OPPO has launched a new system-on-chip (SoC)—MariSilicon Y—at the OPPO Inno Day 2022 event. The new chipset is explicitly made to offer better audio quality over Bluetooth than the audio you get with Bluetooth solutions built into SoCs like the Exynos 2200 and Qualcomm Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1. The company calls this chipset a ‘Flagship Bluetooth Audio SoC’ and claims it to have many industry-first features.
12Mbps data transfer rate and 24-bit/192kHz audio over Bluetooth
According to OPPO, the MariSilicon Y is made using TSMC’s N6RF fabrication technology. Supposedly, chips based on this technology offer powerful network reception while consuming significantly less power. The exciting part is that the MariSilicon Y has a 12Mbps data transfer rate, which is the highest Bluetooth bandwidth in the industry.
The high-speed Bluetooth connection is combined with OPPO’s proprietary audio codec—URLC (Ultra Resolution Lossless Codec)—to “achieve stellar sound quality and a smarter, more personalized audio experience without draining the battery.” It has a data transfer speed of 24-bit/192kHz for audio (compared to Samsung Seamless Codec HiFi’s 16-bit 44.1KHz), which OPPO says is the first in the industry.
OPPO also boasts of the computing power on the chipset, which is 590GOPS (Giga operations per second). However, since we don’t have any figures for the processing power of Bluetooth chipsets in smartphone SoCs, we can’t say if OPPO’s numbers are good or bad.
OPPO also claims that the MariSilicon Y is 33% smaller and consumes 66% less power, but it hasn’t given any reference point to compare with. Maybe, OPPO is referring to Bluetooth solutions built into the smartphone chipsets, such as those from Qualcomm and MediaTek.
MariSilicon Y is made for flagship smartphones
The chipset’s webpage says, “MariSilicon Y helps next-generation flagship devices,” which suggests that OPPO is going to use this SoC in its next flagship smartphone. Considering that this chipset offers better sound quality compared to the Bluetooth solution built into the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 2, OPPO’s upcoming flagship smartphone could offer better audio quality over Bluetooth compared to the Galaxy S23 series smartphones.
Do you think Samsung should up its game and make a similar chip for better Bluetooth connectivity and performance?
