"We are ARM's long-term partner and have strong enough strength in the field of mobile chips to design chips that meet your needs." Guan Jianying said sincerely.
Sitting across from Guan Jianying was Satoru Iwata, who had just become the president of Nintendo. Guan Jianying didn't know where he got the news, saying that Nintendo was going to create a new mobile handheld game.
Guan Jianying believes that this is an opportunity for New Core Technology. Making chips for game consoles, especially for a gaming company like Nintendo, will definitely bring huge profits to New Core Technology.
Although Xinxin Technology has successively launched two excellent products, Bluetooth chips and A-series chips, these are all the work of Zhou Xin and are not the success of Xinxin Technology itself. This makes Guan Jianying, who has a strong career ambition, not satisfied. He always feels that Xinxin has made too many achievements in Americen's R&D department. Although Shenhai is the nominal headquarters, it has no outstanding achievements.
Without Zhou Xin, Guan Jianying would have founded Shixin Semiconductor in the Wanwan area. He originally started by helping Sony make PSP chips, so Guan Jianying naturally had a keen sense of game chips and believed that this would be an opportunity.
So after hearing that Nintendo planned to build a new generation of handheld consoles, he flew to Neon almost immediately and met with Nintendo's new president Satoru Iwata.
Satoru Iwata looked at the obviously Chinese-looking man in front of him and thought to himself, our NDS project has just been approved, how would the other party know?
Then he changed his mind and thought about the good cooperative relationship between Xinxin Technology and Sony, so he could understand that he probably got the news from Sony:
"Mr. Guan, we have the idea of designing a console, but because Nintendo's purpose is to bring entertainment to more people, we may not be able to afford Xinxin Technology's high chip prices."
Nintendo was originally not going to be shocked until Sony quickly launched the PSP at the E3 exhibition in 2003. The NDS project was approved internally in March and was released in September of that year. It only took 6 months of research and development time to create the NDS. A masterpiece of a generation in the history of handheld consoles - NDS.
Now that Sony's news has been revealed in advance, Nintendo has also advanced the design work of NDS.
The global sales volume of NDS is about 150 million units, and because NDS is a dual-screen design, NDS requires two CPUs to process the information flow on different screens.
Of course, Guan Jianying didn't know this, and Satoru Iwata himself didn't know what kind of form the handheld console should be made into to satisfy today's consumers.
Especially after realizing the impact that Mphone had on the handheld industry, he only had one thought in his mind, that is, Nintendo's new handheld must be cheap enough to occupy the market.
The price of the Mphone is US$599. As time goes by, you can get it for about US$500 during the promotion season. If the price of the new handheld phone is not much different from that of the Mphone, why should others choose the handheld phone?
This is a real problem. Later, after the launch of NDS, Nokia saw that its sales were good and simultaneously launched a gaming phone. As a result, it was defeated because of its high price and lack of content.
So they really can't afford the chips of Xinxin Technology. Xinxin Technology's image to the outside world is not a Chinese company, but a Silicon Valley company, known for its product innovation and expensive prices.
After the price of the Bluetooth chip produced by Xinxin Technology was announced, the industry was in an uproar. Although the technology is indeed much ahead, the price is also really cruel.
Including the price of A1E chips, as a company in the consumer electronics industry, everyone has heard of it to some extent, and New Core Technology has a lot of Neon employees.
Guan Jianying replied seriously: "President Iwata, our prices are based on products. If Nintendo's demand is not high, our prices will not be so expensive.
If Nintendo purchases a large enough volume, we can push the price further down. "
Game consoles do not have high requirements for CPU performance, which is why Guan Jianying said this. He wanted to use this project to train his team.
Judging from the two product lines of Bluetooth chips and A-series chips, Guan Jianying believes that the level of front-line R&D personnel at Xinxin Semiconductor is too different from those in Silicon Valley, and he urgently needs projects to train his team.
It is not enough to integrate mobile phone chips alone.
In order to impress Satoru Iwata, Guan Jianying continued: "I don't know if you know the A series chip used by Mphone. This chip is designed by Xinxin Technology. Xinxin Technology is especially good at chip design for mobile devices. What we are best at is mobile The end chip reaches a balance between performance and energy consumption.”
