36Kr Exclusive | A startup founded by a team from the Chinese Academy of Sciences has secured tens of millions in additional financing for the world's first RISC-V DSP chip.
Author | Wu Ruoyu
Editor | Peng Xiaoqiu
Hard Kr has learned that Beijing Haawking Technology Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Haawking"), a supplier of digital signal processors (DSPs), has announced the completion of its Pre - B+ round of financing. The investors include Huajin Capital, Megmeet, etc. The funds from this round will be mainly used for new product promotion and customer development.
Public information shows that Haawking has raised hundreds of millions of yuan in total. Previous investors include well - known companies and institutions such as Sequoia Capital China, Nine - Fusions Ventures, LCSC, Megmeet, BYD, Skyworth Capital, GoodWe, Ginlong, YN SOLAR, and Blue - Ocean Huateng.
Haawking's founding team is the core scientific research team of the former National Engineering Research Center for Application - Specific Integrated Circuit Design. Since 2007, they have been developing core processors in the national strategic field. In January 2019, they officially started corporate operation. It is an enterprise for the transformation of scientific and technological achievements of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and has been selected as a national "little giant" specializing in niche markets. Haawking focuses on the DSP track and is the world's first enterprise to design, develop, and mass - produce digital signal processors (DSPs) using the RISC - V open - source instruction set architecture.
Currently, the DSP market is dominated by US companies such as TI and ADI. Domestic enterprises have a relatively low market share and are still in the initial stage. Li Renwei, the founder, chairman, and CEO of Haawking, believes that "the overall development of DSP chips is relatively closed. The original instruction set architectures are not licensed externally. In the past, domestic enterprises did not have a better technical route for development."
As a high - quality and open - standard processor instruction set architecture, RISC - V is suitable for all computing systems. The mainstream X86 architecture is dominated by companies such as Intel and AMD. If domestic companies want to use the ARM architecture, they need to obtain authorization, which is not conducive to technological updates and product iterations in the long run. This will limit the application ecosystem such as domestic operating systems and software synergy. Li Renwei told Hard Kr that "Haawking's adoption of the RISC - V instruction set can solve the two major problems of independent intellectual property rights and application ecosystem, providing an independently controllable path for domestic processor design."
Haawking - HX2000 Series RISC - V DSP, provided by the enterprise
Haawking independently develops everything from the DSP core to the algorithms. The world's first DSP based on the RISC - V instruction set, the Haawking - HX2000 series, is specially designed for high - real - time scenarios such as industrial automation, photovoltaic energy storage, and digital power supplies. It covers automotive - grade DSPs, high - performance DSPs, mainstream DSPs, and cost - effective DSPs, and can be applied in fields such as industrial control and motor drive, digital power supplies, photovoltaics, energy storage, new energy vehicles, consumer electronics, and white goods. Among them, automotive - grade DSPs have higher requirements for reliability. The company considers various safety mechanisms and verification methods in product design, strictly screens the supply chain, and its products have now entered the supply chains of leading domestic automobile manufacturers.
Currently, more than a dozen chips of the Haawking - HX2000 series have completed tape - out, and multiple models are in mass production and supply, with an average annual supply of nearly ten million chips. Haawking has also launched programming tools such as Haawking IDE and Haawking - Downloader, as well as HXLink series emulators to optimize the integrated development environment, all of which are in large - scale commercial use.
For different scenarios such as new energy vehicles, humanoid robots, and photovoltaic energy storage, Haawking will analyze the characteristics of application algorithms in different scenarios, extract the corresponding DSP instructions, and then combine them with the basic RISC - V instruction set to form Haawking's RISC - V DSP instruction set, helping products to be quickly launched. Li Renwei pointed out that "the most important feature of DSP products is computing power. Haawking's DSP chip architecture has been optimized, with better performance and stronger computing power at the same clock frequency. Secondly, there are differences in application algorithms in different industries. We will extract the dedicated acceleration instructions for the scenario to improve the response speed. Haawking has also established a rich algorithm library to provide algorithm support for engineers' development and optimization."
Li Renwei, the founder of Haawking, provided by the enterprise
In terms of the team, Li Renwei, the founder of the company, is a doctor in computer application technology from the University of Chinese Academy of Sciences. He has presided over and participated in many national major scientific research projects. The team members come from well - known institutions and companies such as the Chinese Academy of Sciences, HiSilicon, NXP, ST, and Spreadtrum, and have more than 10 years of experience in chip design, chip quality control, chip production and operation, sales, and technical support. The total number of employees in the company is nearly 100, with front - line R & D personnel accounting for more than 60%. The total R & D investment has accumulated to hundreds of millions of yuan.
This year, there have been changes in the tariff policy, and enterprises in the wave have felt the most obvious impact. Li Renwei mentioned that the policy changes have accelerated the localization process, which is an opportunity for the company's development. The key issues in the development of domestic DSP chips lie in the construction of the RISC - V ecosystem and market acceptance. It will take a longer time for products to enter fields with higher requirements for safety and reliability. In the future, Haawking will continue to improve the RISC - V ecosystem and the application - layer (software and hardware) ecosystem, and jointly build an open - source ecosystem for digital signal processors with independent intellectual property rights.
Investors' Views:
The person in charge of Zhuhai Kechuang Changqing Fund said that the complete technical accumulation such as the RISC - V independent core, the in - depth understanding of the needs of industrial customers, and the tenacious and pragmatic spirit are the key factors for Haawking's continuous progress in recent years, and also the key elements for the chip industry to help Chinese manufacturing upgrade from large to strong. Zhuhai is committed to building a RISC - V ecosystem based on industrial value, introducing hard - technology benchmark projects relying on Zhuhai's manufacturing foundation, and laying out the core links of the semiconductor industry chain along the upgrade path of Chinese manufacturing. The Haawking team is exactly such a new force in the chip field that fits Zhuhai's industrial synergy and RISC - V ecosystem strategy. We look forward to the company's continuous use of technological innovation to empower industrial upgrading and contribute more definite strength to the localization process of "Chinese chips".
The investment person in charge of Megmeet said that the core reason for choosing to cooperate with Haawking is its outstanding technological uniqueness and huge potential for domestic substitution in the RISC - V DSP field. Haawking's core competitiveness is not only reflected in its full - stack independent R & D ability for RISC - V DSP products but also in its accurate insight and efficient response to the core needs of domestic industrial customers for DSP chips. It is this deep combination of technological innovation and market insight that has driven Haawking to make remarkable breakthroughs in a short period. In the future, we look forward to deepening the strategic cooperation between the two sides, jointly leading the technological innovation and scenario application of RISC - V DSP chips, and accelerating the localization process of core and key chips to a new level.