At the end of 2005, Wang Haili, who is going to graduated from Tsinghua University with a Ph.D. in computer science, joined a newly established Sino-foreign joint venture, Yahoo! Technology, to start the research and development of China-made FPGA chips. In 2010, with support from the Beijing Municipal Government, Also converted identity and changed its name to 'Jingwei Ya grid'.
In the beginning, because Xilinx and Altera accounted for more than 90% of the market, and intellectual property barriers built with nearly 9,000 patents with companies such as Lattice and Microsem, they were blocked to a great extent later Who pursued the road.Jingwei Ya grid initially because of patent restrictions almost impossible to move, had another way - bought the United States CSwitch company to acquire the patent, coupled with some expired patents of some FPGA vendors, and eventually successfully developed Tile framework of their own.
However, FPGA is a product with large fund consumption, long development time and long payback period. With the interruption of continuous capital investment, the relevant funds are not put in place in time, and the company lacks the rhythm of financing, In front of the team in May 2016, set micro-grid disclosure of Beijing micro-Accor suffered difficulties, two months of arrears, people have to go to the floor of the situation.After Jingwei Ya Ge responded: 'The company occurred in the business Some difficulties, but there is no case of company collapse, the core management team still hold the post, the company is looking for reorganization.
At that time, Wang Hai Li, the vice president, was one of the eight remaining employees, but the reality was not as good as they had imagined. During the period, the bankruptcy of the company led to an abnormal financing problem and staff labor dispute, property and Supplier recovery and other difficult issues, the state of business deteriorating.
In seeking the consent of the shareholders of the original company premise, we finally decided to start a second business, staying in the eight people in June 2017 set up 'micro-Beijing (Qili Technology)', Wang Hai invested 2000000 yuan, chairman and concurrently General Manager The original company continues to maintain the status quo, at the same time, all its products, technologies and other exclusive license to the company now use the team hopes to find ways to solve the problems faced by the original company.
Born "Beijing micro-Qi (Qi Li Technology) ', Continuation of FPGA Chuixin
Through the acquisition of CSwitch, based on a number of FPGA vendors partially expired patents based on independent research and development, after the Beijing micro-Accord applied for a total of more than 200 patents, and has more than 90 patents have been granted.
After reorganization, the team of "Beijing Micropower (Qili Technology)", after obtaining the authorization of over a hundred patents and proprietary technologies (including international patents) from Jingwei Yage and secondary development rights, provided the traditional FPGA chip At the same time, we further aimed at the application needs of artificial intelligence and emerging applications, opening up a new generation of Ai programmable logic controller (AI in FPGA), Heterogeneous Programmable Accelerator (HPA), embedded programmable eFPGA IP research and development plan.
Funding is the first thorny issue facing the new company.It is fortunate that less than 2 months after the establishment of the new company, it got nearly 7 million yuan of angel round of financing, with shareholders of Tsinghua-based investment funds and strategic investors, For the follow-up development of the company has laid a solid foundation.This round of financing led by Thai fund leader, Mizuki Fund, Zhen cloud venture, Tyco source with the vote.
The financial difficulties have been solved, the next is the talent problem.The original company's core technical team is the first member of the forward design of FPGA chips, Wang Haili understand that these people have to be invited again, and now the company employees have been from the beginning Eight people to the development of more than 30 people, including four returned overseas experts, a Beijing Distinguished Specialist and the sea poly people, a national "thousands of people plan" expert consultants, the majority of the team has more than 20 years of work experience in the industry.
As for what products to do, Wang Haili said in a salon blocked by Thai funds that Beijing Micro Microsystems is currently using some simple AI applications with its own small-capacity FPGA products.
In AI applications, FPGAs have the advantages of high speed, low latency, low power consumption, etc., and have strong I / O expansibility (I / O will be the key once the AI enters the product phase) and will have in the future In addition, due to the programmable, configurable, and re-programmable FPGAs, FPGAs can take advantage of FPGAs to continuously update their products to capture the market quickly.
He said that based on the above market analysis and FPGA's own unique technological advantages, in addition to continuing to sell the original FPGA chip, the company is developing a new generation of AiPGA chips for applications such as artificial intelligence / intelligent manufacturing. Heterogeneous Computing HPA chip, embedded programmable eFPGA IP core, the product market will cover the cloud server, Internet of Things, consumer smart terminals and national communications / industrial / power / military / medical and other core infrastructure.
In rebuilding the server room, restoring data and recruit older employees, the team has already set up two new product lines: 'Hercules' chip and 'Avatar' chip, the former will be used in consumer emerging video-related fields, the latter The main attempt 16/12 nanometer new technology to further enhance the existing FPGA's power and energy consumption ratio.
According to pencil reports, 'Qi Li Technology' is now producing 40-nanometer FPGA chip, the next two years will be 28 nm and 16/12 nm advanced process nodes to achieve a breakthrough.'s Existing customers more than 40 companies in 2017 total Achieve sales of more than 10 million yuan.The team in January of this year again completed the tens of millions of Pre-A round of financing, the lead investor for the Hankook fund.
According to Wang Haili revealed that new products have also entered the research and development stage, the company expects sales this year will reach 20 million yuan. 'Experience of the past two years, I realized the spark of the stars can start a prairie fire.'
At the same time, domestic FPGA manufacturers are also gradually showing a hundred schools of thought contend .It has been engaged in the reverse design, quite marketable in military products, the country Microelectronics; there is a technical team from Lattice's core team of Xi'an Polycrystalline; and be backed by violet, and with the micro-electronics is quite similar to Tongchuang core.
The difficult road of domestic FPGA, whether it is the beginning of the new micro-Beijing, or other domestic manufacturers, domestic independent FPGA enterprise's future and development are noteworthy.