China's Underdog Chipmakers Make IP Grab to Compete in SoC Market

Majeed Ahmad, Electronics360
April 29, 2015

The semiconductor industry in China is at a crossroads, and the fact that companies such as HiSilicon Technologies Co. Ltd and Spreadtrum Communications are launching cutting-edge chips in competition with silicon behemoths like MediaTek Inc. and Qualcomm Inc. just shows how far China's system-on-chip (SoC) underdogs have come. Intel Corp.'s high-profile entry into China's SoC scene further gives credence to the country's ambitions to create an IC powerhouse.

An awakening of sorts about China's ascent in the SoC world came in February, when ARM announced its latest processor design for smartphones. The British intellectual property firm mentioned three SoC makers that would license its upcoming Cortex-A72 processor core: MediaTek, HiSilicon and Fuzhou Rockchip Electronics Co. Ltd. The names of HiSilicon—the chip division of Huawei Technologies—and Rockchip earned more media mileage than the technical nitty and gritty of ARM's next-generation 64-bit CPU technology.

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