Iwata thought to himself, of course I know that Xinxin Technology is good at chip design for mobile devices, otherwise I would not meet you. First, for Zhou Xin's sake, and second, because Xinxin Technology did have two skills in mobile chips, Iwata did not send his section chief or a random vice president to meet him, but met with Guan Jianying in person.
He said: "I have a general understanding that Xinxin Technology is a very excellent semiconductor company and has cooperated with many of our neon companies, such as Sony, Toshiba, Nikon, etc. We also know that the mobile chips designed by Xinxin Technology for Mphone have very good performance. powerful."
A 500MHz mobile chip can still achieve 8 to 10 hours of battery life. Even if the battery capacity is specially increased, it is still very remarkable.
"But our new generation of handheld consoles wants to control costs as much as possible, and we want to control the prices of all components as much as possible."
Nintendo is really stingy. Without Guan Jianying, they would have taken ARM's core and designed two chips of their own.
These two chips are ARM946E-S with a frequency of 67MHz and ARM7TDMI with a frequency of 33MHz.
The ARM946E-S adopts the ARM9 architecture and is a mid-range product in embedded CPUs. The mainstream frequency is between 200 and 300MHz. The ARM7TDMI adopts the ARM7 architecture and is a mid-to-low-end product, but the mainstream frequency is also 100 MHz. to 200MHz.
As for why Nintendo made the frequency so low, it is impossible to know whether it is a technical problem or because of power consumption control considerations.
As for the PSP's dual-core chip, both cores can run to 333MHz. Simply based on the CPU frequency, the performance of the PSP is obviously much stronger than that of the NDS.
Naturally, Satoru Iwata also knows that Nintendo's chip R&D department has limited strength. As long as the price is right, he does not exclude cooperation with Xinxin Technology.
"President Iwata, our prices are set based on sales volume. We hope to provide overall services, from chip design to chip manufacturing, all handled by New Core Technology.
Therefore, we will charge per-piece pricing instead of only charging patent fees for chip design. We hope to form a long-term cooperative relationship with Nintendo. "
Guan Jianying came here just to be familiar with him. If he wants to achieve cooperation in the future, he will definitely need long-term follow-up.
Guan Jianying continued: "We can set up a tiered fee. The higher the quantity, the lower the fee. At the same time, we can adopt the method of paying for goods first and settling quarterly. You can be absolutely assured in terms of fees. Xinxin Technology will definitely give you a reasonable price.
In addition, if you purchase the public IP design from ARM, you need to pay a licensing fee, but if you cooperate with us, we are ARM's core partner, so this fee can be saved.
When working with Xinxin Technology, the most important thing is not the price, but the service. Our experience in the field of mobile chips can help you better serve players. "
After hearing this, Satoru Iwata was not moved, but felt that he could give New Core Technology a chance. If the products they designed really met Nintendo's needs, it would not be a bad idea to hand over the chip design of the new generation of handheld machines to New Core Technology. ?
Nintendo has always designed its own chips before, because the previous chip design was not as complicated as it is now, and at the same time, the performance requirements of games are not as stringent as now. A little better performance will not have much impact.
Things are different now. Players are beginning to pay more and more attention to the performance of handheld consoles. The quality of performance will directly determine the types of games that can be carried and the smoothness of the games. This has caused Nintendo's original chip design department to gradually become unable to meet its expectations.
Without Xinxin Technology, Nintendo would have handed over chip design to Nvidia starting in 2012 and focused on developing games and handheld consoles.
Guan Jianying said: "I think Nintendo can seriously consider cooperating with New Core Technology.
Sony does not design its own chips, and Microsoft's Xbox also does not design its own chips. Nintendo actually does not need to focus on chip design.
Professional matters should be left to professional companies. Xinxin Technology is a new player in the field of chip design and a company that has not been established for a long time. However, in the field of mobile chips, Xinxin Technology is definitely a first-class company.
We have enough experience to handle any of your company's chip needs. "
Guan Jianying's confidence was more dazzling than the sunshine in Tokyo's midsummer afternoon. Satoru Iwata was a little moved. He said, "Mr. Guan, we will definitely consider your company's proposal seriously."
After leaving Nintendo, Guan Jianying went to Sony the next day. The source of the news also told him that both Sony and Nintendo were working on new consoles and they couldn't just take advantage of them.
