Nanjing Tianyue Electronics Files for IPO After Cutting Hearing Aid Chip Costs by 30% and Breaking Domestic Technology Barriers
Currently, approximately 120 million elderly people in China are gradually experiencing hearing loss.
In "The Current Status and Development Trends of Hearing Health in China," a set of data stands out. However, due to factors such as the high cost of hearing aids, extremely complex fitting procedures, limited product functionality, and insufficient market education, only a few million people have actually adopted hearing aids despite the large population base with hearing impairments—a harsh reality where less than 6.5% of hearing-impaired individuals in China currently use hearing aids.
Although domestic hearing aid manufacturers are striving to break the deadlock and increase product penetration, they remain constrained by a market in which nearly 90% is monopolized by overseas giants. To succeed, these manufacturers must first overcome the high entry barriers posed by patented technologies in the market and achieve independent research and development of core technologies. Only then can they further enhance the performance of hearing aid devices while reducing costs, ultimately enabling more patients to access domestically produced hearing aids.
Five years ago, Nanjing Tianyue Electronic Technology Co., Ltd. (“Nanjing Tianyue”), a subsidiary of Jiangsu Variety Group, took note of this issue.: In the current hearing aid industry, leading global brands independently conduct the research and development of hearing aid chips. However, domestic manufacturers in China, having entered the market later, rely primarily on chip suppliers such as ON Semiconductor (USA) and IntriCon Corporation. If breakthroughs in this core chip technology are not achieved promptly, domestic manufacturers risk being relegated to low-end assembly roles amid slim profit margins, making it even more difficult to genuinely reduce product costs. Once core technologies are monopolized and controlled by foreign entities, the functional iteration and performance optimization of domestically produced hearing aids will be subject to external constraints.
Breakthroughs in chip technology are undoubtedly the key to addressing the industry’s urgent needs, and Nanjing Tianyue has made this its strategic direction.
After extensive accumulation of scientific research,Nanjing Tianyue ultimately overcame numerous key technical challenges in integrated circuits and speech processing, and secured corresponding intellectual property rights,Developed multiple SoC chips for the HA series of digital hearing aids,Filling the gap in domestically produced digital hearing aid-specific chips. Leveraging this first-mover advantage, along with stable and mature products, Nanjing Tianyue has collaborated with the vast majority of customers in China.Chip shipments have reached millions of units.
As the most critical core component of digital hearing aids, the processing capability of the chip largely determines the performance quality of the device. Features such as noise reduction, compression, open-fit verification, wireless technology, frequency lowering, directional technology, and feedback suppression are all integrated into this small chip.
However, achieving genuine breakthroughs in chip technology remains particularly challenging. In this process, long-term technological accumulation, a diverse talent pool, and sufficient R&D investment are all indispensable keys to success.
Yang Dongyi, founder of Nanjing Tianyue, is an expert in the field of microelectronics and integrated circuit engineering at Tsinghua University. He studied under Academician Li Zhijian of Tsinghua University, who served as the leader of the team that developed China’s first cryptographic chip and as the Deputy Director of the Chip Technology Committee of the Chinese Association for Cryptologic Research. With thirty years of experience in scientific research, engineering, and business practice, Mr. Yang has achieved significant results in technological innovation and industrialization in the field of low-power, highly complex chips.
At its inception,The company has assembled a team of low-power chip design experts and algorithm elites from renowned universities and institutions such as Tsinghua University, Southeast University, and the Chinese Academy of Sciences., developing domestically produced digital hearing aid chips, algorithms, and solutions. It is worth mentioning that,Nanjing Tianyue's chip algorithm was jointly developed with Southeast University.With over two decades of experience in research and development and the commercialization of scientific achievements, the Hearing Aid Algorithm Team at Southeast University is one of the earliest groups in China to study digital hearing aid algorithms. The team has filed numerous patents and published specialized monographs in this field.
