The matter of Emei Semiconductor soon came to an end, regarding the idea of Kaiyang injecting funds into the other party, the other party did not refuse or object, but just said that it was necessary to respond to the higher authorities first, and then strive for the opinions of the higher authorities, but it can be seen that Lao Liang is very excited about this fund.

When it comes to the restructuring of state-owned enterprises, although this time it is only mentioned because of the shortage of funds for unit expansion, such a major event still needs to be considered more after all.

The Ministry of Metallurgical Industry is on the one hand, and the attitude of the Sichuan Provincial Government should also be considered, after all, the factory receives various red-headed documents every year, and there are many documents starting with "Sichuan (Metallurgy)..."

At the end of the month, Rasha, who communicated with Acorn in Cambridge, England, returned to Shudu first and brought back that Roger had organized the development team to upgrade the IC design of the chip and improve the main frequency.

"This time I also heard a news, Acorn company's design team is still based on the processor we are about to introduce as a basis, is preparing to develop a military microprocessor, I don't know how difficult it is, maybe we introduce this processor to China, the next time we develop a new generation of military microprocessor, we can also develop based on this processor. ”

Based on the basis of civilian microprocessors to develop military microprocessors, this kind of thing can also be done by the European gang of calves, these guys have always been military and civilian, military equipment is developed using civilian standards, which is really nothing new in Europe.

A large number of European countries want to use civilian equipment to attack the military market, while the Soviet Union and Russia are hollowing out the idea of putting military equipment into the civilian market.

Of course, Wang Zhengguo is unwilling to do this, military products are military products after all, and the huge military market of the Republic in the future will be enough to support a microprocessor specially developed for military use.

"You said that these are also things in the future, now the military processor we developed can meet the needs of the military before 2000, as for after 2000, the technical level at that time must be much better than now, probably not the processor we are introducing now. ”

I think what Wang Zhengguo said is quite reasonable, with the rapid development speed of the semiconductor IC industry, there is a snail-like performance improvement demand for military microprocessors.

Don't think about it, Rasha also felt that his words were unreliable, so he quickly changed to a happy topic: "Chairman, you mentioned before that you were looking for scientific research forces engaged in the development of computer graphics display in the UK, not to mention, I really found a company later, and it was specialized in this." ”

I took out the information in the leather briefcase I carried with me, spread out the technical information and put it on the table, and introduced the general situation of the company.

"Imagination Technologies, translated into Chinese called Fantasy Technology Company, was only established last year, but the company's technical team has been formed a long time ago, and it was established by the scientific research team of Oxford University, and the technical aspect is relatively reliable. ”

In fact, it can be seen that Lasha really inquired about the project explained by Wang Zhengguo this time, at least Wang Zhengguo has never heard of this fantasy technology company, and I really don't know if it is the cat and dog in the corner.

didn't have time to comment on this company, Wang Zhengguo directly flipped through the information and roughly looked at it.

Not to mention, this company is really interesting, it is actually an IP design manufacturer, that is, it specializes in the research and development of patented technologies and its own solutions required for various graphics processing chips, and provides three technical licensing service solutions including soft core, solid core and hard core.

The so-called semiconductor IP design, which is actually the model of ARM later, does not produce processors, the company mainly provides deeper technical support to major microprocessor manufacturers, and uses this to master the industry design standards, which belongs to the giant crocodile level behind the predators.

Unexpectedly, the UK had a mature IP design manufacturer in the 80s, and also put forward a complete technical licensing service plan: soft core, solid core, hard core, such a fine product division, it is not easy to do this.

"It's good, their model is quite new, you should study it well, you can try to communicate it back, explain our requirements, first give a consulting fee to test the waters, see what suggestions they can give, whether we want to develop high-performance graphics workstations, this link is not a trivial matter. ”

If Wang Zhengguo clearly knew that high-performance graphics work things could sell well in China, and it would be relatively easy to get it in terms of technology, of course, there would be no need for any technical consultation, but now the situation is different, spend a little money to do technical consulting first, and then you can do it in a targeted manner.

As for what level of products and services this soft core, solid core, and hard core belong to, it is not difficult to understand.

First of all, the IP core refers to the functional modules with specific functions, interface specifications, and can be reused in multiple integrated circuits, which are the basic components to realize the overall design of the chip, and can be simply understood as a variety of well-designed functional modules.

In this way, it is easier to understand the soft core, solid core, and hard core.

Softcore: Literally understood as "program code", it is a hardware description language implementation to describe a functional module (such as a trigger written in VHDL, in text form), the service does not contain any physical implementation scheme, specifically to provide a technical problem solution.

The soft core is characterized by strong portability, short design cycle and low cost for users, but the disadvantage is that the physical implementation performance is unstable and incomplete, and the property rights protection is poor.

The fruit company on the upper plane also uses the IP core of ARM, but its processor performance is better than that of other processors in the same period, the reason is that the fruit is to buy the ARM IP soft core, and it can carry out secondary development on this basis to optimize the IOS system of the fruit machine, which is the advantage of the soft core design.

Solid core: In addition to providing the "program code" for the implementation of functional modules, it also includes the design of gate-level circuit synthesis and timing simulation, which is generally provided to users in the form of gate-level circuit netlists, and has more "rules between the design intent of the programmer's module and the physical implementation of the hardware".

At the level of solid core, IP design manufacturers have sorted out the design of the entire functional module, and the big problems have been basically solved.

Finally, there is IP hard core: this refers to the detailed design based on the earlier physical description, and the IP manufacturer has verified that the design is feasible and the performance is absolutely guaranteed, and the service is provided to users (chip manufacturers) in the form of circuit physical structure mask layout and a full set of process documents.

If the manufacturing of chips is compared to making cars, directly buying hard cores is probably equivalent to buying engines, transmissions, and production lines, buying solid cores, which is equivalent to buying engine and transmission design drawings, and buying soft cores, which is probably buying cutting-edge design and technical consulting from professional institutions.

Fantasy Technology was able to sort out such a detailed customer service plan in the 80s, it seems that there are still two brushes, Wang Zhengguo can make a bold guess, maybe in the future, ARM will transform itself into an IP manufacturer positioning, and the leading role of this fantasy technology is not unrelated.