The Shenzhen-based company launched its first-generation Powerstar P3-01105 CPU early last month. President Li Ruijie said that this chip is designed mainly for desktop computers on the commercial market, based on Intel's x86 architecture in cooperation with the US company.
However, the product marketing materials published by Powerleader do not mention any agreement with Intel. After the launch event, some experts and technology enthusiasts immediately recognized the similarities of this CPU with Intel products. They say that the new Powerleader CPU is an improved version of the older Intel processor.
The specifications and performance of the Powerstar chip announced by Geekbench (Canada) at the end of May show that this processor is identical to Intel's Core i5-3 Comet Lake CPU. Meanwhile, Tom's Hardware, a popular technology news and review website, also points to some design elements and identical physical properties between the two chips.
This has led to accusations that the Chinese company has exaggerated the product as an attempt at domestic technological autonomy in order to receive subsidies from the government. Currently, Beijing has been increasing its support for semiconductor research and development through subsidies and grants as the technology war with Washington shows no sign of abating.
In a statement posted by Li on Weibo, Powerleader reaffirmed the Powerstar chip as a "custom product developed with Intel support". Besides removing online marketing about the new processor, the company said it did not apply for any government subsidies during the development of the processor.
However, Powerleader did not clarify or provide any details on how they customize with Intel processors.
Exaggerating the capacity of domestic technological autonomy
On May 6, the Chinese company continued to say that the new product launch marks "an important step on the journey to achieving independence and control of the domestic x5 chip architecture." Powerleader plans to build 86 production facilities across the mainland and set a sales target of 9 million units per year.
However, according to Caixin news site, semiconductor experts expressed doubts about whether Powerleader is capable of producing chips on its own, because the company does not invest heavily in production lines, nor does it have the expertise to fully grasp the technology behind Intel's CPUs.
Powerleader, founded in 2003, mainly manufactures servers and personal computers. According to a report published by market researcher IDC, the company accounts for less than 5% of the server market share in China by 2022.
Some observers have compared the incident to the 2006 scandal when Chen Jin, a prominent rector and professor of Shanghai Jiaotong University, fraudulently funded government funding by falsifying research on the Hanxin digital signal processor, which was later exposed as a Motorola chip version.
Experts say that Powerleader's case is different from the Hanxin chip scandal in that the company previously had a business agreement with Intel. Therefore, they may have "overstated" about technological autonomy in product marketing, confused in distinguishing self-developed and custom chips.
(According to Nikkei Asia)
