Millions of digital multimedia chips have been sold in international market and dominated some 40 percent of the world's computer image input chip market. This was jointly declared on December 28, 2003 in Beijing by the Electronic Products Administration with China Ministry of Information Industry and Beijing Zhongguancun Science Park Administration.

"Over the last five years, China has developed a batch of sci-tech and new products of its own intellectual property rights. Some products have been available in the market and reaped good returns. The road that Vimicro has taken proves that the sci-tech innovation model of "policy support, market orientation, and corporate operation" is upgrading China's integrated circuit industry to the phase of "Innovated by China " from what used to be known as "Made in China", said Zhang Qi, director of the Electronic Products Administration with Chinese Ministry of Information Industry.

Dr. John Deng, chief commander of the Xingguang digital multimedia chips project and president of Vimicro, said, "Digital multimedia chip technology is the kernel technology of the emerging digital 3C industry. It represents a great potential both for market application and development. When the world is still in turmoil with various organizations seeking for hegemony in this aspect in the world, it offers an opportune time in history for China's leap forward in chip industry and an ideal platform for the take-off of China's information sector." This vision justified the launch of the the digital multimedia chip project in 1999 under the leadership of China Ministry of Information Industry and the support of China National Development and Reform Commission, The Ministry of Science and Technology, Ministry of Commerce, National Science Association, and the Beijing municipal government. It was also included in the 863 Program, the National Key Technology Innovation Scheme, National Hi-tech Industry Development Program, National Mobile Communication Program, Commercialization Program for Beijing Key Sci-tech Research, and Beijing Sci-tech Program. The purpose is to make a breakthrough on computer imaging input chip, a driving force for China's digital multimedia chip industry, thus paving the way for China to be among the leading countries for integrated circuit design.

Over the past five years since it was launched, the digital multimedia chip series project has scored breakthroughs in seven core technologies including multimedia data driven parallel computing, reconstructible CPU architecture, deep sub-micron super chip design, high performance image processing and dynamic harmless compression algorithm, CMOS digital-analogue mixed circuit, ultra-low power and low amplitude circuit, and mono-crystalline silicon-wafer imaging embedded system. It possesses dozens of international and national proprietary technologies and about 200 patent applications. It has also obtained one integrated circuit know-how registered as a protected proprietary technology and three software copyrights registrations. All these have made it technically advanced in the world.

As learned, many world famous giants, such as Samsung, Philips, HP, Logitech, Innovation & Technology, Fujitsu, NEC, Lenovo, Bird, and Tsinghua Tongfang, are all big users of the digital multimedia chip series,. As the only standard chip appointed by China telecom, it has covered 16 countries and regions in the world, including Europe, US, Japan, South Korea and China's Taiwan Province.

Experts pointed out that the successful development of the digital multimedia chip series has scored a breakthrough in the monopoly by foreign chips, which used to dominate the Chinese domestic market. To a higher sense, it boosts China's digital 3C industry and indicates that China's electronic information industry is marching forward from "Made in China" onto the road of "Innovated by China".

(People's Daily December 30, 2003)