The world's richest man started by developing gutter oil

Chapter 124 Chapter 121: ARM is here
At this time, the words "Dislocated Time and Space" appeared on the big screen behind him. Under the song, the composer and lyricist were both Mr. Han.

The opening scene is a documentary scene from October 1949, 10.

The music also played along with the documentary, and after announcing the formal establishment of China, the scene switched to the independent filming section.

"That year you were the same age as me

young as a green song
But in order to create that new world of dreams
You turned and hurried into the wind and rain

I see thousands of lovely you”

Just at the beginning, several instructors thought that if Gulina didn't win the No. 1 spot, they estimated that they would be scolded to death by everyone after the show was broadcast. The director of the program team even felt that there was a terrible force behind Gulina. .

But this matter is not a headache for him, let’s let the headquarters have a headache.

December 2009, 7.

A 50-meter-tall nine-story building stands in the Deep Blue Film Factory. Originally, Han Chen wanted to build a 9-story factory. When Wu Qimin applied for the application, he was told that there were restrictions. Industrial land could only be built with a maximum of 10 stories. The height of the building is limited to 9 meters but the number of floors cannot exceed 50 floors.

In the end, the entire factory could only be built to a height of 9 stories.

Han Chen and Ma Changsheng wore safety helmets and walked into the factory for inspection. The factory has many windows with plenty of light. Even if there is no power, the inside of the factory is still very bright. The staff of the security company are installing fire pipes.

"Uncle Ma, have the monitoring circuits on each floor been arranged in advance?" Han Chen asked.

"They have already laid it out. The lines follow the electric wells. Monitoring will be installed after the fire pipes are installed." Ma Changsheng replied.

Han Chen walked around with the empty drum stick and knocked it to see if there were any empty drums in the factory. He also took a look at the quality of the factory. Overall, the quality of the factory was pretty good. The cement floors were also laid very flat and the walls were very smooth. A layer of cement has been hung and it is very smooth.

Because Han Chen didn't plan to renovate, he asked them to lay cement on the project so that the factory building could be used directly.

As long as the fire piping is installed, the equipment can be brought into the site for production.

After an inspection to confirm that there were no problems, Han Chen left the Deep Blue Film Factory and returned to Nantian Pioneer Park.

Office of the President of Nantian Pioneer Park.

Not long after returning, Chang Huazhang brought a man in his early thirties to Han Chen's office.

The man’s name is Wu Xinzhong and he is the former sales manager of Amou Technology. If Han Chen wants to make a monitoring chip, he must choose a chip architecture as the basis. The RSIC-V development team has not yet been established, and Han Chen does not want to use Misp Frame.

ARM can be said to be Han Chen’s best choice now.

In the future, if there is a chance, we can develop mobile phone chips by ourselves. Of course, developing mobile phone chips is not that simple. In this era of talent shortage, we can only think about it. Even if Han Chen swallows the brain capsule and comes up with the chip structure, there must be corresponding Only technicians can fill in the content.

"Mr. Han, this is Wu Xinzhong, the sales manager of Anmou Company." Chang Huazhang introduced.

"Manager Wu, hello." Han Chen shook hands with the other party.

"Hello, Mr. Han." Wu Xinzhong said with a smile.

"Manager Wu, let's drink and chat at the tea table." Han Chen said, waving his hand in the direction of the tea table.

"Okay, Mr. Han." Wu Xinzhong nodded.

After the two sat down, Han Chen started to make tea. In fact, Han Chen hated making tea because the process of making tea was too troublesome, but drinking tea was the best choice for talking about business. It was better than just sitting on the sofa and talking. good.

"Manager Wu, I wonder how ARM's licensing fees are charged?" Han Chen asked while making tea.

"Mr. Han, our authorization methods are divided into two types, instruction set authorization, traditional IP authorization and flexible authorization. Instruction set authorization is the cheapest. Instruction set authorization only costs 100 million US dollars. Traditional IP authorization depends on Mr. Han. Which kind of IP you want, the price of each IP is different.

In addition to the licensing fee, we also charge a 1% royalty. The royalty price is calculated based on your chip shipment price.

In other words, if the chip you designed sells for 100 yuan, you will have to pay ARM a royalty of 1 yuan. If your company needs technical support, we will charge a service fee based on the technical difficulty. "Wu Xinzhong explained.

"If we develop a new instruction on ARM, who owns the copyright of this instruction?" Han Chen asked.

