The term “a generation of boxing champions” for chips was proposed by Tsai Ming-chie, chairman of MediaTek in Taiwan, China. In the chip design industry, the waves behind the Yangtze River often push the waves ahead. With the help of new consumer electronic product forms/functions or new wafer manufacturing process technologies, there is indeed an opportunity for newly born chips to "come first, come first" and "hit the ground running". "Red", but whether it can last is another matter. After MediaTek became popular with its copycat GSM mobile phone chips, it encountered two huge crises when entering the 3G and 4G eras, but luckily came out of it.

Most of the chips produced in the world are used in consumer electronic devices (such as smartphones, personal computers, TVs, whole-house smart phones, wearables, etc.), and the main needs they meet are various entertainment needs. Our hearts are all soft and we are all trying to find happiness and happiness.

In the years since the reform and opening up, among the massive consumer electronics products that have grown in the Chinese market, the once-splendid electronic products include electronic watches, telephones, learning machines (game consoles), electronic dictionaries, VCD/DVDs, repeaters, and MP3/MP4 , copycat GSM mobile phones, Android tablets, etc.

These electronic products became a hit, and the corresponding main chips also became the "boxing champions of a generation."

In the past few years, thousands of new chip design companies have miraculously been born in mainland China. They are also working hard to become "a generation of boxing champions" and then look forward to becoming "real chip heroes."

Reference article: The unbeatable boxing champion you don’t know, Cai Mingjie, Xie Fuxu, Lin Hongwen, Today’s Weekly

In 1985, when I was in the second grade of junior high school, I owned an electronic watch. I brought it from Zhongying Street in Shenzhen for only 5 yuan. This was the first time I owned an integrated circuit. My parents' Shanghai brand and Guangzhou brand watches both cost more than 100 yuan.

The electronic watch chip of Taiwan Industrial Research Institute can be described as the "boxing champion of a generation."

In 1977, Taiwan Industrial Research Institute introduced RCA technology from the United States and built the first three-inch integrated circuit demonstration factory. During the same period, many employees received training at RCA.

The first batch of products was electronic watch chips, which were also the first integrated circuits (ICs) made in Taiwan, China. A Taiwanese businessman making electronic watches in Hong Kong gave them an order for 100,000 chips. In the 1970s and 1980s, Hong Kong's electronic machine industry (with the help of talents and labor from the mainland) was very developed. In less than a year, ITRI's chip production yield surpassed that of RCA, becoming one of the world's largest suppliers of electronic watch chips.

Legend: Yatian Industrial Co., Ltd.’s electric clock with jumping characters was the winner of the best product competition in 1971. (Photo: Hong Kong Memory)

ITRI ​​has become a chip design training and training center. At that time, there were no more than 100 people who could use computer chip design tools (now called EDA), and they were all concentrated in ITRI. The target market was basically in the field of various consumer electronics products.

ITRI ​​used its assets to establish UMC (established in 1980), which is the first semiconductor factory in Taiwan, China. Its history is even earlier than the foundry route (TSMC) established in 1987. The first stop Li Guoding invited Zhang Zhongmou to come to Taiwan was to serve as the president of the Industrial Research Institute.

In 1997, UMC decided to go ALL IN into professional wafer foundry (foundry) and divested itself of its chip design business. So each of its chip design departments went out to start a business, with Novatek, Novatek, and There are a number of IC design companies such as Yang, Faraday Technology, Liansheng Electronics, Lianjie International, and MediaTek, among which MediaTek is not conspicuous.

In 1993, I took a course called "Digital Logic Circuits". The course design was to use many "gate circuits" to plug in a clock circuit.

There are at least two such stories in mainland China.

In the 1980s, Tsinghua University Microelectronics owned a chip trial production line and trained the first batch of people to use computer software (EDA) to design chips, such as Wei Shaojun, Wang Guoyu and others. Wang Guoyu published "Methods and Applications of SPICE-II General Circuit Analysis Program" at Southeast University in 1988. At the end of 1990, he and his colleagues created the world's first CMOS image sensor chip at the University of Edinburgh in the UK. Extraordinary contributions of people.