The accumulation of diverse talent has naturally laid the foundation for Nanjing Tianyue’s future development. The team possesses comprehensive technical capabilities spanning chip-level bottom-layer design, hearing aid circuit design, microphone and receiver matching, and algorithm design, enabling it to provide users with full-stack technical support. As a result, Nanjing Tianyue has achieved independent technological breakthroughs, even as core underlying technologies in the hearing aid industry remain monopolized by imports.
Digital hearing aids are not merely “speech amplifiers”; they are devices composed of hardware components such as speakers, microphones, adjustable potentiometers, single-cell batteries, telecoils, and hearing-aid-specific System-on-Chip (SoC) chips, along with software such as hearing compensation algorithms. Their design requires coordinated optimization of the chip and algorithms across multiple dimensions to ensure the accuracy, clarity, and low-latency transmission of audio signals.
First, it possesses strong DSP computing capabilities. Only by equipping the chip with DSP computing power can computationally intensive speech signal processing algorithms—such as subband analysis and synthesis, wide dynamic range compression (WDRC), noise reduction, feedback suppression, and scene recognition—be executed in real time.
Secondly, high real-time performance ensures low audio latency. Typically, audio latency must be kept below 10 ms, with more stringent requirements demanding 2–4 ms.
Furthermore, it involves high-precision hardware and software processing. It is essential to ensure minimal speech distortion and effective noise reduction;
Then, it supports low-voltage operation with a single-cell battery;
Finally, there are stringent low-power requirements. Digital hearing aid devices must achieve low-power operation to ensure prolonged functionality. Typically, the total operating current of the device must be <2 mA, including the current required to drive the speaker (0.5–0.8 mA).
Yang Dongyi told VCBeat that chip R&D is a hard-core technology, with design being the core challenge. The key to chip design lies in the ability to deconstruct a technical problem into multiple sub-problems and solve them one by one. However, overcoming this hurdle does not mean the job is done; there are further algorithmic challenges to address. After all, the algorithms running on the chip represent a more formidable obstacle that requires long-term technological accumulation to conquer. Combining both aspects makes the task even more difficult. The key for Nanjing Tianyue to crack this technical puzzle lies in its “algorithm-first, architecture-second” approach. This means first considering the computational functions the chip needs to perform, and then designing the chip’s underlying architecture accordingly.
Adhering to the philosophy of "algorithms first, structure second,"Nanjing Tianyue has not only joined forces with Southeast University to establish a Joint R&D Center for Audio-Video Systems and Integrated Circuits, tackling core technologies and developing a series of hearing aid chips, but its products have also passed the technical specification testing conducted by the China Electronics Standardization Institute, achieving widespread market adoption.
In September 2019, the company launched the HA320D, an ultra-low-power digital chip dedicated to hearing aids, filling the gap in commercially available domestically produced digital hearing aid chips. It subsequently introduced the HA330G, achieving million-unit shipment volumes for both the HA320D and HA330G chips in 2021. In 2022, Nanjing Tianyue achieved another breakthrough by reconstructing and innovating its hardware and algorithms, releasing the HA601SC and HA631SC, specialized SoC chips featuring high computing power, low latency, and low power consumption.
Specifically, the Nanjing Tianyue HA series chips feature a dual-core architecture combining an MCU and a DSP, a parallel multi-data-channel DSP architecture, and dual-channel 16-bit ADCs. They incorporate 16-bit DACs with Class-D power amplifiers and an ultra-low-power design, support a wide range of peripherals, and enable a complete single-chip system solution. This series of chips holds full independent intellectual property rights.
The HA330G, independently developed by Nanjing Tianyue, is a high-performance digital signal processing (DSP) chip for hearing aids.
Built on an MCU+DSP architecture, this chip features a second-generation 16-bit ADC, a hardware acceleration engine for LMS adaptive filtering calculations in echo cancellation algorithms, and a dedicated 128-point FFT hardware acceleration engine, with an 8-bit SAR ADC precision. The Class-D driver achieves a maximum sound pressure level of 130 dB. Additionally, the chip integrates a 32-bit RISC CPU and a DSP core with a dual-MAC structure, offering high computational efficiency, multifunctionality, scalability, high sampling precision, low equivalent input noise, and low harmonic distortion.