"If your company independently develops a new instruction set and architecture, it will be owned by your company. Your company can also entrust us to sell the architecture and instruction set externally, and we will charge 30% of the sales service fee." Wu Xinzhong replied.

"Manager Wu, after we purchase the instruction set authorization, is this authorization permanent? If your company will update the instruction set in the future, do I need to pay for it additionally?" Han Chen said.

"It is permanent. Subsequent instruction set updates will require additional payment. I wonder what Mr. Han does by purchasing the ARM license?" Wu Xinzhong asked.

"Our company designs a chip for security systems." Han Chen replied.

"If Han always uses it in security systems, you can purchase our Cortex-M3. This IP is suitable for industrial control fields. This product is the most used in microcontrollers. Purchasing this IP can save a lot of development costs.

The licensing fee for our IP is only US$50.

ARM Cortex-M3 is an ARM embedded core based on ARMv7 architecture, which adopts Harvard architecture and uses separate instruction and data buses. ARM's positioning of Cortex-M3 is to provide low-cost, low-power chips to the professional embedded market.

In terms of cost and power consumption, the Cortex-M3 has pretty good performance.

The Cortex-M3 core mounts memory, peripherals, terminals, etc. through the interface bus to form a multi-point controller.

To date, several chip manufacturers have begun producing MCUs based on the Cortex-M3 core.

The current authorized customers of the Cortex-M3 processor core include Toshiba, STMicroelectronics, Ember, Accent, Actel, ENERGY, ADL, Sigma Semiconductor, Texas Instruments, Atmel, Broadcom, Samsung, ZiLOG and Renesas, among which Toshiba, ST , NXP, TI, Atmel, etc. have launched MCU products based on Cortex-M3. "Wu Xinzhong said.

MCUs are widely used in different fields, such as automation, smart home, security, automotive electronics, smart power, wearable devices, wireless technology, etc.

"The performance of Cortex-M3 is a bit low and cannot run our system." Han Chen shook his head.

If it is just a simple security architecture, Cortex-M3 can be used, but its computing power cannot support the face recognition SDK, even if it is used in 802.11AX or Bluetooth 6.0.

So Han Chen does not plan to buy Cortex-M3.

"If Mr. Han feels that the performance of Cortex-M3 is not enough, you can buy our Cortex-A8, but the price of Cortex-A8 is much more expensive. The licensing fee for Cortex-A8 requires US$500 million." Wu Xinzhong said quickly.

In fact, he didn't care what Han Chen used this thing for. All he wanted was to sell their products so that he could get a high commission.

If he can sell the Cortex-A8 to Han Chen, he can get a commission of US$2. "Five million US dollars is too expensive. Isn't there some discount?" Han Chen poured a cup of tea for Wu Xinzhong and said.

Speaking of Cortex-A8, there is a little bit of excitement. Cortex-A8 is a very classic core. The rise of Qualcomm relies on Cortex-A8.

The three generations of CPUs, Snapdragon S1, 2, and 3, are all modified based on the Cortex-A8.

Cortex-A8 can be used in routing by modifying it, and then 802.11AX can be promoted to the market. In addition, Cortex-A8 can also support access control systems, but Cortex-A8 still needs to be modified.

Of course, modifying the chip sounds simple but is a very complex project.

"Then buying your instruction set plus the Cortex-A8 license will cost 600 million US dollars. 600 million US dollars converts to almost 4000 million soft sister coins. At this price, several companies in China are willing to spend money to buy it. Besides, Cortex- A8 has been eliminated by your company.

Your company has already released Cortex-A9, why is Cortex-A8 still so expensive? "Han Chen picked up the tea cup and took a sip before continuing.

"Mr. Han, our company has invested a lot of R&D funds in this area. Even the Cortex-A8 has invested hundreds of millions of dollars. The 500 million licensing fee is not even a fraction, and the price of 500 million has already been adjusted. The price, before adjustment, the Cortex-A8 licensing fee costs US$800 million.

Our latest release of Cortex-A9 is now selling for US$1000 million. "Wu Xinzhong said.

In fact, what Wu Xinzhong said is not false at all. This kind of thing can be found out by searching. After all, ARM is a listed company, and the company's financial reports are released to the outside world.

Is it expensive to buy a core license for $1000 million?

It's honestly not expensive at all.

The conversion of 1000 million U.S. dollars is only 6800 million. If calculated based on 10 chips, the license fee will only be 68 yuan if evenly distributed. The more production, the lower the cost of the license fee.

In this era, a Cortex-A9 chip can be easily sold for 300 yuan.