Not to mention that he has a ready-made relationship network at Sony. Suehiro Nakamura, the head of Sony's semiconductor division, will later become Sony's chief technology officer, and has known Guan Jianying for many years. They met at IEEE.
The two parties had a good personal relationship. Later, Shichi, founded by Guan Jianying, was able to become the graphics processing chip designer for the PSP series of handheld consoles. It was also able to cooperate with Sony in the field of chip packaging. In the early days, more than 80% of Shichi's business came from Neon. Rainbow is closely related to the good relationship between the two.
"Nakamura, long time no see." Guan Jianying and Nakamura Suehiro were obviously much more relaxed when they met. They were both dressed more casually, except for wearing sunglasses and a pair of slippers to look like they were on vacation.
After Suehiro Nakamura hugged Guan Jianying, he said, "Guan-san, we haven't seen each other for a long time.
It has been about half a year. You have done a good job in Xinxin Technology. Xinxin Technology is an outstanding company. In the past two years, the people from Toshiba have been talking about you in my ears, saying that Xinxin Technology has subverted their mobile business. Understanding of the chip field. "
Guan Jianying smiled and said: "We are just a small business. Xinxin Technology has only been established for a few years. We still need enough support before we can grow."
Guan Jianying is very humble. If she wants to achieve her goals, sometimes she needs to be weak in her words.
Nakamura Suehiro waved his hands repeatedly: "No, no, no, your A series chips were able to reach 500MHz two years ago, which is really an amazing number.
Not to mention the Bluetooth chip you just launched not long ago.
You must know that both Sony and Toshiba have invested in Bluetooth technology, especially us, because Sony involves a large number of direct-to-consumer products, such as mobile phones, handheld consoles, TVs, etc., we all do it, so we have always believed that Bluetooth technology has great potential. .
As a result, after Xinxin Technology launched the Bluetooth chip, we directly disbanded the Bluetooth R&D team internally, and a total of about a hundred people in the entire team were transferred to other R&D departments.
Less than ten people are left to continue to pay attention to the cutting-edge progress of Bluetooth technology.
Xinxin Technology's presence in the past two years is not like a newly established company. The king of the Internet is still as strong in the semiconductor field. Zhou Jun is really an amazing person.
So when you left the company you founded before and then joined Zhou Jun's company, I told you that a blessing in disguise was a blessing in disguise. "
Guan Jianying agreed: "It's true, you never know what will happen next. I have been very motivated after joining Xinxin Technology, and the development of the company has been much smoother than I imagined.
Nakamura, I came here this time because we haven’t seen each other for a long time, so I wanted to catch up on old times and come to Tokyo for vacation. Secondly, I came here to see if there are any cooperation opportunities between Xinxin Technology and Sony. "
Suehiro Nakamura said: "It's no problem to reminisce about old times. We can go find an izakaya and have a good drink later in the evening. After drinking, there are many good entertainment venues in Ginza. I will take you to experience them."
There is also no problem with cooperation. Sony has always cooperated with Xinxin Technology. I remember that the music phones launched by Sony sold very well in Tokyo.
It is equipped with the Bluetooth technology of Xinxin Technology. My wife uses this phone. After experiencing it, she was full of praise and thought that compared with the Bluetooth technology of this phone, other Bluetooth headsets on the market should be thrown into the garbage. Inside the barrel. "
After hearing this, Guan Jianying felt proud. He could not feel the impact of the Bluetooth chip launched by Xinxin in Zhangjiang. It was very obvious after Neon arrived. One or two of the ten people wearing headphones walking on the road were wearing them. Bluetooth headset equipped with Xinxin technology.
Because Xinxin Technology is currently licensed only to Sony, Sony's headphones equipped with a new generation of Bluetooth chips are very recognizable and can be identified at a glance.
In addition, this is Tokyo, the hometown of Sony, and the place with the strongest neon consumption power. The probability of one in ten is not high.
Guan Jianying said: "We are cooperating with Sony Ericsson. We hope to achieve a good cooperative relationship with Sony Games and also hope to cooperate with Sony headquarters."
The one written the day before yesterday was wrong. Lei Jun joined Jinshan at the age of 23, and then he was 33 in 2002. The crow records were mixed up.
(End of chapter)