The 35-year history of CMOS image sensors and the key contributions of the Chinese

Deleted content and thoughts after reading the explosive article "The 35-Year History of CMOS Image Sensors"

Shanghai Microtechnology Industrial Research Institute (referred to as "Shanghai Industrial Research Institute") was established in 2013. In September 2017, its "Beyond Moore" 8-inch R&D pilot line was put into operation, becoming the first micro-electromechanical system (MEMS) sensor pilot line in China, and has in-depth cooperation with universities in Shanghai.

Forehead thermometers can measure body temperature without contact. In the spring of 2020, after the outbreak of the epidemic, the global market for forehead thermometers skyrocketed. Infrared thermopile temperature sensors were once extremely scarce, and the price rose from more than one piece to more than 100 yuan each.

The 8-inch MEMS production line of Shanghai Industrial Research Institute was urgently converted on February 2, 2020 to provide a large number of thermopile infrared temperature sensor products, serving many domestic infrared thermometer companies, and exporting a large number of products overseas to help control the epidemic. This chip has become a "generation boxing champion", and the current chip price has fallen below one yuan again.

What I know about are MCU chips and solutions from Wuxi Xinyang Micro (formerly founded by Huajing Zhu Dajiang), digital-to-analog conversion chips (ADC chips) from Shenzhen Xinhai (formerly founded by Haislu Guojian), ZTE National Technology Department of Entrepreneurship, etc. A number of companies have gained explosive development opportunities in controlling the global epidemic.

Reference article: [Made in Hong Kong] Is a clock engraved with "Made in the Empire" more fragrant? The award-winning alarm clock from the 1960s contained a kaleidoscope? Written by: Yu Silang

In 1974, R&D personnel Chuck Peddle and Bill Mensch, who had left Motorola, developed the MOS 6502 8-bit microprocessor at MOS Technology. MOS was founded just five years ago as a small fab, initially designing calculator chips for Texas Instruments and manufacturing game arcade machines for Atari.

Coincidentally, INTEL's CPU was originally used in calculators (Japanese Busicom) in 1971.

Note: Sanyo calculator produced in 1984, collected by Tang Jianxing

In the second half of 1975, the 6502 went on sale for $25, one-sixth the price of the Motorola 6800 and Intel 8080 (which sold for $150). Then people realized it was a revolution. The low price and better performance make the 6502 stand out in the competition in the CPU market. Soon after, MOS Technology was sold to Commodore Corporation and adopted an open licensing approach to allow other manufacturers to produce the chip.

In 1976, Steve Wozniak and Jobs worked together to develop the Apple I based on the 6502 chip. A year later, they launched the improved Apple II, also equipped with the 6502. At the same time, many home computers also used this chip.

In 1981, after the successful launch of the arcade version of "Donkey Kong", Hiroshi Yamauchi appointed Masayuki Uemura to design Nintendo's third-generation home game console FC (FAMILY COMPUTER), based on the MOS 6502. The compatible chip Ricoh RP2A03G authorized by MOS became the main CPU.

On July 15, 1983, the first hugely successful game console in history was born, named "Family Computer". With the birth of various games such as Mario and Contra, many players started to get into game consoles by playing FC. Nintendo’s revenue from the sale of FC consoles alone exceeds the total revenue of television stations in the United States.

Note: The Nintendo game console is nicknamed "Famicom"

China also followed the world trend in the 1980s and developed home computers and game consoles.

At the end of 1981, my country's first self-produced game console, model YQ-1, was successfully developed by the Beijing First Research Institute of Light Industry, using a television as the monitor. In 1982, this game console passed technical appraisal and was put on the market in small batches. The YQ-1 model belongs to the first generation of game consoles, using the AY-3-8500 chip from General Instrument. This machine has very little impact.

In order to accelerate the popularization of computers and the development of education in our country, multiple ministries and commissions organized and Tsinghua University presided over the joint design. The Chinese Learning Machine was successfully developed in 1986. It followed the Apple II technical route and was produced by more than a dozen factories. When shipped in large quantities, The CPU used is a compatible chip of MOS 6502 (should be UMC UA6527). This machine has some influence.

