Following Biqian Technology, Suiyuan Shares, Moore Threads, and Muxi, another GPU manufacturer joined the capital market competition.

On February 7, the official website of the China Securities Regulatory Commission disclosed that Shanghai GPU manufacturer Granfi Intelligent Technology Co., Ltd. has completed the registration of counseling with the Shanghai Securities Regulatory Bureau, officially starting the A-share listing process, and the counseling agency is Haitong Securities.

According to the company's official website, Glenfi focuses on providing software and hardware integrated graphics and AMOLED display driver solutions, and its products and services cover computer software and hardware, autonomous driving, online games, smart office and other fields, aiming to help customers meet diverse challenges. The company's graphics and image solutions department is the earliest and most complete graphics processor design and R&D team in China. The department covers architecture, front-end design, back-end design, system engineering, software and testing, and the core product is the Arise-GT10C0 discrete graphics chip.

According to Hehui Optoelectronics (688538. SH) announced on March 29, 2024 that the unaudited financial data of its related party Glenfi in 2023 showed that Glenfi achieved operating income of 210 million yuan in 2023, total assets of 1.53 billion yuan, and net assets of 1.26 billion yuan. However, the company did not make a profit in terms of net profit, with a loss of 20 million yuan.

The advantage lies in the localization of architecture and algorithms

According to the analysis of the Toubao Research Institute, the upstream of the graphics card industry chain mainly includes GPU chip manufacturers, wafer and circuit manufacturers, among which GPU chip manufacturing is the core link of the industrial chain, and the main manufacturers include NVIDIA, Chaowei Semiconductor (AMD) and Intel; Midstream is the OEM of GPU chip manufacturers, such as ASUS, MSI, Gigabyte, Colorful, etc.; The downstream covers multiple application scenarios such as games, professional visualization, data centers, and automobiles.

Image source: Glenfi's official website

Glenfi's Arise-GT10C0 graphics card is built on a 28nm process and is equipped with a new generation graphics and image processing engine that is completely independent and self-developed. The graphics card is compatible with mainstream operating systems such as Galaxy Kirin KOS, UnionTech Software UOS, Windows, etc., and supports running on mainstream hardware platforms such as X86, ARM, and MIPS.

In addition, the Arise-GT10C0 also supports a variety of graphics and image API interface standards such as DirectX11, OpenGL4.5, OpenCL1.2, etc. In terms of parameters, the Arise-GT10C0 has a GPU frequency of 500MHz, a single-precision floating-point performance (FP32) of 1.5 TFLOPS, DDR4 video memory, optional 2GB 64bit or 4GB 128bit configuration, PCIe 3.0 support, and interfaces including HDMI, DP and VGA.

According to industry insiders told the Times reporter, the Arise-GT10C0 is slightly lower than the Nvidia GTX1050 in terms of performance, especially in the floating point computing power There is a certain gap. In terms of software ecosystem, although Arise-GT10C0 supports mainstream operating systems such as Windows, UnionTech UOS, and Galaxy Kirin, there is still insufficient driver support on older systems such as Windows 7.

In terms of production process, the Arise-GT10C0 uses a 28nm process technology, while the NVIDIA GTX1050 is based on a 14/16nm process technology, which makes the former relatively backward in terms of energy efficiency ratio and transistor density. However, the 28nm process technology has been mass-produced in China, and the supply is relatively controllable.

In terms of application scenarios, GTX1050 is mainly targeting the consumer gaming market, while the Arise-GT10C0 focuses on general-purpose computing, commercial display, and desktop applications. The advantage of the Glenfi Arise-GT10C0 lies in its localization of architecture and algorithms, which can meet the needs of industries such as information innovation for security and independent controllability.

According to iResearch data, the scale of China's information innovation has reached 47.2 billion yuan in 2022, and is expected to reach 88.7 billion yuan in 2024, increasing to 322.8 billion yuan by 2027, with a CAGR of 46.2% from 2021 to 2027. Basic hardware is the core area of the future development of the information innovation market, GPU is the core device, with the penetration of information and innovation products into more core business areas, its market size prospects are very optimistic.

