Chapter 544: Polishing

On the experimental table, a chip lay quietly. A crowd of people wearing dust-free suits and entering the laboratory focused their eyes on this chip.

When Wu Xinyi saw the Song Tianji chip, he was even more emotional. Only those who joined the Song Tianji chip project would know how much Dongxin Semiconductor paid for this chip!

Last year, Dongxin Semiconductor's revenue was close to 300 million US dollars. It sounds like a lot, but in the end, it was a loss, and it had to be subsidized by Dongling High-Tech headquarters!

If they didn't develop computer chips, lithography machines, and other projects, Dongxin would have been profitable since the first year of its establishment.

Relying on supplying cow dung chips for electronic pet machines, and supplying chips, motherboards, and other components for products like Shenzhou digital cordless phones, Feiyan mini radios, Little PHS, etc., Dongxin's days were quite moist, and the profit reached an astonishing 40%, second only to Intel, Toshiba, and other chip companies in the chip industry.

But raising a computer chip R&D team is not as simple as raising a few engineers. Ni Guangnan and Huang Lingyi now have R&D teams on both sides, and the R&D personnel are close to 400 or 500 people. The basic salary of these R&D personnel is at least 2,000 yuan per month, and the basic salary of senior engineers is basically over 10,000.

Just paying the salary of the R&D personnel of the Song Tianji chip in the Dongxin company, it is millions per month. Dongxin Semiconductor has raised this team for more than two years, almost three years.

Of course, you can also recruit chip engineers with low salaries, but that kind of junior engineer who has just graduated can only do miscellaneous work, and they can't be cultivated without a few years of time, and they can't be counted on in the short term.

In addition, including

This was just the investment in compensation; in reality, it didn't even count as the bulk of the chip investment. There were also experimental equipment and materials built from scratch, which couldn't be conjured out of thin air and required domestic and international procurement or self-developed R&D equipment.

There were also technical documents purchased from abroad, etc., all of which cost money. Nominally, the R&D expenses invested by Dongxin Semiconductor in the Song Tianji chip were only 300 million RMB, but this was just R&D expenses. If all expenses were counted, the funding for this single Song Tianji chip had more than quadrupled or quintupled.

"The Song Tianji chip is a 120MHz processor, uses the MIPS architecture, adopts a 600-nanometer chip process, consists of 3.2 million transistors in its core, possesses floating-point operation functions, has a working voltage of 3.3V, and supports computer voice, sound, images, pictures, handwriting, and other functions!"

As the chief engineer of the Song Tianji chip, Ni Guangnan introduced the process and performance of the Song Tianji chip. He was already intimately familiar with these data.

"How does it compare to Intel's chips?"

For laymen like Wu Yaoguo, Li Weimin, and Zhou Shuyang, the Song Tianji chip data Ni Guangnan mentioned didn't have a concrete concept, but what they cared about most was how it performed compared to Intel's chips.

After all, almost all domestic computers currently used Intel chips, especially high-end computer models. Using chips from brands like AMD, Toshiba, Hitachi, and NEC could only be considered "generic" processors.

Of course, even if they were generic processors, the country couldn't develop them either. Although it was said that making is not as good as buying, just like Dongxin, spending such a high price to develop it was already much, much more expensive than buying chips, but without domestic computer chips, there just weren't any!

"This..."

Ni Guangnan's expression was inevitably a bit awkward. Although he didn't want to admit it, based on the current paper data of the Song Tianji chip, he knew clearly how big the gap was compared to Intel's latest chips—it was almost a generational gap.

"If the performance of the Song Tianji chip can meet the standards, it should be about the same as, or even surpass, the first-generation Pentium chip released by Intel three years ago!"

At this moment, a voice came from the crowd. Lin Benjian looked carefully at the Song Tianji chip in front of him. As an industry veteran, he knew how the chip performed as soon as he heard the paper data of Song Tianji.

Of course, paper data is just paper data. It is estimated that when running on a computer, the performance would shrink a bit; otherwise, that classic saying wouldn't have appeared: "When one core is in trouble, eight cores watch." Ordinary non-professional users probably wouldn't be able to push the chip to its limit or experience the difference.