In 1993, Xiaobawang Company, located in Zhongshan City, Guangdong Province, launched the first generation learning machine. It looked like a standard AT layout keyboard , but different learning cards could be inserted into the keyboard slot, and it could learn Chinese and English typing, English, Using a calculator, etc., or programming in BASIC language, you can display Super Mario and Mushrooms on the screen and output music in just a few lines of code.

What’s even more amazing is that you can “play games under the guise of learning”! Various game cards can be purchased in the market, including eight-in-one and sixty-four-in-one game cards after the game has been localized.

You take a shot, I take a shot, and the little bully comes out of the learning machine. You shoot two, I shoot two, and we learn the game together. Jackie Chan once endorsed Little Overlord: "Back then, I used my fists to conquer the world. Now in this computer age, my son wants to use Little Overlord to conquer the world."

The Xiaobawang learning machine actually integrates the concepts of PC and game consoles and has grown rapidly. Similar so-called "learning machines" have also emerged one after another, with similar differences. Immediately, China Learning Machinery, which mainly adhered to the educational concept, had no choice but to withdraw from the arena.

These "learning machines" in the south use Taiwan's UMC UA6527 (compatible with 6502) chip and UA6538 (compatible with Ricoh RP2C02 FC image processing chip). They can not only learn BASIC programming and typing, but also play games.

UMC has provided game console main chips based on the MOS 6502 core to various "little bullies". It is said that there are 30 million chips, which is a veritable "generation of boxing champions". In fact, UMC also provides CPUs to the game console industry in markets around the world, such as Dendy in the Russian market.

My younger brother Dai Bin graduated from a technical secondary school in finance in 1992 and went to work in a township at the age of 18. He became addicted to playing games on a learning machine in his spare time and became interested in computers from then on. He left his job to study in 1995 and passed the difficult senior computer programmer proficiency exam in 1998. The "Game Boy" successfully transformed into an implementation consultant for Kingdee ERP.

Note: The IP of the movie "Pixels" comes from the popular 8-bit pixel game

In 1995, Duan Yongping led Chen Mingyong, Shen Wei, Jin Zhijiang and others to leave Xiaobawang and founded BBK in Dongguan, starting a legendary story. In 1997, my hometown party member Liu Lirong left Xiaobawang and came to Dongguan Jinzheng to enter the VCD industry. In 2002, he founded Jinli Mobile Phone, which is a tragic story.

In the West, the dedicated game console market continues to this day, such as Xbox, PS2, WII, etc. Zhou Geng from Shenzhen told me that they have been manufacturing (ODM) game consoles. You can play a lot of games on a handheld console from Amazon that costs just a few dozen dollars.

References:

1. VCD was born in the Chinese market and defeated video recorders and LDs.

Around 1992-94, the three technical routes in the home audio and video industry were all competing fiercely in the Chinese market to compete for users. In 1993, the sales volume of combo speakers in the Chinese market was 1.42 million units, the sales volume of video recorders was more than 1.7 million units, the sales volume of LD video players was 1 million units, and the sales volume of CD laser record players was more than 1.6 million units. VCD was just born.

In 1992, Deng Xiaoping visited Shenzhen during his southern tour and visited Xianke Laser Company. Xianke introduced the advanced production technology of Philips Company of the Netherlands and was the only manufacturer in my country at that time that produced compact discs (CDs, with an annual output of 5 million), laser discs (LDs, with an annual output of 1.5 million), laser disc players and laser disc players. A company with an annual production capacity of 50,000 units each.

Note: The American host mentioned that laser disc (LD) technology eventually lost to DVD

In 1992, the American C-CUBE company founded by Chinese-American Sun Yansheng launched an image decompression chip to achieve MPEG-1 hard decoding and compression of video data. Since 1981, Sun Yansheng has founded many well-known multimedia technology companies in Silicon Valley, including Weitek, C-Cube and DVS. He was awarded the only Lifetime Achievement Award by the DVD Forum and is known as the "Father of MPEG".

In 1993, the VCD standard was formulated by Sony, Philips, JVC, Panasonic and other electrical appliance manufacturers. The diameter of the disc is the same as that of CD. It is 5 inches and is easy to circulate. It can play 74 minutes of full-screen, full-motion images and stereo music. Adopts the MPEG-1 video compression standard. A movie consists of two discs, usually one and a half hours long plus featurettes and a trailer.

