In recent years, the rapid development of China's information industry, has been deeply affected by the lack of core.For more than a decade, the chip imports far exceed the oil Become China's largest imported products, especially the most market-oriented computer CPU, the basic relying on all imports.
Now, with the new generation KX-5000 series processor released by Shanghai SiChun IC, let's see the dawn of opening the core knot.
Tested, the overall performance of this chip 140% increase over the previous generation to meet the needs of the mainstream desktop applications, to achieve the same period mainstream international general processor performance level. Shanghai Siu-core also want to pry out a monopoly in the Intel and AMD market And strive to become one of the world's third computer CPU suppliers.
Long-term control of people
Speaking of chips, in fact, we come into contact every day, when the brush traffic card by subway or checkout with a bank card, each credit card device has a CPU, the central processor, which is the brain of all electronic information devices, through it Similarly, we use the computer every day office, but also through the CPU to achieve the operation and function, relative to other electronic equipment, computer CPU technology with the highest threshold, the most difficult development. The two major U.S. companies, Intel and AMD, have long dominated the global market, with Intel accounting for almost 85% of the total.
Wei Shaojun, chief technical officer of the State High-tech Foundation for Nuclear Heights, said that as one of the first special nuclear high-tech bases in the medium- and long-term science and technology development plan of the country, it is also called the '01 special 'and one of the core problems to be solved is high-end chips. If the CPU can not be broken, it means that the results of nuclear high-base special projects should be greatly reduced.
For a long time, China does not have the core technology to spend huge amounts of foreign exchange chips every year. In 2017, China imported a total of about 250 billion U.S. dollars in IC Fiscal Year into a record high, which is the fifth consecutive year of more than 200 billion U.S. dollars. Has become China's highest import category of products.More importantly, the CPU accounted for an important component of which, 200 billion US dollars and CPU-related imports of about 55 billion to 60 billion US dollars.
If this "controlled" situation can not be improved, it will be very difficult for our country to gain a leading position in international competition.
Just earlier this year, an imported chip was blamed for a high-risk vulnerability that could allow hackers to access personal computer's memory data, causing a loss of customer data. The vulnerability was not easily solved and must be fixed on the operating system, but even if After the repair will also bring performance impact on the global computer.
Ye Jun, chairman of Shanghai Zhaoxin, said after the vulnerability event, Zhaoxin engineers immediately made an analysis and found that the reason why the CPU loopholes in the pursuit of higher speed and efficiency, ignoring the rules and requirements of safety precautions , Resulting in a high chip efficiency, security risks.'Chao core in the design of the chip, engineers in strict accordance with the rules of the design authority, the final efficiency and performance may also have a gap with imported chips, but in fact, if to make up for the loopholes Patch the factors into account, the performance will not be worse than it.
The chip has become a supportive product that affects the development of various industries in the society and highly penetrates into all fields of the society, at the same time, it has a great impact on network security and information security.
The vulnerability event highlights the importance of developing autonomous controllable chips. As the world's largest chip and computer market, the information security issues brought by chips have a particularly prominent impact on the development of China's information industry.
Chip localization has come to a critical moment, the emergence of trillion core let us see the dawn.
Ripped a hole
The domestic CPU research, these years the country has been spending a lot of effort.Although achieved some results, but also exposed many deficiencies, the biggest problem is the research and development and the market out of touch.
As a dark horse in the field of processors, in 2013, Shanghai Zhaoxin held "National High-tech Nuclear Science and Technology" major projects with Shanghai Institute of Advanced Research, CAS, Huali Microelectronics Co., Ltd., and KAIX was responsible for the "safe and reliable desktop computer CPU 'project. After more than four years of hard work, the ZX-C series CPUs developed by Zhaoxin has achieved mass production. The test found that the machine equipped with Zhaxu CPU had a total failure-free time of 100,000 hours, completely To meet the commercial production of the standard.To do this, in addition to continuous research and development, the core also took a path different from previous domestic enterprises: the same with Intel x86 architecture, which makes the domestic CPU and Windows Windows Operating system and application software to form a good compatibility.Ye Jun said that the x86 architecture occupies the absolute core position in the desktop office, government, corporate offices are inseparable from the x86 machine and server.For more than a decade, Chinese companies continue to develop the domestic CPU Why the market is still rare? The key issue lies in this.
Ministry of Industry 'nuclear high-base special Office' Director Xie Xuejun said the CPU itself is indeed a high threshold R & D, but the hardest is not to research and development itself, but lies in the entire industry chain.A few years ago when the Tablet PC first appeared, the Chinese CPU The company launched an attack on the Tablet PC, but later retreated across the board. Why? There was a popular game called 'Angry Birds' but it was not available on domestic CPUs, because of the tools used to develop the game. Not run on the domestic CPU, and the mainstream x86 architecture does not match. 'If you can not integrate into this ecology, even if the whole machine to do beautiful, users can not accept and use, or migration is very difficult.' Core to go with Intel compatible way into the Wintel ecosystem, but also the core of Siu-core compared with other domestic, more vitality, the reasons for the broader market.