When Intel released the first-generation Pentium 586 chip back then, it also had frequent failures and constant problems, and even recalled a batch of processors.

As a latecomer, a processor that was three years behind the first-generation Pentium, no matter what, the theoretical performance of Song Tianji should be stronger than the first-generation Pentium.

"Only equivalent to the performance of an Intel chip from three years ago?"

Hearing the performance of the Song Tianji chip, Zhou Shuyang and other provincial office staff were clearly a bit disappointed.

Li Weimin was not disappointed. He knew some of the ins and outs of the chip industry. "But those Intel chip manufacturers never supply the latest models of chips to the country!

Currently, most domestic computers are still equipped with 386 chips. 486 chips only entered the country starting last year. Intel currently only supplies the first-generation Pentium 586 processor exclusively to domestic high-end computer models from Lianxiang.

As for Intel's latest second-generation Pentium processor, it won't be supplied to the country at all. If Song Tianji can be released, it will become the most advanced computer chip in the country!"

Hearing this from Li Weimin, Zhou Shuyang, including Wu Yaoguo and the others, couldn't help but show joy on their faces. In the current domestic market, the Song Tianji chip was actually considered an advanced processor.

However, afterwards, several of them couldn't help but curse Intel for really not being a decent thing, actually using three-year-old stuff to fool domestic computer users and harvesting domestic leeks with expired junk.

But this was the status quo of the tech industry. Foreign tech companies treated the domestic market as a dumping ground, selling low-quality goods at high prices. Just like the "Big Brother" mobile phones before, foreign countries would ship inventory that had been released for two or three years to the country to sell at high prices, not only clearing inventory but also selling at prices higher than abroad.

The domestic mobile phone industry only changed after Dongling Gao Ke launched the Xiaolingtong. Before that, mobile phone manufacturers like Nokia and Motorola weren't even willing to develop a Chinese operating interface, letting domestic users use an English interface. From this, one could see the attitude of foreign tech companies toward domestic users.

After the Xiaolingtong appeared, it brought down the prices in the domestic mobile phone industry and was the first to launch a Chinese operating interface. Now, mobile phone manufacturers like Nokia, Motorola, and Ericsson no longer dared to clear inventory at high prices in the country. If they played that game again, their mobile phone sales in the country would collapse.

The same routine applied to the computer industry. Whether it was the major computer brands or component suppliers like Intel, they didn't take domestic users too seriously. They basically sold products that were one or two years old in the country, which was equivalent to clearing inventory. The latest models of products were not sold in the country at all.

However, if Song Tianji really went on sale, chip manufacturers like Intel, AMD, and Toshiba would probably change their attitude immediately. They would start selling the latest models of chips to the country overnight and wouldn't give Dongxin a chance to grow!

Li Dongling glanced at Lin Benjian. The latter stepped forward, put on gloves, picked up the Song Tianji chip, and observed it carefully for a long time. Based on his experience, he confirmed that this chip wasn't something made by buying Intel chips or the like and then altering the model to fool people. Only then did he install it into the motherboard and put it into the case.

As an industry veteran, if he capsized in the gutter on a chip and was fooled by someone using a fake chip as a sleight of hand, Lin Benjian would really have nowhere to put his old face.

Seeing this, Li Dongling's last trace of worry dissipated. He didn't doubt the Song Tianji R&D team, but he had to confirm it. In his previous life, were there few examples of domestic chips capsizing in the gutter? Li Dongling didn't want Dongxin to become the capsized ship. Losing funding was one thing, but the key was that Dongxin's head would never be able to be held high again in this lifetime!

In this day and age, there was no chip benchmarking software; one could only rely on one's own usage experience. It mainly relied on experience and usage time. Only after long-term testing would one know where the problems were, and then maintenance and upgrades could be carried out.

"The chip's completion is quite good. In terms of performance, it should be superior to the first-generation Pentium processor, but it still needs polishing!"

After using it for a while, Lin Benjian gave his answer. Coming from the mouth of an industry veteran like him, one could basically see the quality of Song Tianji.