by the company’s in-house chip anytime soon.

If the report is indeed accurate, it will hint at OPPO’s ambitious plan to reduce its dependency on Qualcomm and MediaTek for mobile SoCs.

Designing mobile chipsets is incredibly difficult, let alone producing a chipset that can rival the best of Qualcomm or MediaTek. Samsung has been making in-house Exynos chipsets for years now but it has yet to achieve total self-sufficiency. As such, it would be interesting to see how OPPO’s mobile SoC venture pans out in the end.

OPPO has previously released an in-house chipset called MariSilicon X. It’s a dedicated imaging chip that combines a Neural Processing Unit, ISP, and multi-tier memory architecture in a single package to greatly improve camera performance. So far, MariSilicon X has been featured on the OPPO Find X5 Pro and as we mentioned in our review, it significantly enhances lower-light camera performance.

OPPO hasn’t officially confirmed any plans to launch its own mobile SoC.