Deng Zhonghan, commander-in-chief of the "Starlight China Chip Project," was
granted another award last week.
This one is from the Zhongguancun Administrative Committee, coming after
Deng's team was recognized with a State Science and Technology Award in March.
The government-backed project was undertaken by Deng's company, Vimicro Co, a
start-up firm based in Beijing's Zhongguancun, known as China's silicon valley.
A series of chips developed by the team, breaking through seven core
technologies in the sector, has broken up foreign developer's stranglehold in
the global chip market.
The core technologies include some 400 patents, and within six years, Vimicro
was the No 5 largest patent holder in the nation's capital last year.
Deng says the moment he most remembers was when President Hu Jintao presented
him with the State Science and Technology Award in March.
"President Hu shook my hand and said: 'It's hard for overseas-returned
scholars to research and develop chips.'
"I was too moved and exited to speak, and later I replied that we have sold a
total of 38 million chips to the world and we own about 400 patents," Deng
recalled.
Insiders say that 38 million is indeed a sizable figure in chip market, and
will have far-reaching and lasting influence on the sector. The company's
personal computer camera-embedded multimedia signal processing chips have been
widely adopted by world information technology giants, such as Samsung, Philips,
Hewlitt Packard and Lenovo, which together occupy over 60 per cent of world
market.
Moreover, the success of the project not only proves Chinese researchers'
strength in research and development in the area, but also showcases their
pursuit of independent intellectual property rights (IPR).
"We place IPR as a key priority in our work," Deng said.
Project engineers never regard their achievements as "innovation" but
"invention," according to Zhang Hui, deputy commander-in-chief of the project.
Deng said IPR barriers are one of the biggest problems facing China's chip
industry.
"It is hard to foster technology, since many companies own thousands of
patents. Various competitions, merger and acquisition cases hinge on them," he
said.
Deng said the biggest difficulty confronted with his cutting-edge project is
human resources, and he was once quoted by sohu.com as saying that the flow of
human resources, venture capital and the establishment of new enterprises all
hinge on IPR.
Thanks to precise market positioning, the patents of the "Starlight China
Chip Project" have achieved astonishing feats in world's computer camera, camera
in mobile phones, video-phones and digital cameras arenas.
"Every year, we apply for tens to hundreds of patents, and we constantly
focus our sights on progress in core technology breakthroughs and the profound
effects of their commercialization."
Background
The "Starlight China Chip Project" was initiated in 1999. It was supported by
the Ministry of Science and Technology, the Ministry of Information Industry,
the National Development and Reform Commission, the China Association for
Science and Technology and the Beijing municipal government.
Vimicro Co was founded to undertake the project in 1999. Most of engineers
involved in the project are overseas-returned scholars.
The project was launched in a bid to develop China's independent IPR in the
chip industry.
To date, the project has proposed complete multimedia date structures,
processing methods, chip structures and designs and embedded software
technologies.
It has enabled the nation for the first time to realize the integration
between standards and core technologies in this area.
The low cost of the monocrystal methods helps reduce overhead in related
multimedia technologies. It has laid a solid foundation for the standardization,
popularization and service for 3C (three-way convergence for computer,
communication and consumer) multimedia services in China.
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