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. The project was launched in a bid to develop China's independent IPR in the chip industry.

Vimicro Co was founded to undertake the project in 1999 by Dr. Deng Zhonghan together with some other like-minded overseas-returned scholars. Dedicated to the development of advanced digital multimedia chips, Vimicro has launched series of products and successfully broke up foreign developer's stranglehold in the global chip market. Its core technologies include over 400 patents, and within six years, Vimicro was the No 5 largest patent holder in the nation's capital last year.Today, Vimicro's chip solutions are being widely adopted by multi-national companies such as Samsung, HP, Fujisu, Lenovo, Logitech and Creative.

To date, the project has proposed complete multimedia date structures, processing methods, chip structures and designs and embedded software technologies, enabling the nation for the first time to realize the integration between standards and core technologies in this area. 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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