Chapter 118: The price-performance ratio is too high (Ch 830645914)

Lei Jun’s requirements for chips are not actually very high. The mobile processor chip he asked to design this time is positioned as a mid-to-low-end processor chip.
The performance is required to be close to that of Fire Dragon 835.
Of course, this processor chip pays more attention to the requirements of imaging and AI. It is hoped that the processor chip can adopt a better ISP module so that the chip can support up to 64MP imaging.
Chen Tong agreed to this readily!
The chip that Lei Jun requested is essentially to make some cuts and reductions on the Xuanwu 800 processor chip.
By reducing some of the modules, the overall size of the processor chip can be reduced, ultimately allowing more chips to be produced on a wafer.
This method can significantly reduce the cost of the chip.
“Boss Lei, I plan to have the company design a castrated version of the Xuanwu 800 processor!”
“First, we removed the two large cores from the CPU module and adopted a 2+6 core architecture, increasing the frequency of the two large cores to 2.6Ghz!”
“At the same time, we will adjust the 9-core of Xuanwu 800 to 6-core on the GPU module!”
“As for NPU and ISP, some cuts have been made on the original basis…”
Chen Tong specially called the company’s engineers to have a brief discussion with Lei Jun.
Finally, after discussions between the two parties, Lei Jun was given a solution!
Based on the original Xuanwu 800, we will castrate it and reduce all the scales.
This reduced design makes this processor chip more suitable for mid-to-low-end positioning.
Lei Jun is relatively satisfied with this design. Of course, Lei Jun hopes that there will be some discounts on the price.
The price of the Xuanwu processor chip is actually considered very cheap in the entire industry.
Especially after the Fire Dragon 855 has started to be sold to various manufacturers, Lei Jun also learned about the discounts of the Xuanwu series chips.
This year’s flagship processor chips have made many upgrades in terms of the architecture used, and improvements have also been made in the manufacturing process.
This makes the price of the Fire Dragon 855 processor chip directly increase by 10% compared to the previous generation Fire Dragon 845.
The price of the Fire Dragon 855 chip has reached 520 yuan, which is a very high budget for major manufacturers at present.
The only Xuanwu processor chip that can be compared with Huolong 85 now should be the current Xuanwu 900.
The current price of the Xuanwu 900 processor is only 420 yuan, which is much cheaper than the Huolong 855.
And the real strength of the Xuanwu 900 processor chip is not only its excellent performance, but its performance in ISP and NPU has also attracted the attention and concern of many manufacturers.
In particular, the Xuanwu 900 processor chip also supports the most powerful 8k video recording, which is an imaging function that the Huolong 855 cannot currently achieve.
Even though the Xuanwu 900 processor has so many advantages, when Rice Company and Lei Jun considered the flagship processor chip, they could only consider the Fire Dragon first.
After all, the relationship between Fire Dragon and Rice Company is basically interdependent.
Due to the long-term partnership, even though Rice Company knows that the Fire Dragon 855 has disadvantages in some aspects, it will still consider the Fire Dragon processor chip as the first choice for its flagship.
This time, Lei Jun chose to let Huateng Semiconductor produce mid- and low-end chips, mainly because the mid- and low-end chips released by Huolong were too poor.
Now the latest mid-range processor chip of Huolong is the Huolong 730 processor chip which has not yet been announced on the market.
This new 7 series processor chip uses an 8nm process technology, and its CPU also uses the A76 2+6 architecture.
It’s a pity that the main frequency of the processor chip is only 2.2Ghz.
As for the GPU, it uses the self-developed Andrew 618 graphics processor, which is weaker than the Mary G76 graphics processor chip.
What Lei Jun could not accept the most was that this processor chip only supported a single camera of up to 36MP.
Of course, in November of this year, Gaotong also proposed image style rendering technology that can enable some mid- and low-end processor chips to achieve high-pixel photography through multi-photo synthesis.
This technology enables some processor chips with weak ISP to achieve high-pixel shooting.
However, it requires a powerful AI algorithm to reduce noise, sharpen and color correct the synthesized images, which will cause some distortion during the shooting process.
Because of this, Lei Jun does not have much idea about the current Fire Dragon 730 processor chip.
At the same time, the price of the Fire Dragon 730 processor chip is as high as 300 yuan, which is basically close to the Xuanwu 800!
And Lei Jun is also unable to use this processor chip in models priced below 1,500 yuan.
That’s why we specifically approached Huateng Semiconductor to customize processor chips.
“We will design the new processor chip as soon as possible. We estimate that the price should be around 240 yuan…”
After detailed explanations and estimates, the engineering team has roughly figured out the approximate cost of this newly designed processor chip.
After reducing the core configuration, the area of ​​this processor chip will be reduced by about 15% compared to the Xuanwu 800.
This will also result in more chips being produced from the same size wafer, thereby reducing the cost of the chip.
Of course, in addition to customizing a chip, this time Lei Jun finally reached a cooperation with Huateng Semiconductor.
With a final discount of ten yuan, 10 million Xuanwu 800 processor chips were purchased for 310 yuan.
However, Huateng Semiconductor has just placed an additional order with TSMC, which has postponed the delivery of the chips to March next year.
Lei Jun did not have much to say about the delivery being delayed by nearly five months.
The Xuanwu 800 processor chip already has flagship performance capabilities, and even if it is put on the market next year, it will be stronger than some terminal processor chips.
Lei Jun’s plan was also very clear. He did not intend to use the Xuanwu 800 on the company’s flagship product.
Instead, it plans to use this product on the flagship sub-brand of its own company that is about to become independent.
After the two parties signed the contract, the number of orders for Huateng Semiconductor increased rapidly.
There are currently four manufacturers cooperating with Huateng Semiconductor!
Rice Company has ordered 10 million Xuanwu 800 processor chips, as well as new chips designed and produced subsequently.
Blue Factory is one of the companies that has reached in-depth cooperation with Huateng Semiconductor. After purchasing 3 million pieces of Xuanwu 800, it also deliberately bought another 7 million pieces.
In mid-October, it also specially purchased five million Xuanwu 900 processor chips and GPU driver core services.
As for the Green Factory, it was relatively calm. After purchasing 2 million Xuanwu 800 processor chips, it did not take any subsequent actions.
As for the small factory in Zhuhai, with which the relationship is the closest, although the cooperation between the two sides is relatively close, the shipment volume of the small factory in Zhuhai is always smaller than that of the four major manufacturers.
Currently, the supply of Xuanwu 900 is only 1 million pieces, and the supply of Xuanwu 800 is only 5 million pieces.
Of course, what is giving Chen Tong a headache now is the Xuanwu 900E processor chip.
As a defective processor chip, it has never been favored by manufacturers, which has resulted in the company having nearly 600,000 Xuanwu 900Es in its inventory that cannot be sold.