Reborn Tokyo Golden Age

The application of STN screens will definitely not be limited to handhelds anymore, as it is clearly ahead of the existence of TN screens on the market.

Its application range is very wide, and it is a technology that can bring huge profits to SIC.

However, we still need to chat with Heitaro Nakajima about its promotion. As the president of SIC, this is one of his businesses.

Today, besides the LCD R\u0026D department, Bai Chuanfeng also decided to go to the chip R\u0026D work.

SIC's first-generation chip has three different parameter specifications, namely the 8-bit processor 8089A, the 8-bit enhanced version 8089, and the 16-bit processor 8081.

At present, the most widely used chips on the market are the first two 8-bit chips. The reason is that they are cheap in the final analysis.

As a pure 8-bit chip, 8089A is as good as Intel8080, Z80, MOS6502 and other famous chips with the same specification in terms of performance.

Now, as Bai Chuanfeng exposed the existence of SIC at the briefing in July, the outside world has also cast more attention on this Neon local chip design company.

As the cheapest and most widely used 8089A, it has also won a large number of orders from Neon.

This is a process of slowly advancing from less to more. Only after receiving favorable comments from initial users, more and more customers placed orders with SIC.

In less than half a year as of the end of the year, SIC has shipped nearly 3 million pieces of 8089A in total.

As for why there is such a large shipment, it is because 8-bit processors have a large demand in industrial production and consumer electronics.

From industrial process control, digital machine tools, power systems, power grid security, power grid equipment monitoring, petrochemical systems and other fields.

Arcade machines, computers, printers, scanners, fax machines, electronic dictionaries, DVD players and other products in daily life.

All the fields or products mentioned above will use 8-bit processors.

Because this is the most basic and mainstream chip processor in the current era, 4-bit machines lower than it are almost on the verge of being eliminated.

Therefore, 8-bit processors will be just-needed products in industry and electronics manufacturing for a long time to come.

This also means that SIC's 8089A chip can be sold for at least 10 years.

This is a safe and secure business, and now SIC can rely on the design of 8089A to count money for decades.

According to the needs of customers, some other versions of 8089A can be designed every year at most to adapt to different applications.

But this is a minor operation at most, and the general design structure will not change, so there will not be too much research and development costs.

Another reason why 8089A can get a large number of orders is that some government departments are taking the lead in using SIC chips.

For example, the power system, power grid security, petrochemical and other fields mentioned above are all important departments of the country.

Generally speaking, processors in these fields have very high reliability requirements, and they are unlikely to change their previous usage habits easily.

However, after Akita took the lead in using it on a large scale at the beginning of the year, it began to slowly spread to the entire Northeast.

Today, SIC's chips have occupied all markets in the northern part of Honshu Island and Hokkaido.

Even the central organization here in Tokyo has begun to pay attention to the existence of such a domestic chip development organization.

With the first use of these important departments, there is no hesitation for ordinary enterprises, of course they support domestic production.

In this regard, Xiaori is the same as the people of the Celestial Dynasty. As long as the quality is reliable, they will support domestic production within their capabilities.

After using Laomi’s chips for so many years, now that Neon has products that can compete with him, why not use its own chips.

So it has been nearly a year since the 8089A was designed, and the crazy shipments in the past six months are the biggest reason why it can reach 3 million sales.

Because of the large increase in shipments, the production cost of the 8089A has now dropped below $3.

And its selling price is basically hovering around $18, and the difference of $15 in the middle is where the profit lies.

3 million pieces is a profit of 45 million US dollars, which is about 11.25 billion yen in conversion.

The profit earned in this small half year is more than 10 times the revenue of SIC for the whole year last year. The fact is that the result is so amazing.

And this is only the 8089A chip, so how does it perform as its enhanced version 8089?

In fact, its large-scale application is earlier than 8089A, such as Namco's arcade machines and Fujitsu's computers.

Especially Fujitsu's FM-7 personal computer is definitely the star product in this year's computer.

From May to the end of the year, it sold about 800,000 units, basically winning the sales champion of personal computers this year.

Its hot sale, SIC chip and open MS-DOS system played a role that cannot be ignored.

Also because of the sudden emergence of FM-7, Hitachi, Toshiba, and Panasonic have also paid attention to the existence of SIC.

Because of the IBM commercial espionage case in June, these companies are now taking a more cautious attitude towards all computer-related technologies in the United States.

In particular, in order to prove its innocence, Hitachi is eager to replace all the parts with Neon's local products.

Other computer components are easy to talk about, but looking at the processor chip Neon, there is no company that has this capability.

It happened that Bai Chuanfeng announced the existence of SIC in July, so SIC became the only choice for Hitachi.

However, specific orders are still being discussed, and the appetites of these giants are very large.

They want to license the technology of SIC chips and then produce them themselves.

How could Bai Chuanfeng agree to such a condition? It would be tantamount to digging his own grave.

