On July 20, the alumni-founded company Zhongke Cambricon Technology Co., Ltd. (“Cambricon” for short) successfully listed on the Science and Technology Innovation Board of the Shanghai Stock Exchange.

The world's first AI chip company IPO

"Although it has indeed created many firsts in the field of artificial intelligence chips, CambrianCambricon is just a very traditional chip design company,"said Chen Tianshi Chen, Chairman and President of CambrianCambricon (alumni of the 2001 alumnus of the School of the Gifted Young of the University of Science and Technology of China): " We are following the most classic growth path of chip companies, which may be a bit like Forrest Gump-Run, just Forrest, run!"

The CambrianCambricon Company originated from two academic papers by brothers Chen Tianshi Chen (2001 alumnus of School of the Gifted Young) and  Chen Yunji Chen (1997 alumnusi of the School of the Gifted Young). It now seems that these two papers will definitely leave their mark on the history of the world's artificial intelligence development.

In March 2014, the Chen brothers' paper "DianNao: A Small-scale High-throughput Machine Learning Accelerator" won the best paper award at the top international academic conference ASPLOS. This was the first time that Asian scholars had won the best paper award of top conference in the field of processor architecture. In December of the same year, "DaDianNao" (also known as: CambrianCambricon Neural Network Processor No.2, designed for large-scale neural network applications) won the Micro Best Paper of 2014, which was the first time this award had been acquired by researchers outside the United States since Micro's founding in 1963.

After these scientific research results got were highly recognized by the international academic community, based on long-term thinking about the chip + AI idea,Chen Tianshi Chen (2001 alumnus of School of the Gifted Young) founded  the CambrianCambricon in 2016. The establishment of the CambrianCambricon marked the official appearance of AI chips on the stage ofin the history books, becoming the third ultra-large-scale digital chip type after CPU and GPU, which also marked that China was at the forefront of the world in the field of high-end chips for the first time.

The idea of genius is a revolution from 0 to 1, and commercialization is a transformation from 1 to 100. Although it has been living under the spotlight since its birth, with the industry, capital, government, and the media paying great attention, the CambrianCambricon has always been the same as it constantly sets new records of finance and wins various awards. "Make a little progress every day, all the efforts will not be in vain," asChen Tianshi Chen (2001 alumnus of School of the Gifted Young) has always said, CambrianCambricon should make chips with a n unremitting ideasolid focus, be careful about capital management, and withstand loneliness, temptation and criticism.

CambrianCambricon has realized the continuous iteration and commercialization of original technology with a solid and steady pace. It has successively launched CambrianCambricon 1A, CambrianCambricon 1H, and CambrianCambricon 1M chip series for terminal scenarios, cloud intelligent accelerator chip product series based on Siyuan 100 and Siyuan 270, and the edge intelligent accelerator chip based on Siyuan 220 chip.

Among them, CambrianCambricon 1A and CambrianCambricon 1H core IPs are applied in Huawei's flagship smartphone chips, which have been equipped in more than 100 million smartphones and other smart terminal devices. Siyuan product series have also been used among the products of mainstream server vendors, like Inspur, Lenovo, etc. In addition, Siyuan 270 chip won the Leading Science and Technology Achievement Award of the Sixth World Internet Conference as well.

As one of the few companies in the world that has mastered smart chips and its basic system software technology comprehensively and systematically, CambrianCambricon can provide a series of smart chip products and platforms with cloud-edge integration, software and hardware coordination, training and reasoning integration, and a unified ecology. From development, debugging to tuning, from general-purpose smart chips to transformation of cloud, edge, and end-to-end general ecology, the company is building a "Cambricon NeuWare" ecology of species explosion around artificial intelligence.

“The chip industry is different from the Internet industry. It is a long-term competition. The way towards a great chip company is very long. It is just the beginning. If you use the analogy of competitive sports, the preliminaries have only started for a while. Start-up companies including the CambrianCambricon are all fighting for tickets the chance to become great chip companies."Chen Tianshi Chen (2001 alumnus of School of the Gifted Young) maintains a consistent humble and pragmatic attitude.

Alumni Introduction

Chen Tianshi Chen was born in 1985 and got admitted to School of the Gifted Young of the University of Science and Technology of China at the age of 16. He received a doctorate degree from the School of Computer Science and Technology of the University of Science and Technology of China at 25, whose under the supervision ofors were Chen Guoliang Chen and Yao Xin Yao. After graduating with from his Ph.D. in 2010, Chen Tianshi Chen became a researcher at the Institute of Computing Technology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. He won the ASPLOS Best Paper Award and the MICRO Best Paper Award in 2014, who wasbecoming the first Chinese to win the Best Paper Award in these two top international conferences. In June 2019, he attended the 2019 undergraduate graduation ceremony of the University of Science and Technology of China as an alumni representative of alumni.

Yunji Chenwas born in 1983 andgot admitted to School of the Gifted Young of the University of Science and Technology of China at the age of 14. When he was 19, he became the youngest member of the research and development team of the domestic chip " loongson-1". At the age of 24, he received a doctorate degree from the Institute of Computing Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences. Since 2002, he has been engaged in the research and development of domestic processors, and has participated in the design of a number of loongson processors. He has published more than 40 papers in academic conferences and journals including ISCA, HPCA, ISSCC, Hot Chips, IJCAI, FPGA, SPAA, IEEE Micro, and 5 IEEE/ACM Trans, and applied for nearly 30 patents.

Article source: WeChat public account: the University of Science and Technology of China Alumni Association

Translated by Guangyuan Wei