Who developed China’s first chip? What’s the story?

Deng Zhonghan, born in Nanjing, Jiangsu Province on September 5, 1968, is an academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, a member of the 13th National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, the commander-in-chief of the "Starlight China Core Project", and the director of the State Key Laboratory of Digital Multimedia Chip Technology. Expert in microelectronics and large-scale integrated circuit design technology.

On October 14, 1999, Deng Zhonghan’s Zhongxing Microelectronics Co., Ltd. opened in a warehouse of a company in Zhongguancun, Beijing. The Beijing Municipal Government actively supports Deng Zhonghan’s “Starlight China Core Project” and has given green light all the way from project establishment, registration, license application, and recruitment of personnel. Vimicro also received the first batch of seed funds from the Electronic Development Fund of the Ministry of Information Industry, and later venture capital investments were raised independently by the company, thus becoming a local Chinese company founded under the "Silicon Valley mechanism."

Vimicro's core team are all typical "returnees": Chairman Deng Zhonghan, Chief Technology Officer Yang Xiaodong, Vice Presidents Zhang Hui and Jin Zhaowei, two Berkeley Ph.D.s and a Stanford Ph.D., all of whom have worked at IBM, Worked for major international companies such as HP and DELL Laboratories. However, Vimicro's development path was not smooth. When the company encountered a shortage of funds at the beginning of its development, they used their personal deposits, real estate, and stocks to sign a personal mortgage loan contract with the bank and obtained a loan of US$3 million. They withstood a Serious challenge. In 1999, when Vimicro was founded, 4.9 million brand-name computers were sold in China, but none of its "hearts" were "Made in China." On March 11, 2001, Vimicro's first chip finally clearly displayed data images.

Under the leadership of Deng Zhonghan, the "Starlight" series of digital multimedia chips they developed have successively broken through 7 core technologies and applied for more than 500 patents. In 2001, "Starlight One" was successfully developed. This is China's first ultra-large-scale digital multimedia chip with independent intellectual property rights and a million-gate level. Vimicro’s products not only ended the silicon-free history of Zhongguancun, the “Silicon Valley of China”, but also became the first “Chinese chip” to enter the international market.