China's First 7nm GPU Nears Mass Production, Pics Emerge

Tianshu Zhixin Big Island GPGPU
(Image credit: Tianshu Zhixin)

Shanghai Tianshu Intellectual Semiconductor Co. (Tianshu Zhixin) announced Wednesday that it's nearing "mass production and commercial delivery" of Big Island, China's first domestically produced 7nm general-purpose GPU (GPGPU).

Tianshu Zhixin said in January that BI was made using an unidentified 7nm process node and 2.5D chip-on-wafer-on-substrate (CoWoS) packaging. On Wednesday, it confirmed our suspicion that BI was made using TSMC's 7nm FinFET process.

It also shared a little more information about what people can expect from BI when it starts to ship. The image below shows Tianshu Zhixin's performance claims in a variety of floating point formats that it teased during the January announcement:

Tianzhu Zhixin Big Island Performance Claims

(Image credit: Tianshu Zhixin)

Tianshu Zhixin claimed that BI offers "nearly twice the performance of mainstream manufacturers' products" at a lower power consumption while also offering a more attractive price-to-performance ratio. (Pricing details weren't revealed, however.)

The company said that its "progress of product development and commercial application is 1-2 years ahead of domestic counterparts." That's an important lead to claim as China pushes companies to reduce their reliance on foreign products.

Tianshu Zhixin also shared images of the first BI products:

Exact shipping information and pricing details for the first BI products weren't provided. It wouldn't be a surprise if progress is slower than Tianshu Zhixin would like, thanks to the global chip shortage, but it's clear the company's raring to go.

Nathaniel Mott
Freelance News & Features Writer

Nathaniel Mott is a freelance news and features writer for Tom's Hardware US, covering breaking news, security, and the silliest aspects of the tech industry.

  • UWguy
    Reversed engineered card from several generations ago I’m sure.
    Reply
  • gargoylenest
    UWguy said:
    Reversed engineered card from several generations ago I’m sure.
    You are still thinking about China 20 years ago. It dont need to copy anymore, it create product occident is not able to match yet. It got some of the biggest brains in the world. They catched up by copying, but now they are getting ahead of us because we are sitting on our ass thinking of how great we are.
    Reply
  • hotaru251
    gargoylenest said:
    It dont need to copy anymore,
    i do hope that is a joke...

    China still pays ppl to give them info/products secretly today.

    sure, they CAN make their own stuff from scratch, but they have no issue stealing to save them work.
    Reply
  • Nobonita
    This is excellent. But China needs to make sure they have the equipment. Until we can make sure west has been taken out of entire global supply & financial chain, it's on. We can't make same mistake we made after ww2.
    Reply
  • Phaaze88
    Whoa, that is neat.
    Reply
  • daworstplaya
    hotaru251 said:
    i do hope that is a joke...

    China still pays ppl to give them info/products secretly today.

    sure, they CAN make their own stuff from scratch, but they have no issue stealing to save them work.

    As you said, probably stole the technology from AMD or Nvidia. That's what China is good at, stealing.
    Reply
  • bernieo
    hurry up and catch up with Amd and Nvidia ,they have pissed me off with the lack of 3080's .
    ill show them what happens, when they mess with their customer base. Its called payback .
    Reply
  • Stevemeister
    Using TSMC's FinFet process obviously stolen from TSMC . . . . no way could they advance so far so fast without stealing technology from somewhere . . . . . and no they are not innovators - they are copiers.
    Reply
  • Chung Leong
    UWguy said:
    Reversed engineered card from several generations ago I’m sure.

    This is stupid. As I've mentioned before, the Chinese government owns Imagination Technologies. Why the heck would they reverse engineer AMD or Nvidia old tech when they've already bought a more power-efficient design?
    Reply
  • pocketdrummer
    "as China pushes companies to reduce their reliance on foreign products."

    Maybe we should be doing the same thing since we're just handing them everything they need to learn how to overtake us AND have the manufacturing to build it cheaper. We're writing our own death warrant.
    Reply