A view of chips  Photo: VCG

China's electronics company Loongson announced it will step up efforts to develop a graphics processing unit (GPU) by 2020. Industry experts welcomed the announcement, but warned that it may not happen in the short term. 

Loongson has established a research and development (R&D) team, the company said Wednesday. The aim is to develop their own GPU, which normally takes two or three years, within one year, the firm said.  

The company said it is determined to help upgrade China's information industry, and become the core force of the independent chip ecological construction system, a company press release said. Loongson did not elaborate on its target. 

Xiang Ligang, a veteran industry analyst, told the Global Times on Wednesday that the domestic level of development in the GPU sector is weak compared with some other countries and it is important to have more companies engaging in the field.

"GPU technology is about graphic recognition and can be adapted in much broader areas, including security checks and smart traffic control," he said.

Loongson did not reply for comment by press time.

Developing a GPU has always been a competitive battlefield for global chip producers, as they can be applied to many fields.

US chip maker AMD, for example, has become a force that is seeing a rapidly growing share in the most important niches of the CPU (central processing unit) and GPU markets, according to Nasdaq on Friday. 

Xiang said that GPU research and development needs an enormous amount of data.  

"It takes a long time to process that data, so we don't know if Loongson will be able to release any results in the short term," he said.