Reborn in 2011, 985 missing from two copies

The strength of Texas Instruments' R&D team is unquestionable.

Currently, most of the core R&D talents of Xingyi Semiconductor were poached from Texas Instruments. They are the best of the best, so naturally they have strong strength.

Without any surprise, the smart home SOC chip, fast charging chip, and power management chip have all been successfully taped out.

The next step is trial production. If there are no problems with the trial production, we can start full-scale mass production!

By then, Xingyi Semiconductor will enter a new era of formal mass production from the PPT era!

Although these three chips are not high-end chips, everything is difficult at the beginning.

With these three chips leading the way, subsequent high-end mobile phone chips, baseband chips, and even next year's high-end SOC chips with integrated baseband will all be a natural outcome.

It is too difficult to directly develop a 28nm SOC chip with integrated baseband this year, after all, Qualcomm will have to wait until next year.

No matter how talented the people poached from Texas Instruments are, it will take until next year.

After all, baseband issues are more difficult to solve than processor issues, let alone integrated baseband, which is even more difficult.

Therefore, Wang Yi had to make a choice and slow down the development of SOC chips with integrated baseband and switch to an external baseband solution.

Develop 28-nanometer processor chips and 28-nanometer baseband chips separately.

This plug-in solution is the same strategy as NVIDIA's Tegra 3 and Qualcomm's flagship processor 8064 in the second half of the year. It greatly reduces the difficulty and is sufficient.

It won’t be too late for Xingyi Semiconductor to launch the Xingyi SOC with integrated baseband by the first half of next year when Qualcomm launches the Snapdragon 800 SOC with integrated baseband.

After all, next year's NVIDIA will still be an external solution.

This strategy is more stable and safer.

Moreover, it is developed separately, and the processor does not integrate the baseband, so the modules that are not used by the TV can be castrated, and the video decoding capability can be optimized to be used as a 4K TV chip!

This way, you kill two birds with one stone!

You can even not castrate it and just mass-produce more of it, and use mobile phone chips as 4K TV chips without any problem.

The Snapdragon 600 chip used in the previous generation of Xiaomi TV is the same Snapdragon 600 chip used in mobile phones.

Although the material cost of this solution is slightly higher than that of castration, it saves a series of processes such as re-design, re-tapeout, re-trial production, and reopening of the production line. Overall, the cost is lower.

After all, there is so much code in chip design that if you change one line, you have to re-strip the chip.

The cost of a tape-out is not low.

The chips that Xingyi Semiconductor is taping out this time are all 40-nanometer low-end chips. The price of the tape-out is relatively low, only about 80 to 90 US dollars, or million RMB per time.

But the price of 28 nanometers is much higher.

The current price of a 28nm tape-out is 500 million US dollars, which is more than 3200 million RMB.

A few years later, when the 28nm process matures and production capacity is sufficient, the wafer price will drop to US$200 million.

There is nothing we can do about this.

Moreover, tape-out may not be 100% successful in one go.

In the past, Xiaomi's Surge S2 chip failed multiple times during tape-out, resulting in hundreds of millions of RMB being wasted. Even the wealthy CEO Lei Jun could not bear it and had to abandon the development of the S2 chip.

Similarly, the current 28-nanometer chip tape-out cost is too high. Xingyi Technology can simply choose to use 28-nanometer mobile phone chips as TV chips, saving the trouble of re-research and development and re-tapeout.

We will wait until next year to develop more high-end and professional TV picture quality chips.

No problem.

After thinking this through, Wang Yi came to the semiconductor department.

Williams greeted him with a smile: "As expected, all three chips were successfully taped out at once!"

"Very good, Xingyi Semiconductor Department has made great contributions. George's R&D team will give each person an extra three months of year-end bonus!"

"I'd like to thank Mr. Wang on their behalf!" Williams said with a smile.

The research and development of these chips were all done by George's department, and the bonus also went to George and his team.

As for Williams and his department, it depends on whether the mobile phone chip can be successfully developed.

If the research and development is successful, there will be more bonus.

If the research and development fails, you will end up with nothing.

Wang Yi has always been clear about rewards and punishments. Even within the same department, he would quantify management and refuse to eat from the same pot.

"By the way, Chairman, all three chips have been put into trial production, so we should give them official names. And the mobile phone chip we are developing also lacks an official name!"

"Then let's name them by category." Wang Yi pondered for a moment:

"Smart home, abbreviated as SH, is a bit cumbersome, so let's call it H, home. Our first smart home chip is called the Smart Home H1 chip."

"Power, the first power management chip is called P1."

"Charge, the first fast charging chip is called C1!"

Williams agreed: "This is obviously simple and clear. Even if there are more chips later, there will be no confusion."

Wang Yi nodded: "Yes, and these low-end chips are not mobile phone chips. The performance requirements are not high, and there is no need to upgrade every year. On the contrary, one generation can be used for several years."

By the time the next generation upgrade comes, which is estimated to be many years later, Xingyi Wafer Factory will achieve high-tech process, free up 28-nanometer process, and then create the second-generation 28-nanometer smart home, fast charging chip, and power management chip.

In the past, before 2017, most smart home chips were 55 nanometers, and 40 nanometers was the limit.

It was not until 2017 that new 28nm products gradually appeared.

As for 10-nanometer and 7-nanometer smart home chips, this is unrealistic and a pure waste.

After all, 10-nanometer and 7-nanometer mobile phone chips can be sold for more than 1000 yuan.

However, the unit price of smart home chips is only a few dozen yuan at most, which is not worth the high-end process.

Williams smiled and said, "That's right. If we produce more at one time, the cost can be spread to the lowest! After the trial production, we have to go into formal production. Chairman, how many orders should we place for those three chips?"

Wang Yi fell into deep thought: "How many orders to place? This is an important question! The more orders you place, the lower the OEM fee and the lower the cost. Of course, it can't be too many to prevent excessive inventory."

"That's right." Williams handed over a document: "Chairman, this is TSMC's quotation and the cost we calculated. Please take a look."

Wang Yi took it and looked at it carefully.

Williams did a very good job. He not only marked the foundry fees, material costs, and diluted total costs corresponding to different production volumes, but also marked the current purchase prices of similar chips.

This made Wang Yi very satisfied.

Currently, the power management chips of Xingyi mobile phones and Xingyi tablets are purchased from Qualcomm, Nvidia and other companies.

Wang Yi purchased in large quantities, and the price offered by the other party kept decreasing.

For example, the two power management chips of Xphone 1 come from Qualcomm. Xiaomi bought the two chips for a total of US$10, and paid Wang Yi US$7.

Later, as the orders for Xphone 1 increased, the price dropped to US$6, which is equivalent to only US$3 per piece, or 20 RMB, which is a very cheap price.

But Qualcomm still makes a lot of money!

It’s simple, the material cost of a power management chip is only a few cents!