"How long do you think it will take to complete the "Chinese Cube" handheld project?" Lin Qi said indifferently. Pen | fun | pavilion www. ｂｉｑｕｇｅ。 ｉｎｆｏ

"If it's just a game called "Chinese Cubes", it's very simple. The 6502 chip simplifies the program and reduces the cost of memory chips. Plus a black ** crystal screen, two ordinary batteries. These are all common technologies that are already available on the market, and they can be made with a little integration. Gao Tian said, "If it goes well, it is expected that a prototype can be developed within three months." ”

Lin Qi nodded and said, "Can you handle the budget of 10 million Hong Kong dollars?"

"I can only play the handheld of "Chinese Cube", and I don't need that much. If it is a machine that can replace the game card, then it is necessary to make supporting development tools and provide it to game developers, which is equivalent to designing a set of small computers, the hardware is not difficult, the problem is software. Gao Tian said, "The whole project, 10 million Hong Kong dollars is not guaranteed to be completed, and more may be needed." ”

"So, what about 50 million?" Lin Qi didn't seem to care about the cost.

"......" Gao Tian said after a while, "That's enough! I don't think it will take so many ......."

50 million Hong Kong dollars is definitely a lot of money, for example, the Hong Kong film industry in this era, a movie with a budget of 2 million is already a big production, and the cost of 5 million has shocked the industry!

Jobs pulled a grass bench team to develop Apple computers, and for less than a few tens of thousands of dollars, he began to develop prototypes.

During the same period, the R&D cost of many 4-bit and 8-bit microcomputers in the United States rarely exceeded one million yuan.

The research and development of the Atari 2600 host is said to have cost hundreds of millions of dollars in research and development costs. However, this is because a few years ago, the technology was not very mature, and Atari did not have much to learn from, so many technologies required Atari to burn money for trial and error, and in addition, Americans' salaries were too expensive, and they liked to procrastinate in doing things, so the cost would seem very expensive. Switching to an Asian company to invest in R&D would cost at most half that of a U.S. company.

Handheld platform, although Lin Qi promised a research and development budget of 50 million yuan. But the vast majority of the budget is still wool from sheep. After the launch of the "Chinese Cube" handheld, I believe that it can continue to make profits. Then, with the sales profit of the handheld of "Chinese Cube", you can lay out the handheld platform project.

"The handheld platform needs to control the cost, and it can't use too expensive components, and the 6502 chip will be enough for the next ten years. But the TV host can't be like this, the platform should be high-performance, far more than the PC of the same period, close to the arcade. And the best chip on the arcade platform, the Motorola 68000 chip, is too expensive, close to $200 a piece, but its performance does not match its price. In the future, the price of a game console will not be as much as 200 US dollars! Therefore, we have to design our own chips, not the kind of CISC structure, but the RISC structure. Lin Qi said, "RISC is in the right direction, the current popular technical concept, theoretically, the same number of transistors, RISC chips can reach CISC chips several times or even ten times the performance! Therefore, it may adopt a cheaper and backward process to manufacture CISC chips whose performance is not inferior to the current most advanced technology level!" We want to make high-performance home hosts, we must not use expensive and inefficient CPUs from Motorola and Intel, we must design and produce high-performance RISC chips by ourselves!"

With the truth in our hands, RISC is the right way, and CISC is the evil way!

Although Lin Qi is not a professional, he is convinced......

"This ......" Gao Tian already felt speechless, feeling that the boss might have read some article and been brainwashed, "but...... RISC is just a theory, and there is no real RISC chip on the market!"

"So, let's make the first RISC chip!" Lin Qi said ambitiously.

"Regardless of the money for chip design and production, what about people...... Where is the person who designed the chip?" Gao Tian said with a red face, "You don't think that designing a CPU chip with tens of thousands of transistors is as easy as a calculator with less than a thousand transistors?"

"Forget it,The TV host project can not be started for the time being,Start the handheld project first。 Handheld project, after becoming the new hematopoietic machine. Coupled with the development of a variety of profitable arcade machines, it should be able to support the TV host project!"

The future ARM chip is the RISC camp. The chips in this camp are all very capable of playing, and the performance is complete X86 a few streets. It's just that because in the PC era, the X86 chip seized the opportunity.

However, RISC chips are still in theory, and when the chips of the RISC camp are mass-produced, they have missed the PC market. As a result, RISC chips can only attack the server market and the market for dedicated chips. However, its cost performance has exploded a few streets between Intel and AMD, so the shipment volume has gradually grown rapidly, reaching several times that of X86 chips.

