Chapter 178: Heartbreaker Performance and Price

The performance of the reduced instruction set is naturally stronger than that of the complex instruction set, so much so that the reduced instruction set can achieve several times the performance of the complex instruction set with the same number of transistors. Pen, fun, pavilion www. biquge。 info

If you want to develop chips with a reduced instruction set, can't Intel do it? No!

Intel's talent and technology reserves are among the best in the global semiconductor industry. If Intel goes all out to develop chips with new architectures, it will definitely be able to do a reduced instruction set chip in the performance seckill market.

However, Intel's X86 architecture in the past has attracted a large number of users, and abandoning the original users and prescribing chips that are incompatible with the original architecture is also an absolute suicide for Intel.

When Zilog launched the Z80, it was on par with Intel. But...... Zilog launched Z8000 in 79, but its performance is comparable to that of the 80286 that was launched in 82! Is this chip excellent? Of course, it is excellent, in terms of performance, it is more than a generation ahead of Intel!

But the Zilog 8000 still failed miserably, because it was a new film with a new architecture, which was not compatible with the Z80 chip of the past. Since Zilog is a company that mainly sells CPUs, the new architecture of CPUs has hit the streets, and a large amount of investment has been wasted, so that the chip industry in the United States has learned a lesson and regarded compatibility as the first, followed by performance.

Therefore, semiconductor manufacturers who mainly sell chips regard compatibility and versatility as their life, and will not blindly pursue performance!

If a chip with excellent design and high performance has poor compatibility, then most chip manufacturers in the market are willing to develop and put into production.

The XRM16 chip with the new architecture of Xinchuang Electronics is mainly self-produced and sold, and there is no need to consider whether other customers accept it, so don't care about its mother's compatibility, how to design it with high performance!

With the backwardness of the semiconductor manufacturing capacity of Xinchuang Electronics, we can only obtain powerful performance through better new chip design!

Intel is now preparing to launch a chip factory with a 1-micron process in preparation for the next generation of 80386. It seems that Intel's chip design is not first-rate, but it is the CPU factory with the highest market share. By simply engaging in the most advanced process, it can make up for the lack of complex instruction set design.

The new venture electronics company has made great efforts to come up with a 3-micron chip production line. It is about equivalent to the level of Intel in about 79 years, and according to Moore's Law, it is two generations behind the current Intel process!

With a process that is two generations behind, the chip with a performance far exceeding 80286 has been designed, and the technical team of the new venture electronics company is also proud of it.

Of course, it is inevitable that Lin Qi sent a large number of "references", many of which are later mature reduced instruction set chip designs.

With such a bunch of data references, coupled with the fact that the new start-up subsidiaries are burning more money, since its establishment, it has invested more than 1 billion Hong Kong dollars in technology.

Rely on burning money to continuously do experiments to verify the feasibility of the technology. The XRM16 chip, which is finally the way out, can be called the king of 16-bit chips.

Even the later 32-bit 80386 chip cannot be said to necessarily surpass the XRM16 chip in performance.

"In addition to having a CPU that was not powerful before, the memory also reaches 64KB, in addition, it has a display chip with a capacity of 64KB, and a special sound card chip, its graphics display performance and sound are the strongest in the home game console and microcomputer market!"

"Inside the Pangu host, the slots for hardware upgrades are retained. Users can insert some memory, graphics cards, and even ...... that meet the technical standards according to their choice. Hard disks can also be added. That said, if you feel like it can be used as a computer, it's really a computer and very powerful. However, because it is a new platform, we are not compatible with Apple and PC. Some software from other platforms that need to be rewritten according to our program development standards can be ported to our platform. Of course, we currently have a lot of hardware and peripherals that aren't added for price reasons. ”

"There are two versions of the Pangu console, the low-end version uses a card belt to read the program, and this version is priced at $199 in the global market. In addition, it is a high-end version, priced at $399, and has two data reading standards, cassette and CD-ROM. Of course, the CD-ROM format can record programs up to 650MB, so the capacity and quality of the game will far exceed that of traditional cassette. At present, the size of most game cartridges is no more than 5MB! For hardcore gamers, the bigger the game program, of course, the better, of course, considering the wallets of many players, so we have launched a cheap entry version. Compared with the high-end version, the disadvantage of the entry copyright is that it is only one less CD-ROM. However, don't worry, we've given the Starter version players an upgraded opportunity, even if they buy the Starter version, and when they have money in the future, they can go to the market for $249 and buy an external CD-ROM player, and get the same features as the high-end version......"

Pangea isn't the cheapest host, but considering its performance, it's the strongest of the same priced hosts. Even the $600 C64 host, or the PC on the market now, is far inferior to the Pangu host in terms of CPU, display chip and memory and other hardware.

