It will be produced using the 5 nm process technology
While Huawei and SMIC are attracting attention to their 7-nanometer Kirin SoC and rumors about working on 3-nanometer chips, the Chinese company Nio, which has nothing to do with semiconductors in general, has created its own chip with 5 nm process technology.
The single-chip system is called Shenji NX9031 and is aimed at Nio's own cars. In addition to the fact that this SoC surprises with its technical process, it is generally the most modern and complex Chinese-developed chip. Shenji NX9031 contains more than 50 billion transistors. This is more than the Nvidia AD103 GPU on which the GeForce RTX 4080 is based.
The chip configuration includes 32 cores based on the Arm architecture, an NPU unit, a graphics core and other less important components. This SoC supports LPDDR5X memory and can process lidar data. Nio itself claims that the Shenji NX9031 is four times more powerful than the Nvidia Drive Orin X, but does not provide details.
Who will produce the new platform is unknown, but Nio is not on the US sanctions list, so it could turn to both TSMC and Samsung. Shenji NX9031 will initially be used in the flagship electric vehicle ET9, which will hit the market in early 2025.