In the face of international competitors, trillion core is still a catch-up role in almost monopolized Intel market share of a piece of cake, as if in the 'iron' pry out a crack.
According to Katherine Core introduced Vice President Fucheng introduction, through the years of dormant R & D, Katherine core has mastered the core design and development technology, including architecture, implementation, verification, IP and related tool chain design method, fundamentally completed Processor technology research and development digestion and absorption process.At the same time, personnel training in the trillion core to seek a breakthrough on the road is an important part.Since its establishment, trillion core attracts and nurtures a large number of general-purpose chip with x86 architecture R & D Ability of local talent, the domestic R & D team has rapidly grown.
On the road to challenge the giant, Katherine core is not alone, Shanghai Huali, Lenovo, Shanghai Instrument and Electric, the same side, the German side, Puhua, the successful bidder unicorn and other industry leaders in different fields around the domestic x86 整 整Machine, in the chip production, hardware integration, system integration, improve the application and service, with the core of different levels of cooperation, in shaping and improving the domestic industrial chain and domestic ecological system of the whole machine go hand in hand.
From easy to use
Before the core, the performance of domestic CPU can only reach 10% of Intel, which is why the market always said that domestic chips can not be used, not easy to use, and the core performance has reached 80% of Intel's mainstream products. Is a leapfrog advancement, making the domestic CPU products have reached the available, easy to use level.
As the financial institution with extremely high information security level, Bank of Shanghai purchased the first batch of machines with megabit CPUs before. "From the recent results, the stability of the whole machine with KC cores is very good and it is fully capable of handling documents such as documents and tables Processing, audio and video playback, web browsing and other daily office scenes, does not appear all kinds of software, drivers are not compatible with other phenomena, basically reached the level of the international chip level. "Cao Guangzhi, general manager of Bank of Shanghai Information Technology.
The whole product adopting the core CPU made by our company has been tested positively by the third party media, and all have got the positive evaluation of "fully meeting the demand of desktop office application". Besides, there is no difference between the operation mode and the whole chip based on foreign chip, and Lenovo, Independent control of the whole machine to build a sound service system, China-made platform OMEGA platform has fully meet the seamless replacement of similar products of international manufacturers conditions.
According to Fu Xinhua, deputy director of Shanghai Economic Commission, Shanghai-based Shenzheli CPU-based domestic machine won procurement requirements of the 19th National Congress of the CPC in September last year with a total purchase of nearly 600 sets, mainly for all 38 delegations Conference site and national language translation use.According to the site feedback, domestic machine running stable during the meeting, the machine performance is good, ease of use, obtained the approval of the delegates.
After the official CPU equipped computer with terabit CPU in 2017, the chip shipments of the enterprise are expected to reach 100,000 or more in 2018. 'The production cost will be lower and the cost performance will be more prominent.' Ye Jun said recently Introduced a new generation of domestic CPU chip KX-5000 series, the performance has been approaching the international mainstream level, is also the first dual-channel DDR4 memory to support domestic generic CPU, Katherine core will be relying on this product into the consumer market.
What is DDR4? Ye Jun explained that the memory of the original DDR3 has been the mainstream design standards, global memory specifications from 2018 to upgrade to mainstream mainstream DDR4. DDR4 better performance than DDR3, more storage capacity, more power consumption In fact, as early as 2016, Lenovo proposed with the core, the global mainstream CPU will be switched to DDR4 after 2018, domestic chips in the research and development must be released as soon as possible to support DDR4 products, or the new one out of the factory behind the mainstream. Li Chaowei, Director of Changfeng Technology's proprietary, self-controllable business, said that if Siu-core is an excellent kind-hearted company, Lenovo wants to give this heart a healthy body. Originally, the Lenovo unit was all around Intel, Driven by the domestic CPU core, Lenovo is using 2200 service outlets throughout the country to build support for domestic-based CPU-based service support system, in Beijing also set up a dedicated domestic machine CPU production lines.
Li Mingshu, deputy chief engineer of the National High-tech Foundation for Nuclear Heights, pointed out that the high R & D cost of CPUs, the cost of design, the cost of patents, the input of personnel and the cost of filming all require a large amount of investment. At present, the domestic enterprises and companies still have R & D investment in international companies Gap CPU R & D achievements hard-won, not only in the face of 'late start, big gap, market barriers high build' difficulties, to overcome the 'R & D investment deficiencies' more deserves to be admired.
With the compatibility of x86, ecological improvement and other advantages, based on the domestic core CPU machine has successfully entered the Shanghai, Anhui, Fujian, Jinan, Wuhan and other government procurement directory.In addition, the party and government security secrets about 5% Currently, 95% of the open market is almost monopolized by Intel, and another goal of KCM is to gradually realize import substitution in the large-scale office computer market to solve the domestic market problem. Office security, industrial security issues.