(Yicai Global) Aug. 12 -- China’s second-biggest short video platform Kuaishou Technology has unveiled its first self-developed chip to power high-quality video livestreaming and launched a cloud video business arm to help companies generate and distribute their own video content.

The SL200, which has started in-house testing, is an intelligent video processing system-on-chip for live video-on-demand applications, Senior Vice President Yu Bing told Yicai Global yesterday.

The SoC, which should start mass production next year, will first be used internally, although discussions will be held with clients in industries such as radio and television, gaming and security, Yu said.

The video and AI division Streamlake, that was launched on Aug. 10, will help firms generate their own video content and distribute them online, Yu said, who is also head of this new arm. It will offer AI-enabled special effects, smart video creation and virtual human technology. The service will operate independently from Kuaishou and will target the Business-to-Business market, he added.

The performance requirements for vision processing units, which accelerate machine vision tasks, are becoming higher and higher. As the demand for high-quality videos in streaming media increases, graphic processing units and central processing units are no longer able to handle the huge volumes involved. Many companies, including TikTok operator ByteDance and internet giant Tencent Holdings have started to invest in making such chips.

Developing chips is extremely expensive, an investor in hard tech told Yicai Global. It costs around USD3 million to reach trial production of 14 nanometer chips, USD30 million for 7 nm ones and USD47.2 million for 5 nm ones.

Beijing-based Kuaishou has not commented on the cost and specific process of making its own chip.

Kuaishou’s share price [HKG: 1024] was trading down 0.2 percent at CNY75.35 (USD11) as of 12 noon China time today. Yesterday the stock gained 2 percent.

Editor: Kim Taylor