Particularly noteworthy is Nanjing Tianyue’s new HA631SC SoC chip, dedicated to digital hearing aids.
HA631SC is a chip specifically designed for TWS/Bluetooth hearing aids. This chip features a new miniaturized package (5.3mm*3.9mm*0.95mm) with high integration,Supports single-chip solutions and enables domestically produced chips to support 32-channel independent adjustment.. It features a DSP architecture with a 32-bit MCU and dual MAC structure, incorporating a multi-channel DMA controller and multiple arithmetic accelerators within the core to support SIMD operations. In conjunction with DMA, the product enables fast and efficient computational response. Its low-power design ensures total device power consumption of less than 1.5 mA. Furthermore, the CPU can operate at low clock frequencies and low voltages to eliminate unnecessary power loss, offering a rich and user-friendly instruction set along with high execution efficiency.
Additionally, the chip exclusively provides a dedicated I²S digital audio interface to ensure high-quality audio transmission, while incorporating built-in mathematical operation libraries, digital signal processing (DSP) libraries, and algorithm libraries. The algorithm library includes multi-channel wide dynamic range compression (WDRC), speech enhancement, feedback detection, echo suppression, and equalization, thereby meeting the functional and performance requirements of mid-to-high-end digital hearing aids. The algorithms consist of four core components: intelligent fitting algorithms, directional speech enhancement algorithms, adaptive noise suppression algorithms, and echo cancellation algorithms.
Precise tuning via 32-channel Wide Dynamic Range Compression (WDRC) technology accurately matches patients’ hearing loss profiles, thereby improving fitting suitability for individuals with hearing impairment. Directional speech enhancement based on spatial filters effectively distinguishes speech from noise and enhances target sound sources, providing optimal conditions for clear sound pickup. Meanwhile, the Nanjing Tianyue team has optimized models for hearing aid speech compensation and fitting based on user characteristics and environmental parameters. This enables real-time analysis of the time-frequency characteristics of speech and noise, employs adaptive estimation algorithms to effectively suppress noise, achieves efficient noise reduction, and improves patient speech intelligibility.
Furthermore,This chip supports fitting via mobile app and PC software.Traditional hearing aids rely on the fitting experience and professional expertise of audiologists to adjust algorithm parameters for optimal performance. This expert-dependent fitting approach is inefficient and has certain limitations. To address the current design requirements for non-fitted and self-fitted hearing aids, the Nanjing Tianyue team has developed a fitting formula based on their product characteristics, combining patients' audiograms and sound preferences. Meanwhile, they have designed a rapid and effective method for correcting fitting parameters through personalized adjustments based on user feedback. By leveraging Bluetooth technology to transmit digital audio directly to the hearing aid chip, users can freely control their hearing devices via mobile platforms. Sound amplification is supported during calls, meeting users' multimedia usage needs.
In addition to core technologies such as chips, Nanjing Tianyue also provides customers with comprehensive technical support services, including circuit design, acoustic performance tuning, fitting software usage, and fitting parameter configuration, along with a fully featured graphical configuration interface. The product allows for the definition of pin functions, acoustic calibration, and algorithm switching without requiring any code-level development by the manufacturer. Meanwhile, customized designs, including product applications, can be developed according to customer requirements.
It is understood that Nanjing Tianyue, leveraging years of technological accumulation and adhering to the consistent product philosophy of domestic manufacturers—offering low prices and high-quality service—has priced its chips more than 30% lower than foreign competitors with comparable performance. This not only provides Chinese hearing aid manufacturers with a more cost-effective option but also injects new vitality into the development of China’s hearing aid industry.
At the conclusion of the discussion, Yang Dongyi stated, “In the future, Nanjing Tianyue will continue to increase its R&D investment and launch more hearing aid chip products that are powerful, high-performing, and reasonably priced. The company’s new generation of 55-nanometer high-performance chips is about to hit the market, providing better hearing services for individuals with hearing impairments and making greater contributions to the innovation and development of domestically produced chips.”