OPPO's Fengchi Game Engine: Three Years in the Making, Reshaping the Android Gaming Experience

OPPO's Fengchi Game Engine: Three Years in the Making, Reshaping the Android Gaming ExperienceRecent advancements in mobile SoC performance have enabled the smooth running of demanding mobile games like Genshin Impact. However, even the Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1, released three years ago, while remaining fluid in everyday use, still sparks debate among heavy gamers regarding its performance surplus

OPPO's Fengchi Game Engine: Three Years in the Making, Reshaping the Android Gaming Experience

Recent advancements in mobile SoC performance have enabled the smooth running of demanding mobile games like Genshin Impact. However, even the Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1, released three years ago, while remaining fluid in everyday use, still sparks debate among heavy gamers regarding its performance surplus. While the enhanced SoC performance allows for smooth gameplay in titles like Genshin Impact, theres still room for improvement in clarity, frame rate, power consumption, and heat generation. Simultaneously, increasingly rich game graphics, details, and gameplay place ever-higher demands on mobile hardware, with overheating and lag during extended play sessions remaining prevalent issues.

To address user pain points in gaming experiences, OnePlus held a gaming conference, inviting media outlets like Lei Technology to participate. OnePlus China President Li Jie highlighted that relying solely on SoC performance improvements is insufficient for enhancing gaming experiences. Android's scheduling mechanism isn't designed specifically for gaming, leading to performance waste, excess heat, and increased power consumption. Therefore, many domestic smartphone manufacturers are employing hardware and software optimizations to improve gaming performance.

OPPO, a global smartphone giant, has established six R&D centers across China, formed joint laboratories with fifteen universities, and collaborated with numerous game studios. After three years of dedicated research and development, they have created a hardware-level gaming technology: the "Fengchi Game Engine." Li Jie stated that most manufacturers' understanding of game experience remains confined to chip iterations or software tuning. However, a wall exists between the chip and the game, resulting in significant power waste. To truly resolve these issues, a holistic approach is required, necessitating rewriting the chip's underlying kernel to improve energy efficiency in gaming scenarios.

This challenge was incredibly complex, akin to rebuilding a skyscraper from the ground up, requiring a complete restructuring of the Android's underlying architecture. The OPPO team, after three years of hard work, rewrote 25,641 lines of Android kernel code, restructured 34,121 lines of game rendering pipeline code, and filed 254 patents to complete the development of the "Fengchi Game Engine." This technology features comprehensive restructuring and optimization at the chip, kernel, and application layers.

OPPO's Game Center head, Tan Hao, explained the core advantages of this technology. Unlike the industry's common approach of creating dedicated channels to prevent other tasks from interfering with game operation, the "Fengchi Game Engine" optimizes gameplay by removing unnecessary load. This approach reduces the number of crucial CPU instructions by up to 22.74%. Furthermore, by shifting from local to global control and optimizing performance scheduling, crucial task wait times are reduced by 66%, and key character calculation efficiency is increased by 49%.

OnePlus official data shows that thanks to the "Fengchi Game Engine," the OnePlus phone's power consumption per frame when running Honor of Kings is only 8.3mA, a reduction of 6.74%. A phone equipped with the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 chip and the "Fengchi Game Engine" achieves a power consumption of only 3.4W in Honor of Kings at maximum graphics settings and 120fps, maintaining an average frame rate of 120fps and a maximum temperature of 40.6. Compared to competitor models with similar configurations, it boasts lower power consumption, lower temperatures, and a more stable frame rate. Specifically, under the same load, a competitor's Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 model achieves an average frame rate of 119.8fps, an average power consumption of 4.1W, and a maximum temperature of 44; a competitor's Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 model achieves an average frame rate of 119.9fps, an average power consumption of 3.3W, and a body temperature of 39.4. This shows that the gaming experience of the OnePlus Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 model is comparable to that of a competitor's Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 model.