Take the original PC on the market in 81 as an example, the CPU it uses is only a 16-bit 8088CPU, the memory of the entry version is only 16KB (can be expanded to 256KB), and the display and sound are not particularly optimized, after all, the PC was designed at the beginning, mainly for office and programmer use, and did not consider using the PC for entertainment.

The lowest version of this PC is also priced at $1,565 in the market, while the high-end version strengthens hardware performance such as display and memory, and the price reaches a sky-high price of $6,000.

To put it simply, the performance of the $1565 entry-level PC is even much lower than that of the $599 C64 console. Historically, C64 did not fall into disadvantage in the early days of the PC, and even sold better than PC, Apple and other opponents, because of its high cost performance. Later, the C64 was defeated by a large number of PC-compatible machines in the market, not purely by IBM!

The entry-level version of the Pangu console, which was sold for $199, was not only not profitable, but also lost at least $50 per day on machine sales. Of course, a new business idea will not say that it is selling at a price below cost, and if it does, it may be sued for malicious tendencies.

In addition, the loss of the high-spec version has even widened to $80 per unit. Because, the core components of CD-ROM are still imported from Philips.

Although the price of the parts supplied by Philips is still steadily decreasing, the cost of producing a CD drive is basically the same as that of a CD player, and the cost price is at least $220.

At present, ICD record players can be sold for as much as $349 a piece, but CD drives cannot be sold so expensive, only cheaper. Buying a single peripheral optical drive, which costs $249, is quite profitable.

And the high-end version of the entire console sells for $399, which is definitely a loss of money. Originally, the configuration was relatively high-end, and it was also equipped with a subversive CD drive in this era.

To be honest, even if it sells for $2,000 a piece, it is still a cost-effective microcomputer.

But......

Xinye Electronics has calmly reduced the price to this point, which is enough to fight!

Next, the scene began to show the powerful performance of the new console, the Pangu host with a CD drive, because the CD disc program can reach hundreds of MB, this age is absolutely astronomical.

Of course, the cost-effective advantage needs to be demonstrated through performance, and if it is not for its strong entertainment performance, it is difficult to convince ordinary consumers to buy.

"This CD in my hand can theoretically store 650MB of information...... Gao Tian asked the staff to take the peripheral handle, keyboard, and mouse, and demonstrated the use of the Pangu host on the spot, "Its peripherals, you can access the handle, you can also connect the keyboard and mouse." Display screen, generally with the screen of the TV can be used. Of course, we will launch optional dedicated games and office screens for consumers to buy. ”

Plug in all the cables, and then press the power button.

The screen lights up quickly!

"The system comes with a graphics operating system, which is easier to use than Apple and PC, C64 and other computers, and I don't know where it is, it is really an ordinary consumer, and you don't need to know any computer knowledge, and you don't even need to read the manual, you can know how to operate. Gao Tian said, "Now, press the CD drive eject button, and install the CD!Okay, this is a demonstration game "The Legend of Sword and Fairy", which is a turn-based RPG game, and the graphics are much more exquisite than traditional console games, after all, the capacity of the game is up to 616MB, and the traditional game is a small game, compared with it, there is no comparison ...... at all."

After boasting about himself, Gao Tian began to use the handle to operate the game, and after a while, he pulled out the handle and replaced it with a mouse and keyboard, because, at the beginning of the design of this game program, it was compatible with both the handle operation and the mouse and keyboard.

Sure enough, the demonstration of this game made the audience exclaim. Compared to the console games at this time, most of them are blurry pixels, after all, a few MB of games, has been considered a large-capacity game cartridge era, the program is too small, of course, there is no clearer picture. This kind of small program, there is no need to have a better graphics card, because, a better graphics card is useless, and the capacity of the program itself is too small. At the same time, many games are not even accompanied by music, and most of the ones with soundtracks are only accompanied by dozens of seconds of background music, and the whole game process is repeated with the same BGM!

"The Legend of Sword and Fairy" is different, and more than 10 original ancient music songs are customized throughout the article. The music alone is enough to release a record, and the picture quality in the game is comparable to the high-definition videotapes of this era.

"Great!"

"This game is awesome!?"

"How much does it cost?"

Gao Tian nodded and said: "The Legend of Sword and Fairy The game will currently give away the first 10,000 players who buy the Pangu console, and the players after 10,000 need to buy it at the market price, and the market price is 98 Hong Kong dollars a box. ”

Relying on this epoch-making game, the Pangu console took the lead, and quickly gave some consumers a reason to buy it - compared to the Pangu console, the game performance of various home game consoles on the market is rubbish!

Even...... Some computers that sell for more than $1,000 are rubbish when it comes to performance......