On January 11, Hisense officially released China’s first self-developed 8K AI image quality chip in Beijing. It is understood that China’s first fully self-developed 8K AI image quality chip released this time is Hisense’s 5th generation image quality chip, which represents the highest processing capacity of a single image quality chip in China, realizes independent research and development and independent control, and eliminates all technical barriers in the subdivided field of image quality processing. After rigorous testing, the image quality chip has surpassed the performance of foreign brands in many indicators.
“China has achieved the largest scale in the world in the field of consumer electronics. The shipment of color TV sets has ranked first in the global market for many years, and the display panel has also ranked first in the world. However, the bottleneck restricting the high-quality development of the industry is still chips, and industrial supporting chips still need a large number of imports, which has affected the industrial upgrading and the popularization of high-end products to some extent.” Xu Wenli, deputy director of the electronic information department of the Ministry of industry and information technology, said that Hisense has been firmly on the road of localization of TV chips in China for more than 20 years. It is one of the few color TV enterprises outside China that systematically studies the iteration of image quality chips. This time, Hisense has successfully developed 8K AI image quality chips and realized independent research and development and independent control, eliminating all technical barriers in the subdivided field of image quality processing, It is an excellent case of collaborative innovation upstream and downstream of the industrial chain.
As early as the late 1990s, the color TV industry fell into a price war because of the sharp price reduction of picture tubes due to technological progress. Hisense, which has always hated low price competition, wants to improve product competitiveness and jump out of the quagmire of homogeneous competition through its own chip development. At present, the larger the TV size and the higher the resolution, the higher the requirements for the chip’s ability to process input signals, the more difficult it is to develop image quality processing chips, and the requirements for the performance of image quality chips for large-size 8K TVs will be particularly improved. With the global TV competition entering an inflection point, the image quality core technology represented by 8K image quality chip will become a new round of “winning weapon”.
In his keynote speech, Yu Zhitao, vice president and Hisense Visual Technology Co.Ltd(600060) president of Hisense Group Holdings, said that for decades, Chinese, Japanese and Korean enterprises have launched fierce competition around display technology and industrial chain, and Hisense has always stood at the forefront of this war. Especially in the core track of chip technology, Hisense has formed a complete series of chip products. It has launched four generations of image quality chips and achieved mass production, forming a unique advantage in the image quality track and getting rid of homogeneous competition.
It is understood that China’s first fully self-developed 8K AI image quality chip released this time is Hisense’s 5th generation image quality chip, which represents the highest processing capacity of a single image quality chip in China. The chip realizes the leapfrog development from 4K to 8K for the first time, breaks through the core technologies such as AI perception image quality algorithm, realizes high-precision image processing by equipped with artificial intelligence with “deep neural network” technology, supports accurate reconstruction of 33 million + pixels, and can show rich hidden details in the picture; 26880 zone controls bring the ultimate contrast improvement, and the details and colors of the picture are closer to reality, so that users can get an immersive visual experience. After rigorous testing, the image quality chip has surpassed the performance of foreign brands in many indicators.
Yu Hengheng, head of Hisense chip display, told the securities times that from the perspective of application, mobile phone chips and computer chips are mainly used as functional chips. 8K AI image quality chip focuses on the display screen function, focusing on how to better process images and videos.
Yu Heng also pointed out that the Hisense 8K AI image quality processing chip released this time is not limited to the field of TV and display. It not only meets the demand for high image quality of consumer display products such as flat panel TV and laser TV, but also meets the application demand of professional monitors and medical professional displays for high precision and high reduction of video signals.
At present, Hisense’s chips include 8K, 120Hz, 60Hz picture quality chips and TCON chips of TV / MNT. They support LCD, OLED, laser and other display technologies of different categories, and realize the full coverage of display products of different grades and multiple categories. It is worth noting that in addition to image quality chips, in 2020, the annual shipment of screen control chips developed by Hisense exceeded 50 million, with a global share of more than 50%, ranking first in the world.
“There is a lot of domestic alternative space for chips, especially in the context of intelligent household appliances, the demand for chips is increasing day by day. Therefore, the company’s R & D investment in the chip industry is not limited to the field of television and display. In the future, a broader space will be in the intelligent chips of household appliances.” Yu Zhitao said.
It is reported that from 8K LCD TV to 8K laser display solution, and then to the current 8K AI image quality chip, Hisense has made preparations for competition in the whole industry chain. This year, Hisense will launch 8K broadcast level professional monitor and micro LED TV. Yu Zhitao said that Hisense will continue to strive for greater opportunities for the healthy development of China’s color TV industry and display industry through the improvement of its own technical level and differentiated competitive strategy.
(source: Securities Times)
