Super Copy of Great Power Technology

Chapter 80 The second tape-out
"As early as the second half of last year, SMIC announced that it had completed mass production of the 45nm process. I heard that it was authorized by IBM. After a year of polishing, the technology is now very mature, and the yield rate can be Achieving more than 90%, the foundry costs are much cheaper than abroad. If you want to mass-produce your chips, you can definitely go to them."

“With only one SMIC and no other companies, can it do it?”

"No, there are relatively few large-scale wafer foundries in China. In terms of equipment procurement and technology authorization, they are subject to many restrictions in the West, and most of the process technologies are relatively backward. For example, Huahong and Huajing are still working on processes below 90nm. , the technical level seriously lags behind SMIC.”

A rare opportunity, Qiao Ruida got a lot of industry news from Zhou Wanda and gained a general understanding of domestic chip design and chip production levels.

At noon, after the two had lunch together, Qiao Ruida said goodbye, left the Daxing campus, and returned to Ruida Technology Company.

In the past four months, Ruida Technology Company has made great progress. The number of orders and sales have continued to increase, and the customer base has continued to expand, showing a thriving state.Ruida's Taobao store and JD store are still popular. The number of registered and active people in Ruida Mall has exploded and has reached tens of millions. It is likely to grow into the third largest shopping platform in China.Ruida Mall has opened three physical stores, all within the capital. Currently, they mainly sell mobile phones, and their performance is pretty good.

In recent days, venture capital institutions have begun to contact Ruida Technology and want to invest in shares, but Qiao Ruida rejected it.The reason is also very simple. Ruida Technology is now in its infancy and has not yet reached the stage of financing.Besides, Reda Technology Company is not short of development funds, and there are still billions lying in the account, which cannot be used.

After Qiao Ruida arrived at the company, she immediately approached Liu Jiayu and said, "Sister Liu, I want to establish a R&D department within the company to develop our own brand of electronic products."

"Oh, establishing an R&D department is a good thing. I wholeheartedly support it. But boss, have you thought about what products to develop?"

Liu Jiayu was also very interested in Qiao Ruida's proposal.Her last job was as a sales manager in an electrical appliance company, and she is no stranger to the R&D process of electronic products.

"The first product is an MP3 player. I have completed the design of an audio decoding chip and am currently testing it for tape-out. As long as this chip passes the test, an MP3 player can be developed based on it. , and put it for sale in our online store. In terms of hardware, I can handle it by myself. The R&D department needs to recruit some people who are proficient in industrial design, tuning, and hardware programming to help me complete the design of the player shell and operating interface. "

"MP3 player? How did you think of making this thing? According to what I know, the sales of domestic MP3 players are not very good. Consumers recognize foreign brands more, and they are more willing to buy them even if they spend several times more money." Foreign products. MP3 player products such as Apple, SONY, and Samsung all sell well." What Liu Jiayu said does exist. The best-selling MP3 players on the market are all foreign brands.In order to reduce costs, most domestic brands of MP3 players adopt industrial mold solutions, purchase foreign low-end main control chips and black chip flash memory chips, and piece them together at will. This has almost become synonymous with cheapness, poor sound quality, and shoddy manufacturing, even after being sold. No matter how cheap the price is, no one cares.

"Don't worry, I can definitely make a high-quality MP3 player with my help. We started research and development from the main control chip and have truly mastered the core technology. As long as we do a good job of debugging, it is not difficult to produce good sound quality. Even so. After putting it on the market, it doesn’t matter if the sales are not good. This is just my trial work. Once I fully master the chip development process, we can also develop other electronic products, such as Bluetooth speakers, smart bracelets, tablets, and even It’s a smartphone and so on.”

"Boss, you are really ambitious. It seems that we need to recruit more talents in software and hardware development to prepare for the development of new products."

"That's it. If our company wants to develop and produce electronic products, it must reserve as many relevant talents as possible. When one day the R&D department can no longer be filled, it will become independent and set up an R&D center. At present, our company's cash The flow is good, and it will not be a problem to afford the research and development costs of several new products.”

In the afternoon of that day, the recruitment information of Reda Technology Company appeared on major recruitment websites. The salary and benefits offered were very high, even in the entire capital, it was considered to be the highest level.Ruida Technology Company was established just a few months ago. It is still an e-commerce company. It can be said that it has no reputation in the field of electronic product R&D and production.Many talents attracted by high wages shook their heads and gave up their plans to apply after checking the information of Reda Technology Company.But as more people see the job postings, there are always some people who want to give it a try and submit their resumes.

Starting from the next day, some resumes were received one after another in the company's email box.After the preliminary screening, they were sent to Qiao Ruida or Liu Jiayu, who screened them again, and qualified ones were notified to come to the company for an interview.In line with the principle of "preferring shortage to excess," Qiao Ruida is very strict about talents. People who are not talented and knowledgeable will definitely not be able to enter the R&D department.But after all, Beijing is a place where talents gather, and the salary offered by Reda Technology is high enough and very attractive, so the number of people in the R&D department has increased rapidly.

On the fourth day, the second tape-out production was completed. This time the yield rate was improved, and 30 qualified chips were cut out of 138 silicon wafers.After getting the chip, Qiao Ruida immediately assembled several MP3 players and distributed them to several people in the R&D department for comprehensive testing.

The good news is that this time the player no longer has the problem of incomplete reading of the flash memory capacity, and all design functions have been realized, which means that the second tape-out was a complete success.The bad news is that the new team of experts from the R&D department found more than ten bugs on the player, some of which can even cause hardware damage.The sound quality of the player was also criticized as useless by a senior tuner.In short, this MP3 player currently has many shortcomings and problems. It needs to be fully optimized and improved in both software and hardware. There is still a long way to go before it can be mass-produced and launched into the market.

(End of this chapter)