China-based Kunlun Xin (Kunlun Semionductor) said it is developing 3G and 4G chips with an open platform. The high-performance chips will be highly compatible with high-end autonomous driving applications.
The Kunlun chips, in the future, will be adopted by Baidu's robotaxi services, Apollo Go, without a specific timeline, Baidu said.
Kunlun Xin is a spin-off from Chinese tech giant Baidu who has been developing in-house semiconductors for various applications including industrial, IoT, financials, education, logistics, transportation, medicine - but autonomous driving technology is a main focus. The semiconductor unit span off from Baidu in 2021, after having released the in-house XPU architecture in 2017.
Baidu holds over 70% of stakes in the Beijing-based semiconductor design house. DIGITIMES Asia has previously reported in 2019 that the first-gen Kunlun Xin was produced on Samsung's 14nm process.
Baidu VP Shen Dou told CNBC last week that Baidu's in-house semiconductor would see very limited impact from the US semiconductor ban.
At the Baidu Apollo Day held on Nov 29, Kunlun Xin CEO Ouyang Jian (former chief chip architect at Baidu) said the company is currently developing 3G and 4G Kunlun chips to improve computing power and compatibility with more advanced AI applications.
Ouyang said the company has mass-produced 2G chips based on XPU-R architecture with 128TFLOPS and 16FP and it is the first 7nm, high-speed GDDR6 DRAM in China. He added that the chip "suits perfectly with all the processors and servers in China."
The 2G Kunlun Xin provides a flexible SDK for developers to fast adopt it any kinds of GPUs.
Source: Baidu
