Chapter 126 - 122 32115_1

On November 29, just before December, the first batch of X32115 in-vehicle chips and the accompanying ternary storage particles/memory went offline.

To tell the truth, SinoCore International and Modu Huahong were quite puzzled by these two orders. It’s not that they didn’t understand; their chip engineers knew these chips were ternary as soon as they looked at the diagrams.

It is now 2015, and 24 years have passed since the Union had dissolved. Almost everyone playing with ternary was an amateur hobbyist, making simple circuits with vacuum tubes or relays for videos, and practical ternary electrical components simply did not exist.

Ternary computers had died in their infancy; they were utterly incomparable to the mature and robust binary system and did not warrant the vast investment needed for research. God knows why New Yuan went to great lengths to work on this.

The batch produced by SinoCore International, with its 28nm process, had 1.8 billion transistors, comprising 860 million analog effect transistors (the term used by New Yuan engineers for ternary basic components simulated with diodes), was clearly an extremely complex and sophisticated design.

During yield rate testing, SinoCore International didn’t even know how to proceed and had to ask New Yuan engineers to assist on site, and only then was the first batch of chips accepted.

200,000 pieces, totaling 590 million yuan; the wafer production and testing cost extra, and additionally, the matching components produced by Huahong amounted to 180 million yuan. The cost of chips for 200,000 vehicles reached 770 million yuan, averaging 3,850 yuan per vehicle.

Together with other components and installation tests, the estimated cost was between 9,000 to 10,000 yuan.

Now, with this batch of chips, 100 XC4 engineering prototype cars, which had been produced a month earlier, finally had usable chips.

According to Xin’an’s design, whether it be battery management or smart driving, both would be handled by X32115. So, when there were no chips, they could only test the sports car’s mechanical and collision performance, and then just wait for the chips.

In the Xin’an automobile factory in Mountain City, the first XC4 was equipped with a complete X32115 control chip set and then had the XW151 smart driving system uploaded.

The XW151 smart driving system was divided into two parts: the most critical part, the battery control and driving part, was uploaded into the ternary storage particles on the motherboard, while the remainder, the human-machine interaction, which was also the largest part, was uploaded onto the traditional solid-state drive connected to the motherboard.

The main reason was that producing ternary storage particles was too costly. If purely using silicon carbide field-effect transistors in the system, in fact, the storage density would be higher than that of solid-state drives with NAND flash memory. However, the cost of using analog field-effect transistors was too high, with a 1GB capacity costing 10 yuan—two to three times more expensive than NAND flash memory of the same era.

Therefore, for the less critical human-machine interaction part, a 1TB solid-state drive from Micron was used, which required an additional conversion chip on the motherboard but was still much cheaper than ternary storage particles.

After installing the X32115 chip and the smart driving system, the 2-ton XC4 finally became complete. It was first driven onto the closed test road of Southern Automobile by Xin’an’s engineers.

Although 4G technology had appeared several years earlier, base stations were not as widespread as in later years, so the smart driving systems of this era couldn’t rely on networking and a dense coverage of base stations for assistance. For the most part, they had to depend on the vehicle’s own sensors, placing high demands on the system.

Within the closed-loop track, many employees of Southern Automobile were also standing there, watching the legendary space sports car.

Last month, after a space trip was made, a special CS105 Space Commemorative Edition was launched at a price of 350,000 yuan and astonishingly secured sales of 41,000 units (including pre-sales) in the first month, amounting to a revenue of 14 billion yuan, which forcefully pulled the style of domestic cars to another level.

After all, even though the CS105 could indeed reach a high standard in terms of configuration, it was still a domestic brand; it’s not easy to command such a price. Achieving sales of 40,000 units in the first month was like a miracle... blessed by Tsiolkovsky!

Moreover, it was still a seller’s market; many 4S shops were raising prices for deliveries, and many people were still waiting for the next batch!

Other domestic car manufacturers envied and resented such success, but such a move was a one-off and impossible to replicate. They could only watch helplessly as Southern Automobile climbed higher and took Xin’an Automobile, the favored son of New Yuan, more seriously.

In 2015, the impression of new energy vehicles was still that of crude manufacturing, akin to donkey carts with four wheels, where safety and performance were substandard.

But the debut of Xin’an XC4 was a different class altogether. A 2-ton sports sedan with less than three seconds to accelerate from zero to 100 km/h, a dedicated chip set for battery management and smart driving system, and marketing being "aerospace-grade quality", it indeed aroused great anticipation.

On the test track, the engineer first drove the car, activated sport mode to enter performance state, and tested the acceleration from zero to 100 km/h and the battery’s performance.

CEO Chen Jun was sitting in the passenger seat, anxiously staring at the fluctuating parameters on the laptop screen.

The XC4 rolled up to the starting line, and as soon as the traffic light turned green, it immediately floored the accelerator. The inherent characteristics of the electric motor allowed the full 653 kW of power to erupt in just 0.1 seconds, outputting more than 1,100 newton meters of torque.

Chen Jun only felt a forceful push instantly, then the car surged forward, and he could faintly sense the tires slipping slightly at the start.

The explosive torque of the electric motor was truly terrifying, with an inherent advantage over combustion engines in principle, making the ABS system very difficult to design. Only by using semi-slick tires on dedicated tracks could one ensure grip during launch.

The number on the laptop screen jumped from zero to triple digits so fast that it left a trail; thankfully, the test engineer decelerated in time and slowly came to a stop.

"0 to 100km/h acceleration time: 2.43 seconds, top speed in test: 186 km/h

Battery remaining: 98.2% (492 kilometers usable) status: excellent; the highest temperature of the battery group: 34 degrees."

The acceleration test was complete, and the performance was even better than expected, most importantly because of the temperature of the battery group under the management of XW151. It wasn’t too high, and the power output curve was smooth, meaning that even with the sudden high current output, the battery group remained unharmed under the excellent regulation of the electrical control, prolonging its lifespan.

However, the usable kilometers were only a reference, based on the most energy-efficient ideal state; without care and just casual driving, expect at least a 30% reduction.

Next, the test engineer conducted lap tests at high speed, reaching a top speed of 316 km/h with all restrictions removed. The sports mode accessible to users limited the top speed to 260 km/h—this test did not have the assistance of the smart driving system activated.

After this, the test engineer turned on the XW151 with advanced driving assist and set the mode to "Sport" to test the performance.

Starting with basic laps, the test engineer took the corners at a reasonably fast and correct manner and immediately noticed the difference.

After the intervention of XW151, the response from the pedal became more linear and accurate. The power was still plentiful, but now better allocated. You could feel the power with just a slight press of the pedal, without any sense of deceleration or power loss at the end.

Moreover, when the lane-keeping assist was activated during lane changes, the system could be felt making minor corrections to the steering and throttle. It was more stable than manual driving, allowing even a novice to fearlessly tackle corners without understeering or losing grip.