The production cost of a chip is only a few dozen yuan. Including the patent fee, the cost will not exceed 150 yuan. If you sell it for 300 yuan, you can get 100% profit.

However, this 6800 million has become a stumbling block for many companies. After all, not every company can afford that much money. If you ask the current boss to invest in research and development of chips, it will cost 6800 million before the chip is produced. The bosses heard The price scared everyone away.

If you use this 6800 million to go into real estate, you can get at least a few hundred million back.

It was not until these domestic bosses knew that chips made money that they were willing to invest money in the semiconductor industry.

But it was five or six years later when they were willing to invest money in the semiconductor industry.

By that time it will be too late to invest in semiconductors.

"ARM's instruction set license plus Cortex-A9 license costs US$750 million. If this price is acceptable, we will sign a contract immediately." Han Chen said.

US$750 million is still acceptable to Han Chen. The authorization of Cortex-A9 saves him a lot of time. Whether it is access control products or monitoring products, products supported by Cortex-A9 will be on the market soon.

Why buy Cortex-A9 instead of Cortex-A8?
The Cortex-A9 core will not be eliminated within 5 years. Many copycat phones in later generations use Cortex-A9. Even Huawei's HiSilicon V9R1 uses Cortex-A9. It can be seen that the Cortex-A9 core How long is the life span? Five years is enough for Han Chen to earn back the money.

"Mr. Han, I can't explain to the company that you cut off 150 million US dollars at once." Wu Xinzhong said with a bitter smile.

"Manager Wu, our company has just started, and the risk of investing so much money is very high. Is it possible that after we go bankrupt, you will buy back the patent license?" Han Chen asked with a smile.

Wu Xinzhong's face became even more depressed after hearing Han Chen's words. How could their company buy back the license? If your company goes bankrupt, it will go bankrupt. Even if it goes bankrupt, these licenses can still be sold for some money.

Although he thought so in his heart, he did not dare to tell Han Chen.

"Mr. Han, the base price of instruction set authorization plus Cortex-A9 is 800 million. This is already the lowest price I can give." Wu Xinzhong said.

"Then you give me a Cortex-M4. If I can sign the contract immediately, if not, I will find a misp." Han Chen said.

Cortex-M4 further enhances digital signal processing and floating point computing capabilities based on Cortex-M3.

This makes Cortex-M4 particularly suitable for embedded applications that require complex digital processing, such as audio processing, motor control, etc.

Cortex-M4 contains a 32-bit CPU and adds hardware support specifically for DSP and floating point operations. As long as the corresponding algorithms are added, it can theoretically support face recognition, but face recognition The speed will be much slower, and it is expected to take 3-4 seconds to be recognized.

除此以外Cortex-M4蕴含的晶体管比Cortex-A9少很多，Cortex-M4的制作成本也比Cortex-A9便宜很多，相对比Cortex-A9最少能够节约一半的成本。

Although the recognition speed of Cortex-M4 is slower, it can still be used in low-end products.

The cost of using Cortex-M4 to make a face recognition electronic lock will never exceed 500 yuan.

It is normal for an electronic lock with facial recognition to sell for two to three thousand and earn five or six times.

"This." Wu Xinzhong was hesitant.

In fact, he can do it at this price, but he will make a lot less money by doing so, and the commission he will receive will also be much less.

"Okay." Wu Xinzhong gritted his teeth and said.

If Han Chen looks for MISP, the order will be considered a waste. MISP is no worse than ARM, and MISP is cheaper than them.

"Then prepare the contract and send it to me. I'll let the lawyer take a look at it. If there are no problems, sign the contract." Han Chen said.

"Mr. Han, do you have wireless network here?" Wu Xinzhong asked.

"There is a wireless network in the office, and the password is 123456789." Han Chen replied.

"Mr. Han, please give me an email address and I will send the contract to your email address," Wu Xinzhong said.

"Mr. Wu, do you have WeChat? Just send it to me using WeChat." Han Chen said.

"Okay, then I'll add your WeChat ID." Wu Xinzhong took out his mobile phone and said.

Ten minutes later, Wu Xin sent the modified contract to Han Chen’s WeChat.

Han Chen forwarded the contract to Yin Ruoyue and asked her to check it. Ten minutes later, Yin Ruoyue told Han Chen that there was no problem. In addition, she also asked Han Chen if he was free at night. If he was free, she would like to ask Han Chen to have dinner together.

When Gu Lina was away, Yin Ruoyue often asked Han Chen to have dinner and watch movies.

(End of this chapter)