The "Fengchi Game Engine" also introduces native 120fps frame interpolation. Unlike frame interpolation solutions using independent display chips, the "Fengchi Game Engine" utilizes the SoC's GPU for native frame interpolation. Tan Hao explained that independent display chips typically use a 12nm process, which significantly impacts energy efficiency compared to the 3nm process used in Qualcomm's flagship SoCs. Additionally, external independent display chip frame interpolation requires obtaining the previous and subsequent frames to generate the intermediate frame, resulting in noticeable latency. The GPU native frame interpolation solution, however, only differs from native frames by one vertical synchronization cycle, resulting in virtually no latency. A Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 model equipped with the "Fengchi Game Engine" can support native 120fps + 1080P simultaneously, achieving an average frame rate of 119.9fps with an average power consumption of 6W.

OPPO's three-year development of the "Fengchi Game Engine" has comprehensively improved mobile gaming experiences in terms of power consumption, frame rate, and heat generation, elevating frame interpolation from "usable" to "user-friendly."

The smartphone performance battle continues to escalate. With the emergence of increasingly demanding games like Genshin Impact, Dark Zone Breakout, and Star Rail, and the potential future porting of PC 3A masterpieces to mobile devices, the upper limit of mobile gaming experiences seems limitless. However, smartphone manufacturers are constantly striving for the ultimate gaming experience.

To enhance user gaming experiences, some manufacturers have introduced professional gaming phones with more robust cooling systems and more aggressive chip tuning. However, cooling components require additional costs and space, and most leading brands rarely release professional gaming phones, leading to shortcomings in screen quality, camera capabilities, and system performance. Many manufacturers have abandoned the gaming phone business, leaving only two active gaming phone manufacturers in the domestic market.

Traditional smartphone manufacturers primarily improve gaming performance through software optimization and tuning, while some high-end models incorporate independent display chips for super-frame (frame interpolation) and super-resolution. To address the latency issue of independent display chip frame interpolation, manufacturers utilize AI to predict character movement trajectories for optimization.

Prior to this, OPPO had already launched technologies such as game cloud computing private networks, Lingxi touch control, super-frame super-image engines, and game stable frame engines, adhering to a combined hardware and software approach. The "Fengchi Game Engine," however, is directly written into the underlying architecture of the Snapdragon 8 flagship chip, allowing for bottom-level GPU calls and thus avoiding frame interpolation latency.

Theoretically, stacked cooling can only improve a phone's performance release capability and peak performance, offering limited help with power consumption. Independent display chips have immense potential, especially after incorporating AI prediction of character movement trajectories to mitigate latency, and each has its own advantages and disadvantages compared to OPPO's "Fengchi Game Engine."

OPPO and OnePlus phones equipped with the "Fengchi Game Engine" will offer enhanced gaming performance, delivering a more immersive gaming experience. Typically, OPPO's new gaming technologies are first launched on OnePlus phones. The OnePlus Ace5 series is the first to feature the "Fengchi Game Engine."

The configuration information of the OnePlus Ace5 series has been gradually revealed. The OnePlus Ace5 will be equipped with the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3, while the OnePlus Ace5 Pro will feature the Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1; both phones will be equipped with the "Fengchi Game Engine." Data released at the OnePlus gaming conference shows that based on the "Fengchi Game Engine," the OnePlus Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 phone's gaming experience surpasses other models with the same chip by a generation, and only shows a minor difference compared to the Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 models. The OnePlus Ace5 Pro, equipped with the "Fengchi Game Engine" and Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1, can run Genshin Impact stably at 120fps + 1080P. In Honor of Kings' 120fps mode, its average power consumption is 2.87W, and the maximum temperature is 37.7, both surpassing other models with the same chip. The accuracy of this data will need to be verified through actual testing after the release of the OnePlus Ace5 series. OnePlus China President Li Jie announced that the OnePlus Ace5 series will be released next week.

At the beginning of the OnePlus gaming conference, CEO Pete Lau (Liu Zuohu) stated that gaming experience is a strategic direction for OPPO's performance track, and the "Fengchi Game Engine" is currently OPPO's strongest "weapon" in this area. OPPO previously established a leading position in fast charging with the slogan "Five minutes of charging, two hours of talk time," and has also led industry trends in photography, screens, and systems. However, the "Fengchi Game Engine" may become a new flagship advantage for OPPO and OnePlus phones in the future.

Finally, the article mentions that CES 2025 will open on January 7, 2025, and the Lei Technology reporting team will be in Las Vegas for on-site coverage.