As the only municipality directly under the central government in the west, Chongqing has made a quiet effort in the chip manufacturing industry. An enterprise located in the Taogu Data Valley, Chongqing, Yubei District, has developed a high-performance, low-cost carrier chip in just over six months. Batch shipments.
What is the magical effect of this chip and which industries will produce magical chemical reactions? What are the unique features of the Chongqing enterprises that research and develop this chip? What stories are there in R&D? Recently, the Daily reporter went to Data Valley, Xiantao, Chongqing, China. For your exclusive secret. Perhaps this little-known company - Chongqing Wuqi Technology Co., Ltd. (hereinafter: Wu Qi Technology), is expected to become the next unicorn enterprise.
Turning a wire into a medium for data transmission
Chongqing Wuqi Technology Co., Ltd. is very 'low-key' and has not yet seen any information in the public media. According to information provided by relevant departments, the company was registered in Chongqing Xiantao Data Valley in November 2016 with a registered capital of RMB 36 million. In March 2018, Wuqi Technology officially entered the office, mainly engaged in the research, development and design of the Internet of Things, security and terminal intelligence chips.
Like most Internet companies, Wuqi Technology has a relaxed, comfortable office environment. Reporters have recently been allowed to visit. Once inside, they are facing the office area. Staff members focus on computer screens and write software. Code. The right side of the office area is the activity area. There are coffee machines, billiards and other recreational facilities.
Under the leadership of company leader Xiong Fei, the reporter came to the product booth and saw the power line carrier communication chip that they had developed successfully. The chip was placed in a transparent circular disk, about a square centimeter in size, about an adult male. Half of the small nail area. There is also a finished motherboard with the chip already installed.
Xiong Fei lifted the circular plate and said that the chip size is very small and it is a silicon chip containing integrated circuits. The integrated circuit is very precise and its unit is nanometer. The chip is equipped with a software system designed by the company. After the power is turned on, the system runs automatically and can be stored. , Calculation, identification and transmission of data.
'Power line carrier communication chip is actually a medium that turns wires into data transmissions to form a digital system.' Xiong Fei introduced that devices equipped with chips can exchange data through wires and terminal equipment, just as people can use WiFi to allow The device is connected to the Internet.
The number of motherboard components is half that of similar products
You may remember that before the household paid the electricity bill each month, there were always meter readers copying the number of meters from house to house. This method was both troublesome. Second, the grid company could not monitor the quantity of electricity in real time, resulting in theft of electricity. The phenomenon occurred. Around 2010, China began to implement smart meters, which is the use of technology to achieve automatic meter reading.
At that time, it was called narrow-band power line transmission technology, and its principle was to turn the power line into a medium for transmitting data. As the name suggests, narrow-band transmission of data is limited, and the speed is very slow. At that time, basically only once a day, meter reading was realized. Because of the narrow-band technology anti-jamming comparison Poor, it may also cause the data of many meters to be unable to return to the total station. Therefore, in 2014, the State Grid began to develop broadband carrier communication standards and began to implement broadband power line transmission technology.
'The chip we developed is fully capable of meeting the national grid standards and even at the international level. ' Xiong Fei said with excitement, using this chip will not only transmit faster, but also transmit more data, It is also more timely and can monitor meter data in real time to optimize power grid dispatch.
'I believe there are similar products in the country, but we still have innovations.' Xiong Fei opened the computer and showed the difference between the chips they developed and their products. 'The number of components on our motherboard is less than half that of similar products, which means The production cost is lower, and the transmission speed is faster. ' Xiong Fei explained, 'We have embedded peripheral components inside the chip. The direct benefit to the customer is that the design is simpler and the solution is more cost effective!'
At the same time, due to the reduction of components, the error rate of the chip will be even lower. 'In production, if one component is faulty, the entire module cannot be used. We will call the success rate of the production module as good The increase in yield and yield has actually reduced the cost of the product. ' Xiong Fei said.
Can be used in Internet of Things such as smart home
In addition to being used for automatic meter reading on the grid, what kind of convenience can this chip bring to people? 'It can be applied to everything in the IoT smart home. ' Xiong Fei said, such as smart lights, smart TVs, smart refrigerators and smart air conditioners, etc. .
