Jiao Guofang, a veteran in the GPU technology research and development industry and co-founder of domestic chip startup Biren Technology, has recently resigned from his role as general manager of the graphics GPU product line, according to an unnamed source familiar with the matter.
Biren Technology, founded in September 2019, specializes in developing general-purpose GPU (GPGPU) for artificial intelligence training and reasoning, and has completed a total financing amount of over 5 billion yuan. The company's CEO, Zhang Wen, comes from a venture capital background and has worked in the United Nations and Wall Street.
Jiao Guofang's background in GPU technology research and development, on the other hand, includes more than 25 years of experience in architecture and R&D. He has worked in Qualcomm for 11 years, where he was the leader of the GPU team and self-developed the 5th generation of classic Qualcomm Adreno mobile GPU architecture. Jiao Guofang also served as the chief scientist of GPU technology in Huawei's Futurewei department, where he was responsible for the graphics and image processing and UI system framework of Huawei's Hongmeng OS.
Biren Technology's Entry into the Graphics GPU Field
Biren Technology is known for its GPGPU development, but the company has also expressed interest in entering the graphics GPU field, which is currently dominated by Nvidia. Jiao Guofang stated that Biren Technology would leverage its technical strength and understanding of the Chinese market to deeply optimize local and emerging application scenarios and take advantage of the "latecomer advantage."
Biren Technology's Recent Developments
Biren Technology announced the launch of its new graphics GPU product line in September 2021, shortly before Jiao Guofang's resignation. However, the exact reasons for his departure remain unclear. Biren Technology's GPGPU and graphics GPU products have not yet been officially listed and mass-produced, and the company's press release announcing the launch of the new graphics GPU product line has been deleted from its official website.
Despite Jiao Guofang's departure, Biren Technology has made significant progress in its product development. In October 2021, the company announced that the first general-purpose GPU with a 7nm process, the BR100, had been officially delivered and started tape-out. The company claimed that the performance parameters were directly benchmarked against the current international leading similar products.
In March of the same year, Biren Technology announced that the first general-purpose GPU chip BR100 series was successfully lit at one time, with core performance design standards that directly benchmark the latest flagship chips released by international manufacturers. In August 2022, Biren Technology officially released the first general-purpose GPU chip BR100, with a single-chip peak computing power of up to petaflops per second, which is the PFLOPS level. The BR100's paper performance data was found to be comparable to Nvidia's latest 4nm flagship H100.
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