There is no doubt about the strength of Texas Instruments’ R&D team.

At present, most of Xingyi Semiconductor's core R&D talents are recruited from Texas Instruments. They are selected from the best and are naturally very capable.

There are no surprises. 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 in trial production, full mass production can be launched!

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 taking the lead, subsequent high-end mobile phone chips, baseband chips, and even next year's high-end SOC chips with integrated baseband will all come naturally.

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

No matter how good the person Texas Instruments poached, it will be next year.

After all, the baseband problem is more difficult to solve than the processor, not to mention the integrated baseband, which is even more difficult.

Therefore, Wang Yi had to make a choice, slow down the development of SOC chips for integrated baseband, and switch to a plug-in baseband solution.

Develop 28nm processor chips and 28nm baseband chips separately.

This plug-in solution has the same strategy as Nvidia Tegra 3 and Qualcomm's flagship processor 8064 in the second half of the year. It is much less difficult and is sufficient.

In the first half of next year, Qualcomm will launch the Snapdragon 800 SOC with integrated baseband, and it will not be too late for Xingyi Semiconductor to launch the Xingyi SOC with integrated baseband.

After all, NVIDIA next year will still be a plug-in solution.

This strategy is more stable and safer.

Moreover, it is developed separately, and the processor does not integrate the baseband. It can castrate the modules that are not used by the TV, optimize the video decoding capabilities, and use it as a 4K TV chip!

In this way, you kill two birds with one stone!

Even without castration, just mass-produce more, and use mobile phone chips as 4K TV chips, no problem.

The Snapdragon 600 chip used in the previous generation of Xiaomi TVs was the same Snapdragon 600 used in mobile phones.

Although the material cost of this solution is a little higher than that of castration, it saves a series of processes such as re-modifying the design, re-striping, re-trial production, restarting the production line, etc. Overall, the cost is lower.

After all, there are so many codes for chip design. If you change a line, you have to re-tape it out.

The cost of a tape-out is not low.

Xingyi Semiconductor's tape-outs this time are all 40-nanometer low-end chips, and the tape-out price is relatively low, only about US$800,000-900,000, which is about 5 million yuan per time.

But the price of 28nm is much higher.

The current price of a 28nm tape-out is US$5 million, which is more than 32 million yuan.

In a few years, when the 28nm process matures and production capacity is sufficient, the tape-out price will drop to US$2 million.

There is nothing we can do about this.

And tape-out may not be 100% successful even once.

In the previous life, Xiaomi's Pascal S2 chip failed many times during tape-out, and hundreds of millions of yuan were wasted. Even the wealthy Rebus couldn't bear it, and had to give up the research and development of the S2 chip.

Similarly, the current 28-nanometer chip tape-out cost is too high. Xingyi Technology can also directly choose to use the 28-nanometer mobile phone chip as a TV chip, saving the need for re-development and re-tape-out.

Wait until next year to develop a higher-end, more professional TV picture quality chip.

This is no problem.

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

Williams came forward with a smile: "Living up to expectations, all three chips were successfully taped out at once!"

"Very good. The Xingyi Semiconductor Department has made great contributions. Each member of the George R&D team will receive three more months of year-end bonus!"

"I'll thank Director Wang on their behalf!" Williams said with a smile.

The research and development of these chips was all done by George's department, and the bonuses also fell on George and the others.

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

Successful research and development will result in more bonuses.

R&D failed, drink from the northwest wind.

Wang Yi has always made clear rewards and punishments. Even the same department must be managed quantitatively and refuses to eat from the same pot.

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

"Then let's name them according to categories." Wang Yi thought for a moment:

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

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

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

Williams agreed very much: "This is so simple and clear that even if there are more chips in the future, there will be no confusion."

Wang Yi nodded: "Yes, and these low-end chips are not mobile phone chips. They do not have high performance requirements, and they do not need to be upgraded every year. On the contrary, one generation can be used for several years."

When the next generation change is expected to be many years later, Xingyi Wafer Factory will implement high-tech manufacturing processes and free up the 28-nanometer process to build second-generation 28-nanometer smart home, fast-charging chips, and power management chips.

In the previous life, most smart home chips before 2017 were 55 nanometers, and 40 nanometers were already here.

Only after 2017 did new 28-nanometer products gradually appear.

As for 10nm and 7nm smart home chips, this is unrealistic and purely wasteful.

After all, 10nm and 7nm mobile phone chips can sell for more than 1,000.

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

Williams smiled and said: "Yes, we can mass-produce more at one time, and the cost can be spread to the lowest level! After trial production, formal production will begin. Chairman, how many orders should we place for those three chips?"

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

"That's right." Williams handed over a document: "Chairman, this is TSMC's quotation and our calculated costs. Take a look."

Wang Yi took it and looked at it carefully.

Williams did a good job, not only marking the foundry fees, material fees, and diluted total costs corresponding to different outputs, but also the current purchase price of similar chips.

This made Wang Yi very satisfied.

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

Wang Yi purchases a large amount, and the prices offered by the other party are constantly decreasing.

For example, the two power management chips of the Xphone 1 are from Qualcomm. The two purchased by Xiaomi cost US$10 in total, and the two purchased by Wang Yi cost US$7.

Later, with the increase in orders for xphone 1, the price dropped to 6 US dollars, which is equivalent to only 3 US dollars each, which is 20 yuan, which is considered a bargain price.

But Qualcomm is still making money!

Without him, the material cost of a power management chip is only a few cents!

For chips, the material cost is very low, and the OEM fee for mass production is also very low. The biggest cost is the research and development cost.

Qualcomm has a large output, so the R&D costs are evenly distributed. Add in TSMC’s foundry fees, and the total cost of a power management chip is as much as one dollar!

Therefore, whether Qualcomm gives Wang Yi 20 yuan, 30 yuan, or Xiaomi 35 yuan, Qualcomm will make a huge profit.

If you can't make it yourself, you'll have to spend an extra twenty or thirty yuan to buy it.

There is nothing we can do about it.

Twenty or thirty million for one mobile phone, ten million mobile phones, that’s two to three hundred million!

Xphone shipments exceeded 15 million. With two power management chips in one phone, Qualcomm earned 600-700 million yuan.

Now that Wang Yi has achieved self-development of power management chips and fast charging chips, he can also drive down prices.

The material cost provided by TSMC is also terrifyingly low, only a few cents!

As for George and his team, they didn't spend much on R&D for developing these chips. The bulk of it was the cost of tape-out.

Then there are the OEM fees and production line costs.

All these expenses are added up to the total cost. The more produced, the lower the diluted cost.

As Williams calculated, producing one million P1 chips would cost 30 yuan per P1 chip, which is 50% more expensive than buying Qualcomm's power management chip!

It can produce 10 million P1 chips. When diluted, one P1 chip only costs 5 yuan, which is only a quarter of the lowest price offered by Qualcomm to Wang Yi.

If 100 million P1 chips are directly produced, the cost of one P1 chip will be only 1 yuan.

That's right, it's that cheap.

After all, it only costs a few cents.

This is the power of self-research.

Take Beidou terminal chips, for example, we couldn't make them at first, and foreign countries sold them for 1,000 yuan each.

When we mass-produced the first generation of self-developed terminal chips, foreign companies lowered the price to 500 yuan a piece.

After we mass-produced the second-generation self-developed chips, foreign companies lowered the price to 200 yuan again.
To be continued...