With their size and investment in the semiconductor industry, once they get the technology license from SIC, it is very likely that none of SIC's own chips will be sold later.

Don't forget that these giants who are the volume kings are also members of the VLSI (Very Large Scale Integration) Institute.

Bai Chuanfeng had already heard about how they organized and killed the DRAM chips in the United States in his previous life.

Give them your bottom-of-the-box technology, and use the other party's accumulation in the semiconductor field. There is no doubt that SIC is only a part-time job.

So even if these giants put pressure together, Bai Chuanfeng would never let go.

Don't forget that Baichuan Electric is now a company with a market value of over one trillion yuan. He has a straight waist and is not afraid of any giants.

This is one of the invisible benefits brought by listing, the huge social influence, everyone has to weigh it a few times.

But at present, Bai Chuanfeng has already talked with Hitachi in private, and the other party is likely to be the first to let go.

After all, they are under the greatest pressure, and SIC will give some discounts here, and the two parties have almost reached an agreement.

As for the remaining few, the alliance no longer exists, and it will be a matter of time before they put down their bodies and return to the negotiating table.

And now, although they have not received orders from these giants, they have received orders from Fujitsu's personal computers, as well as orders from several arcade machine manufacturers such as Namco, Taito, and Sega.

The shipment of SIC8089 has also reached about 1.4 million pieces, exceeding 1 million shipments, and the manufacturing cost of the chip has dropped to less than 25 US dollars.

However, in order to open up the market, the price of 8089 was set at a lower level, around $40.

However, in order to make up for the reduction in profits, the processor chip 8089F used in arcade machines and personal computers later integrated a modular design such as a graphics auxiliary chip.

And with the powerful improvement of graphics function, the price of 8089F has also been raised to the range of 60~70 dollars.

In this case, the profit of a piece of 8089F is enlarged to about 35 US dollars.

Regardless of how to harvest customers' wallets in various ways, SIC uses high-tech methods.

You see, with the addition of a chip, the performance is more comprehensive and powerful.

But the price is still a lot cheaper than the 8088's more than 100 US dollars, just ask if you are tempted or not.

Facts have proved that both Fujitsu and Namco are very excited.

1.4 million pieces, with a profit of $35 per piece. A total of 49 million U.S. dollars, or 12.25 billion yen.

Although the shipment volume is far lower than the 3 million pieces of 8089A, but because of the higher profit margin, the overall profit is higher than the former.

These two chips are the main two products that SIC is currently profitable. As for the 16-bit chip 8081, the current shipments are not high.

Although its performance is more powerful, but because the price is too high, very few customers choose this chip.

However, because of the outstanding performance of the 8089F, Fujitsu has decided to use the 16-bit chip 8081 on next year's high-end personal computers.

In addition to Fujitsu, major research institutes in Tokyo are also one of the main customers of 8081.

Because these research institutes need chips with powerful computing power, ordinary 8-bit chips cannot meet their needs at all.

Although it has been on the market for almost two years, it has only shipped a total of 300,000 pieces so far.

This shipment is really low, and now we can only hope that Fujitsu's personal computer sales will give some strength next year.

There are also mainframes and compatible machines from Hitachi, and I hope they will purchase more, otherwise I don’t know when the 8081 will usher in an explosion.

The price of the 8081 is around US$280, and because less than one million pieces have been shipped, the current cost is as high as US$100 per piece.

But even with such a profit of nearly $180, 300,000 pieces also brought in $54 million in revenue, which is more profitable than the above two chips.

The fact is that it is so outrageous, the least sold but the most profit, 13.5 billion yen is also a large amount of money.

This is also the reason why Bai Chuanfeng tried his best to promote 8081, because it is really too profitable.

However, high profits are high, and the basic disk of SIC is still on 8-bit chips.

Because their shipments are large enough, it means that the market is stable and demand is strong.

In comparison, 16-bit chips are currently only used in high-end devices, and it is expected that it will sink into the market and be widely used in two years.

This is the current overall operating situation of the SIC chip business. Compared with last year, it has been much better.

However, Bai Chuanfeng expects that with the increase in popularity, SIC's turnover will increase significantly next year.

So in order not to lag behind others, he asked SIC to develop the next generation of chips as soon as possible very early.

"Shima-san, will the next-generation chip specifications of SIC still follow the two specifications of 8-bit and 16-bit?"

"To be precise, although the bit width is the same, the number of internally integrated transistors has been greatly improved, and the specifications of the main frequency have also been diversified."

Regarding the development of the chip, Masatoshi Shima has been planning.

He has rich design experience and is most familiar with the design ideas of manufacturers such as Intel.

Therefore, when it comes to chip iteration, Bai Chuanfeng also believes in his vision.

"May I ask Shima-san to introduce the progress and specifications of the next-generation chip."

Chips have now become SIC's most profitable business, and Bai Chuanfeng is of course concerned about its progress.