1. What chip products does the company mainly offer? What are some application cases?
Answer: The company’s chip products mainly include SoCs, as well as power management chips, interface chips, and other mixed-signal chips. Among them:
(1) SoC chips are primarily used in edge and endpoint AIoT smart hardware, widely applied in automotive electronics, machine vision, robotics, industrial applications, education and office, commercial finance, consumer electronics, smart home, and telecommunications, making it one of the manufacturers with the richest AIoT product line layout in China;
(2) Mixed-signal chips are usually used in conjunction with SoCs to form complementary solutions.
Additionally, the series of edge computing co-processors innovatively launched by the company this year will also become a major product line developed in parallel with SoCs, allowing for rapid iteration.
2. What application scenarios does the edge computing co-processor released by the company in July target, and what is the current progress?
Answer: The company officially released the RK182X series of edge computing co-processors at the 9th Rockchip Developer Conference on July 17.
This series of products features high computing power and high bandwidth, can be used in conjunction with main control chips, and efficiently supports the deployment of mainstream large models such as 3B and 7B at the edge. It mainly targets application scenarios such as automotive cockpits, machine vision, smart homes, education, office and conference, robotics, edge gateways, and industrial intelligent manufacturing. Currently, several initial customers from various product lines are in the development phase.
3. What is the current progress of the company’s next-generation flagship chip RK3688? Will it replace RK3588, leading to customer switches from RK3588?
Answer: The next-generation flagship chip RK3688 is currently under development. The CPU of RK3688 is expected to reach 300K DMPIS, the GPU to reach 2TFLOPS, and it will have a built-in NPU of 32TOPs (defined or adjusted according to market changes). The overall performance will significantly improve compared to RK3588. The two chips are positioned differently and complement each other: RK3688 can cater to AIoT application scenarios that require higher processing performance than RK3588, such as intelligent cockpit vehicle systems, high-performance computing at edge terminals, various robotics calculations, and ARM-based PC mobile computing. RK3688 will enhance the highest-end product positioning of the company’s AIoT chip platform, further forming a tiered sequence of high-end products with RK3588 to meet the differentiated performance chip selection needs of customers for different tiers of terminal devices.
4. Will the computing power and technology of the new products launched by the company touch upon the scope of US restrictions?
Answer: The company’s products are mainly used in edge and endpoint AIoT smart hardware, and the specifications defined for the chips comply with normal foundry conditions. In the current complex international situation, the company places great importance on compliance operations and has established a compliance system. The company also continuously monitors relevant policy changes to guard against extreme situations, ensuring stable product supply and the company’s long-term good development.
5. How does the company view the development prospects in the robotics field? Will the company develop dedicated chips for robotics in collaboration with leading manufacturers?
Answer: The robotics category is diverse, with rich application scenarios and broad market prospects, expected to maintain rapid development in the coming years. The company already has SoC chips and related supporting chips applied in various forms of robotic products, collaborating with many leading customers in various robotic scenarios, such as industrial robots, service robots, agricultural robots, warehouse logistics robots, and household-related robots like weeding/snow shoveling robots, companion robots, entertainment robots, quadruped robots (robot dogs), and humanoid robots.
Currently, high-performance general-purpose chip products can meet the innovative development needs of downstream products. As the robotics market gradually develops to a certain scale, the company will also update its chip platform product line layout based on market needs, and does not rule out the possibility of launching dedicated chips to meet the terminal product needs of downstream customers.
6. What are the main uses of the company’s edge co-processors in automotive applications? Can you provide examples?
Answer: The edge computing co-processor series is an innovative solution provided by the company to address the dynamic balance of computing power, storage, and operational capacity for AIoT model deployment at the edge. The latest RK182X released by the company is the first product in this series and can serve as the computing center for automotive cockpits, deploying edge multimodal models up to 7B.
For example, based on the company’s RK3588M + RK182X intelligent cockpit AI Box solution, the computing power of the cockpit platform can be flexibly expanded to achieve intelligent recognition of visual scenes inside and outside the cabin, such as front vehicle recognition, real-time interpretation of traffic signs, eye movement tracking, child danger perception, and spatial gesture perception, significantly enhancing driving safety and experience.
7. With the current trend of industrial intelligence enhancement, does it promote the company’s expansion into the industrial market?
Answer: Recently, the State Council issued the “Opinions on Deepening the Implementation of the ‘Artificial Intelligence+’ Action,” proposing to promote the intelligent development of all elements in industry. With the deepening of the Industrial 4.0 era, intelligence and digitization have become the core driving forces for industrial development.
In the face of the multi-scenario innovative applications of “AI+” in industry, the company, leveraging its deep accumulation in the AIoT chip field, has developed a multi-performance tiered layout of industrial-grade AIoT SoC products ranging from entry-level, mid-range, mid-high-end to high-end, fully developing HMI, PLC, industrial gateways, edge gateways, power equipment, industrial vision, industrial inspection robots, AGV handling robots, and other product lines, fully promoting the application of edge AI technology in various sub-scenarios of industry.
Currently, as the trend of intelligent enhancement in industrial scenarios develops, the company’s achievements in the industrial field are gradually becoming apparent, successfully expanding product solutions to several industry benchmark customers and successfully introducing them to many international first-tier brand customers, steadily increasing market influence.
8. With the rapid development of the company’s business layout, how does the company attract and retain existing core R&D personnel, and what are the plans for future recruitment?
Answer: The integrated circuit design industry where the company operates is characterized by being talent and technology-intensive. A team of outstanding talents with professional higher education and rich industry experience is an important guarantee for the company to become an industry-leading enterprise. With the R&D investment in multiple new products and the continuous expansion of downstream automotive electronics, machine vision, robotics, industrial, and industry applications, the company’s talent team is also continuously growing.
On one hand, the company is increasing its talent expansion efforts, continuously attracting outstanding talents, providing targeted training programs for employees, and forging R&D teams through practical project experience, offering a broad growth platform and development opportunities for employees, especially young talents. On the other hand, the company has established a scientific performance evaluation system, a comprehensive employee welfare system, and a competitive “salary + bonus + benefits + stock” comprehensive compensation system. The company treats equity incentives as a normalized incentive mechanism, continuously launching equity incentive plans every two years to fully stimulate the enthusiasm of employees at all levels, achieving mutual growth between employees and the company.