GPU product performance is slightly lacking

Tianyancha data shows that the largest shareholder of Granfi is Shanghai Zhaoxin Integrated Circuit Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Zhaoxin"), with a shareholding ratio of 27.44%, and the rest of the shareholders include Hainan Yunfeng Fund Center (Limited Partnership), Suzhou Junlian Xiangdao Equity Investment Partnership (Limited Partnership), Shanghai Xinxi New Generation Semiconductor Investment Partnership (Limited Partnership) and other institutions.

Founded in 2013, Zhaoxin is a state-owned chip design company headquartered in Shanghai. As a leading processor design company in China, Zhaoxin has mastered the core technology in the field of independent general-purpose processor and its system platform chip research and development, covering key links such as microarchitecture design and implementation technology, and has built a complete intellectual property system. As of press time, Zhaoxin has applied for more than 1,600 patents and obtained nearly 1,400 rights. In the field of information innovation, Zhaoxin's performance is particularly outstanding, and its Kaitian KX6000 processor ranks third among domestic manufacturers in the PECint benchmark test, and is selected as the "2024 China Top 100 Information Innovation" in the WIA2024 Innovation Enterprise List".

It is reported that Zhaoxin's CPU and Granfi's GPU may adopt a matching strategy to jointly develop the information innovation market. However, the above-mentioned industry insiders revealed to the Times Weekly reporter that the company mainly focuses on the customization of localized solutions, and its business covers multiple fields such as servers and complete machines, and the platform supports Loongson, Feiteng, Zhaoxin, Haiguang, Shenwei, etc., but rarely uses Glenfi's GPU products.

The domestic GPU market is fiercely competitive, and in addition to Glenfi, companies such as Jingjiawei and Moore Threads are also accelerating the layout of the GPU industry ecology. Jingjiawei has successfully developed a variety of GPU products such as JM5 series, JM7 series, JM9 series, JM11 series, etc.; Moore Threads has launched two full-featured GPU chips, "Sudi" and "Chunxiao", based on the MUSA architecture.

In comparison, Glenfi's Arise-GT10C0 falls slightly short in terms of performance. For example, Moore Threads' MTT S80 gaming graphics card is equipped with a complete "Chunxiao" chip core, with 4096 built-in MUSA stream processing units, with a main frequency of 1.8GHz, and a single-precision floating-point computing power of up to 14.4TFLOPS, while the single-precision floating-point computing power of the Glenfi Arise-GT10C0 is only 1.5TFLOPS.

Zhang Guobin, a senior semiconductor expert and founder of Electronic Innovation Network, said in an interview with a reporter from Times Weekly that in the field of game graphics cards, domestic GPUs have basically caught up to the level of Nvidia's RTX3060, but they are still two series behind RTX5090. Judging from public data, there is a big gap between Glenfi's GPU products and Moore Threads in terms of performance.

There is no sign of AI chips entering the market yet

The Times reporter noticed that since 2023, domestic GPU companies have set off a wave of IPO boom, but this boom is mainly concentrated in the field of AI chips. In contrast, Glenfi is currently showing no signs of deploying AI chips.

Recently, with the popularity of the DeepSeek model, a number of domestic AI chip companies such as Huawei Ascend, Suiyuan Technology, Muxi, Moore Threads, Haiguang Information, Tiantian Zhixin, Biqian Technology, Taichu Yuanqi, Yuntian Lifei, Kunlun Core, etc., have announced adaptation to the DeepSeek model. However, there was no news from Glenfi.

Gong Mingde, an analyst at TrendForce, said in an interview with Time Weekly that the main GPU market in China is still dominated by NVIDIA and others. At the same time, some large domestic Internet companies and chip design companies are actively promoting self-developed AI chip solutions. Gong Mingde expects that in the next three to five years, the trend of AI chip autonomy will be significantly enhanced, especially in the field of edge AI applications.

It is worth noting that Glenfi has recruited ASIC (Application Specific Integrated Circuit) R&D engineers in the 2024 campus recruitment, and ASIC is one of the important architectures of AI chips, which has been adopted by companies such as Cambrian.

On February 11, a reporter from Time Weekly called the company about whether Granfi was trying to develop ASIC chips, and the relevant staff said that "I don't know very well and will not accept interviews for the time being".