Is the comprehensive solution an anesthetic that corrodes engineers or a ginseng fruit that enhances abilities?

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Is the comprehensive solution an anesthetic that corrodes engineers or a ginseng fruit that enhances abilities? [Copy link]

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Total Solution was not invented by the original IC manufacturer. This neutral solution design service was originally provided by IC agents to promote all the products they represented into certain new product areas. It has been very popular since its launch for a reason. It packages all the different ICs, active devices, and passive components of several companies represented by the agents into this solution around a new product design solution and sells them in a bundle. This solution, which was originally intended to sell products, allowed smart IC manufacturers to see business opportunities and profit margins. Therefore, single-function ICs plus peripheral ICs evolved into highly functionally integrated SOCs, and the ICs required for a product were made into several large-scale SOC sets. Today, products such as TV, STB, and MP3 have shown a high degree of integration of chip functions. In the solutions of mobile phones and digital cameras, a highly functionally integrated SOC main chip plus a power management chip PMU specially designed for the main chip often become a Total Solution. This solution lowers the threshold for electronic design. The advantage is that it is simple and easy to implement. In the end, the product factory can produce electronic complete products without senior designers. Therefore, the total solution was born for product sales. It can be said that it is inherently branded with capital and rarely has traces of innovative technology. Yan Chongguang, FAE Manager/Senior Engineer of Shanghai Belling Co., Ltd., pointed out: "In order to compete in the market, products must have personalized differences to have selling points. Therefore, the so-called Total Solution is just a neutral and universal solution. To become a hot-selling product in the market, it still requires experienced and talented designers to design the final product in line with market needs and make it a mass-produced product."

But why is it that such a neutral and universal solution still attracts so many local companies? In recent years, the replacement of consumer electronic products has accelerated significantly, and consumers expect product prices to continue to fall. This has brought increasingly severe competitive pressure to Chinese whole-machine companies, forcing them to find solutions that can reduce costs and speed up product launches. Tao Xianfang, senior designer and director of the overall technical design institute of the color TV technology development center of Konka Group Co., Ltd., pointed out: "In view of the current structural nature of Chinese enterprises and market needs, Chinese enterprises will still focus on the production of complete machines in the short term, and complete machine manufacturers will not invest a lot of energy in the technical development of comprehensive solutions, because the technical development cycle is very long, the risk is very high, and it is not easy to manage. The finer the technical division of labor, the more difficult it is to manage. When a product life cycle is over, it is necessary to mobilize the work of technical development staff, which is not an easy task. Often at this time, many people will change jobs. In the case of a relative surplus of technical resources, complete machine manufacturers would rather buy technical solutions from outside than develop everything from start to finish by themselves. This is an inevitable trend of technological development. The computer industry has taken this step the fastest than other home appliance industries. Therefore, in the end, there are only a few computer manufacturers who can stay, and other upstream technology suppliers have become its service providers in the end."

In fact, Total Solution is not only popular in whole-machine design, but has also gradually moved to the high end of the industry. A technical consultant from a well-known EDA tool vendor said helplessly: "Currently, many IC design companies also require us to provide Total Solution. We not only provide them with tools, but also help them with design."

Moreover, Total Solution is no longer limited to China. The product manager mentioned at the beginning of this article said: "Japanese companies used to focus on designing their own solutions. But recently they have also begun to ask us to provide Total Solution."

Blessing or curse?

There is a famous philosophical proposition: What exists is reasonable. As for the popularity of Total Solution, we don't need to discuss the reasons for its existence. But we should pay attention to what impact it can bring to Chinese engineers. Regarding its benefits, Yan Chongguang said: "Total Solution lowers the threshold for new engineers to enter product system design. They can quickly understand a ready-made product architecture solution."

A netizen named "jamine" on the Electronic Engineering Times website also said: "I don't think the comprehensive solution harmed Chinese engineers. On the contrary, it helped many junior engineers grow from ignorance. A large number of Chinese engineers have low actual design capabilities due to poor teaching quality and lack of practical means. The comprehensive solution provides a starting point. However, how to go beyond the comprehensive solution and fundamentally understand the knowledge of electronic circuits is the only way to become an excellent engineer. I think it is inappropriate to blame the comprehensive solution if you don't make progress yourself."

However, everything has two sides. Yan Chongguang said: "The disadvantage of Total Solution is that it is difficult to understand in depth. In addition, it may make engineers dependent, thereby reducing the initiative of independent innovation." Netizen "Mcuplayer" further pointed out: "Many domestic companies use Total Solution on core technologies, so there are only a few solutions in the entire industry, and everyone has to engage in price wars because everyone's products are too similar. In fact, foreigners also use Total Solution, but they use it on peripheral technologies. For example, Microsoft's keyboard and mouse are completely "complete solutions" and are equally nourishing." This actually made a wonderful annotation for the collective demise of hundreds of MP3 manufacturers in the Pearl River Delta region in 2005.

Chinese people have always been wise, especially with strong learning ability. But how can we learn knowledge from Total Solution? How can we not rely on Total Solution? The viewpoint of “Never Regret”, a netizen on the Electronic Engineering Album website, is quite unique: “I think we should not only provide solutions to others without research. What we engineers should do is to learn from one example and absorb the essence, technology, design ideas, etc. of foreign countries to develop ourselves. Isn’t it? Here I want to look up the past. Our ancient Chinese civilization can be said to be superior to the West. For example, the earliest inventor of gunpowder was our ancestors, and the one who introduced it to the West, weren’t they copying? The difference is that they will improve and innovate. What we should do is not to care about whose technical solutions, but to learn from others’ advancedness and ideas, and then innovate on these achievements. This is the only way to development. The culprit is not the total solution, but the culprit is not making progress and not understanding innovative ideas!”

"jamine" also pointed out that I think the comprehensive solution only proves that the chip is usable (of course, it will only count if you see the DEMO board). How to design the solution is the responsibility of the system engineer. If the system engineer cannot go beyond the comprehensive solution, he can only be a mediocre engineer forever.

Moreover, if engineers are good at learning, it may enable enterprises to change from passive to active in competition. "Jamine" said that the phenomenon of over-reliance on comprehensive solutions shows that China is currently in great shortage of system-level design talents. Good system engineers should be able to use the existing chip resources of various companies to build a solution that is very suitable for them. Moreover, this solution should have as many second sources as possible in each subsystem. Only in this way can system equipment manufacturers take advantage of the competition between chip manufacturers and reap the benefits, rather than the opposite.

He gave an example, saying that a few years ago, I used a framing chip from a foreign company and used it as a cross-connect chip by using its loopback function. The foreign FAE was very surprised when they found out that they had accidentally designed a multi-functional chip. Since there were many similar framing chips on the market, they could only reduce the price of the cross-connect chip.

Total Solution is a double-edged sword. Only by using it properly can you combine the strengths of many schools and dominate the technical world. As the technical consultant of the EDA tool vendor said, "Total Solution varies from person to person. Whether it is useful or not for engineers depends on their own judgment."