Chapter Seventy-Six: Co-design
Sun Xing was also attracted by the H8 core architecture that Zhou Zhen came up with.
To be honest, Sun Xing's reception of Zhou Zhen's team at the beginning was just a reception for cooperation and etiquette.
For the in-depth cooperation between the two sides, Sun Xing still hesitated.
It's just that when Zhou Zhen's team came up with the H8 core architecture, Sun Xing had already made it completely.
Before the H8 comes out, the possibility of cooperation between the two companies is basically minimal.
After the official appearance of the H8 core architecture, the cooperation between the two companies has basically become a foregone conclusion.
The H8 core architecture is indeed very good in terms of overall performance and power consumption, even better than the current ARM latest G76 architecture.
What MediaTek lacks now is this kind of outstanding underlying core technology blessing.
You must know that the current MediaTek is basically close to the current level of the overall performance of the CPU.
Only the performance strength of many modules such as GPU and ISP is far behind the processor chip of the Paste Fire Dragon.
In addition, the optimization of fire dragon by various manufacturers is obviously more than the tuning of MediaTek chips, which makes MediaTek basically in a passive state in the entire chip market.
H8, a new GPU core architecture, can allow MediaTek to see the hope of the rise of the company's chip business.
And Zhou Zhen was not verbose, and told Sun Xing the purpose of his coming to MediaTek this time.
The first is to jointly develop a chip with MediaTek!
The second is to want to cross-authorize the corresponding patented technology with the other party.
MediaTek has been established for a long time and has a lot of patents on chips.
For example, communication, audio and other technical patents.
In particular, the level of communication patent technology, MediaTek's level must not be bad compared to some communication companies.
For example, the baseband chips used in the 4G and 5G processor chips produced by MediaTek are all communication frequency modules developed and designed by MediaTek itself.
Although Yuzhen already has a humanoid plug-in like Zhou Zhen, it still needs to cooperate with some senior manufacturers in some technical aspects to make up for the corresponding defects.
MediaTek is clearly one of the targets of Yuzhen's cooperation.
Of course, Zhou Zhen also considered cooperating with HiSilicon Kirin, but considering that the processor chips designed and produced by HiSilicon Kirin will not be sold to other manufacturers for the time being.
This makes Zhou Zhen can only temporarily consider reaching a deep cooperative relationship with MediaTek, so as to obtain the supply of early chips.
With the H8 core technology patent, it is guaranteed that the negotiations between the two companies will be relatively pleasant.
In the case of mutual interests, the cooperation between the two parties seems to be a perfect fit.
Yuzhen licensed the technology and patent license to MediaTek H8 core architecture.
MediaTek authorized part of the communication patent technology to Yuzhen.
At the same time, the two companies have also reached an agreement on chip co-design, intending to design a processor chip with H8 architecture GPU within half a year.
And MediaTek will also let Zhou Zhen and Yuzhen have a half-year chip exclusivity period.
This also means that after the design and production of this chip, Zhou Zhen's company can exclusively use this chip within half a year.
However, after this half a year has passed, this processor chip can be officially supplied to other manufacturers, and MediaTek can also make a lot of money because of it.
Of course, in this cooperation, Zhou Zhen still has to follow the team closely in the early stage and temporarily determine the nature of the processor chip.
Within a month after reaching the corresponding agreement, Zhou Zhen also followed the team and MediaTek's R&D department to develop chips.
Of course, in the process of research and development, the teams of both sides still have to sign the corresponding confidentiality agreement, after all, in the process of research and development, you can also see other processors developed by MediaTek.
During this time, Zhou Zhen also learned that the current MediaTek has begun to file a project for 5G processor chips.
Basically, in the middle of next year, MediaTek's R&D team can start to devote itself to the research and development of 5G chips.
And now the processor chips developed by MediaTek basically have only three lines.
Hallo G20 Series!
Hallo G80 Series!
Hallo G90 Series!
The design project team of these three designs is basically the three remaining product lines of MediaTek in terms of low-end processor chips.
And with the 5G Dimensity processor project to be filed, it will also be castrated part of the product design project team.
The G20 series, as the name suggests, is a chip that MediaTek has opened for entry-level models.
The two series of G80 and G90 are relatively high-end, and they can be said to be the top two series in the current value of MediaTek 4G products.
The chips jointly designed by Yuzhen and MediaTek are temporarily positioned in the G90 series.
And this time, due to the addition of Yuzhen's team and Zhou Zhen's arguments, the processor chips designed by the two teams this time did not intend to be designed in the low-end direction as a whole.
In terms of CPU core architecture, it naturally adopts the core architecture of A76, and in terms of GPU, it naturally adopts the H8 core architecture brought by the team of Yuzhen.
"In terms of performance, at least it must be able to touch next year's Fire Dragon 845!"
According to Zhou Zhen's meaning, the processor chip jointly created by his own company and MediaTek this time should be able to compete with the Fire Dragon 845 in terms of performance.
If you have the opportunity, it is best to compare it with the Kirin 980 god U.
However, from the current cooperation process with MediaTek, it is understood that MediaTek can only use TSMC's 10nm process technology at most.
This means that the processor chips jointly designed by the two companies may only use TSMC's 10nm process technology.
And can't catch up with TSMC's latest 7nm process technology.
This also means that the processor chips designed and produced by the two companies cannot be pulled too high in terms of frequency.
This is mainly due to the backwardness of the corresponding manufacturing process, in order to ensure the stability of the performance and power consumption of the corresponding chip, the frequency of the chip cannot be increased.
After almost half a month of negotiations, the corresponding framework for the design of the CPU and GPU was finally finalized.
This time the CPU uses four A76 big cores + four A55 small cores.
The frequency of the four A76 cores is all set at the 2.4Ghz level, and the four A55 small cores are 2.0Ghz.
The design level of this CPU is not much worse than the Dimensity 800 series chips in the future 20 years.
The CPU of the Dimensity 800U (Dimensity 720 upgrade, to be exact) is two 2.4Ghz A76 + six 2.0Ghz A55.
The CPU of the Dimensity 800 uses four A76 + four A55, and the frequency of the eight cores is 2.0Ghz.
Of course, the CPU performance of the Dimensity 800 is still stronger than that of the Dimensity 800U.
After all, the performance of the big cores of the mobile phone processor CPU is equivalent to seven or eight small cores (energy efficiency cores).
The CPU of the Dimensity 820, the strongest in the Dimensity 800 series, is based on the Dimensity 800, and the frequency of the A76 has been increased to 2.6Ghz.
One shows that the theoretical CPU performance of this newly designed processor chip should be much better than that of the Dimensity 800 and slightly weaker than the Dimensity 820.
However, since this processor chip can only be made using a 10nm process, it may be weaker than the entire Dimensity 800 series in terms of power consumption.
However, the CPU performance and power consumption performance of this chip are too much stronger than that of the Fire Dragon 845.
After all, the improvement of A76 compared to A75 core is still very obvious.
Even aside from power consumption, this chip can even compete with the Kirin 980 chip.
At the same time, this processor chip uses a 566Mhz frequency H8M10 graphics processor in terms of GPU.
That is, ten H8 core GPU modules.
Although the H8 is said to be a castrated version of the core architecture, it is definitely at least 20% better than the G76 core of the Kirin 980 in terms of its same frequency.
This time, the performance of the GPU of the processor chip can basically surpass the performance of the Dimensity 820 by about 30%.
Zhou Zhen estimates that the chip designed by the two companies can be compared with the Dimensity 820 in terms of performance, but the power consumption will be a little difficult to control.