The chip turns the wire into a medium for data transmission, so all the plugged-in appliances in the home can transmit data to communicate. He said that more and more people are using wireless speakers today, and televisions and wireless speakers are mainly connected. Depends on the Bluetooth technology, in fact, both are plugged in. If the wire is used as a transmission medium, the two are naturally connected and Bluetooth is no longer needed.
Another example is the use of water heaters, which are divided into indoor-mounted controllers and outdoor-mounted outdoor machines. The controllers and external devices are connected by a single wire. However, both controllers and external devices need to be plugged in. The controller is connected to the external unit, so the middle connection is eliminated. 'In the future, you will find that there will be less and less connection lines between electrical appliances, and will not worry about all kinds of messy lines.' said Xiong Fei.
'Additionally, our chip is equipped with the functions of communication, measurement, master control and security." Xiong Fei said that communication is a data transmission connection, measurement is energy count, and the master can be presented as a menu. Self-selection, security is the need for similar encryption and matching in data transmission and connection, 'the task that can be completed by three other chips, we can get a chip.'
Xiong Fei said that with the use of electric vehicles, charging piles are installed in many public places and garages. However, these charging piles are relatively bulky because they require multiple chips to enable communication, measurement, and master control functions. 'Our chips come with a variety of features that make the charging station more compact.'
Using wire to transmit data, there would be no possibility of cross-talk, because the wires of every household are all connected. Is this data safe? Xiong Fei said that this is similar to WiFi's password and needs to be paired, so there is no need to worry. Instead, WiFi is more casual and it is more secure than WiFi.
R&D Engineer Writes 500,000 Lines of Code in Half a Year
Those familiar with the chip industry know that a chip from the R&D design to tapeout (boarding) usually takes a year and a half. However, this unique chip from R&D to the tape was only used for half a year. More time. How did they create the myth of time? A survey by the reporter found that this was due to a mature research team.
Wu Qi Technology's founding team has extensive experience in the industrialization of chips. Before the company was established in Chongqing in 2016, they all worked in the world’s top chip R&D companies, and all of them held high salaries. The most rare is the company’s CEO Zheng Jiansheng. Founded at the time of Wuqi, it is already a senior executive of the world's top 500 IC design companies. He has more than 30 years of experience in the semiconductor industry and is a pioneer in life.
Entrepreneurship, for them, is a deliberate choice. Xiong Fei said that the future is an era of rapid development of the Internet of Things. This era will surely bring about the rapid development of the semiconductor industry. 'The big bang of the universe originated from the singularity, the singularity of the Internet of Things. It has also arrived. This is also the origin of the company's name. '
The company's development has been very smooth. It was incorporated from the end of 2016. By February 2017, the number of their team has grown to more than 30 people. 'I am a science student, not good at expressing emotions, but the rapid growth of the team has impressed me.' Xiong Fei said that many of them have jumped from foreign companies. 'Their salary has dropped sharply, and some have even given up their shareholdings, but they still insist that there is a saying that makes me deeply touched,' instead of working for others, It's better to establish a company as a national core'!'
The team was in place. They targeted the company’s first chip for power line carrier communications. Due to the establishment of the national grid standard, broadband power line carrier communication has a relatively high threshold, which in fact opens a whole new market. At the same time, the power carrier communication will It is expected to solve the pain points of the future network.
In June 2017, the chip R&D design was completed, tape out was completed in October, and mass production was completed at the end of the year. Xiong Fei said with a smile that the formation of a chip includes hardware and software. Usually the program is to design the hardware first and return it in the tape. After starting to design the software, and then through continuous debugging and stability, 'our chip is the edge of the design of the hardware, while writing software, six months, our engineers wrote a total of 500,000 lines of software code, this 500,000 lines not yet include hardware RTL code. '
'Because our speed is really fast, some people once suspected that we simply copy and copy someone else's IP. ' Xiong Fei said bluntly, 'All our designs are self-sufficient, we are completely independent design, and we can quickly It's because our team is familiar with it, and it's a good match.