In the era of smart phones, ARM dominates and becomes the absolute dominance of the chip market. X86 chips can only shrink in the withering PC market, watching ARM chip shipments exceed X86 chips by 10 times!

X86Of course, it is not willing to give up the market, but, whether in performance, or price, as well as energy saving and other indicators, it is not up to par. From the beginning, X86 was congenitally deficient, and even if it continued to improve, it could not compete with the chip with a streamlined structure. With the passage of time, the more the X86 technology competes, the more difficult it becomes.

Knowing that this road is the way to win, and the chip is not afraid of no market. At the beginning, it was impossible to grab orders from the microcomputer market, but both home consoles and handheld platforms can provide enough orders for self-developed chips in the future!

Moreover, Lin Qi also thought of a trick to enter the computer market - to make a learning machine, and to change the game console a little, that is, a learning machine. In the 80s, not only the domestic market popular learning machines, but also many countries around the world, families who could not afford expensive computers, have bought learning machines.

Before the Internet age, the market share of learning machines was no less than that of PCs!

Of course, the buyer of the learning machine, what exactly is used for it, this is tacit. After all, in addition to learning computers, learning machines are also compatible with console games, so it's great to use it to play games.

Under the premise of the cost performance of RISC chips, the X86 chip is completely exploded. The learning machine can even have the performance of a PC, just add some peripherals, and it can become a real computer. In addition to compatibility, what a PC can do, a high-performance learning machine, can also do.

Developed country markets, just give up to PCs!

If the learning machine unifies the technical standards, it will occupy the market of developing countries, as well as the market of families below the middle class. By surrounding the city through the countryside, when the PC has hundreds of millions of users, the cheaper learning machine may have several times more users than the PC!

At that time, software and hardware companies were not stupid and would definitely be willing to move closer to the new technical standards and develop a range of compatible software and hardware!

"No one!" Lin Qi said unwillingly.

"The development of arcade and handheld machines, and even the development of TV consoles with the technology already available in the market, can be recruited in Hong Kong. However, you let us design our own CPUs and graphics cards, how many people can we find in Hong Kong?" Gao Tian said with a wry smile.

Hong Kong's education system does not attach much importance to science and engineering, and even if the universities recruit some top Chinese scientists, it is only a face-saving project.

Lin Qi said: "Hong Kong now has one that can design chips such as CPUs. ”

"Who?" Gao Tian was surprised, there was such a big bull in Hong Kong? How could he not know, you know, he was a native of Hong Kong, graduated from Chinese University in Hong Kong, and then went to Stanford in the United States to study for graduate school.

There is no reason why he doesn't know about a famous professor and scholar in Hong Kong, however, Gao Tian has never heard of a scholar in Hong Kong who can develop CPU chips.

"Yu Youcheng!" Lin Qi said.

"That's right! How can I forget Mr. Yu! He seems to have opened a training class in Hong Kong, which has been reported on the news!" Gao Tian couldn't help but nod and said, "Mr. Yu not only has the ability to design semiconductor chips, but also has many inventions, and he is a scientist with a high status in Intel Corporation." Moreover, his face is very wide, Chinese mainland, Silicon Valley in the United States, many scientists are familiar with him, if you can really dig him into the company, then the development of CPU chips, it is really not a fool's dream!"

"Ordinary talent recruitment, you go to the gate. Lin Qi said, "As for Dr. Yu Youcheng, I am going to visit the thatched house three times and ask him to come out of the mountain." ”

'80 was the last window of time to recruit Yu Youcheng, because, by the spring of '81, he had quit his training course and computer agency business and returned to the United States. After hesitating in front of many large companies in Silicon Valley, he chose to return to Intel.

After going back, Yu Youcheng successively participated in the research and development of 286, 386, 483 and Pentium chips, among the Chinese scientists of Intel Corporation, he is the most trusted and respected person by Intel, even if he leaves Intel for a few years, he can still be trusted by Grove.

This person has almost experienced the development history of Fairchild to Intel, not only has design capabilities, but more importantly, he is a bull who can control the overall situation and can coordinate the chip factory from R&D to production. With this person, the chip factory is equivalent to half of the construction, and the remaining half needs funds and equipment. Of course, ordinary people may be fooled when purchasing equipment, but Yu Youcheng is an insider and knows what equipment is needed in the chip factory......