VCD standard optical discs have entered the streets, and movie cards for desktop computers and independent playback VCD players have also emerged. Video halls fill more streets and alleys, bringing many happy memories: Boss, change the disc!

Jiang Wanmeng from Anhui, China, cooperated with Sun Yansheng, the founder of C-CUBE. On March 18, 1993, they jointly invested US$17 million to establish Wanyan Company. They later launched the world's first commercial VCD player in Hefei, using Using C-CUBE's decoding chip and a CD player-like movement (including a laser head for reading disc information), they made home appliances like VCRs/LD players/CD players. Each of the two named them with one character. As "Wanyan", it was unveiled at the Beijing International Radio and Television Exhibition. Jiang Wanmeng believes that this is the only opportunity for China to take the lead in the field of consumer electronics in the 20th century.

Why wasn't Japan the first to launch a commercial VCD player? At that time, video recorders in Western countries had been widely spread into households. Japan was the largest supplier, and the rental business of video tapes was also very developed. From a profit perspective, Japanese manufacturers hope that China will continue to take the video recorder route. From a technical point of view, compared with video tapes, VCD has limited improvement in quality and is difficult to promote in Western countries.

Many domestic brands rushed into the market, and the Chinese market "exploded". Xinke, which had been following the LD route, also turned its guns and joined the VCD war. The technical differences were not big, and all used Philips' laser heads (similar to CD/LD) to read the disc information. Hundreds of electronic manufacturers such as Xinke, Aido, Jinzheng, BBK, Xinke, Wanlida, and Dongpeng successively launched VCDs, and later CCTV's "Weather Forecast" and "Focus Interview" columns and other prime advertising time were once squeezed by VCDs.

China's VCD market sales soared from 600,000 units in 1995 to more than 6 million units in 1996, and sales reached 10 million units in 1997, almost all of which were domestic brands. Watching VCDs at home has replaced the video hall and has become a good way to escape stress. We really read all the CDs in those years.

I was in Guangzhou in 1996, when Aiduo VCD suddenly emerged through high-priced advertising on CCTV, and a huge advertisement featuring Jackie Chan was erected. I watched him build a tall building, and then saw his building collapse (1999).

At the same time, PCs have gone through an era from hard decoding to soft decoding. In 1996, the National Multimedia Conference was held at Sun Yat-sen University. People from Intel told me that in the future computers will no longer need movie cards! At the end of 1996, Intel released the Pentium MMX, which could directly use the CPU to process audio and video codecs. So the movie card, like the Hanka card, was swallowed up by Intel's CPU.

What’s more, games can even be played on some VCD players!

Shenzhen Xianke, a well-known company that produces CD/LD/VCD/DVD, incubated the earliest independent chip company in Shenzhen - Shenzhen Xianke Mechanical and Electrical Integrated Circuit Design Company established in 1993, and became a supporting design company for the National Integrated Circuit 908 and 909 projects. . After the decline of the DVD industry, Shenzhen Xianke went bankrupt, and the chip company was restructured into Shenzhen Guowei, which spawned many chip companies.

Note: Mr. Huang Xueliang tells the history of SMIT

2. Successor DVD boosts MediaTek’s success

On September 14, 1995, after fierce competition, the two giants Toshiba and Sony unified the specifications of DVD (digital video disc), which adopted the MPEG-2 international audio and video compression standard. From the proposal of DVD specifications in the second half of 1994 to the emergence of DVD prototypes in early 1996, it only took more than a year. Its development speed can be said to be very fast.

Domestic countries also proposed their own standard SVCD (Super Video CD) as an upgrade to VCD, but ultimately lost to DVD. My parents also bought a DVD player that is compatible with VCD and SVCD.

DVD developed greatly in China after joining the World Trade Organization in 2001. In September 2001, just as China was joining the WTO, Shinco Electronics launched a single-disc DVD player priced at only 798 yuan, detonating the Chinese DVD market. In 2002, China's DVD production reached 35 million units. The main brands are domestic brands such as Xinke, Xianke, Jinzheng, Xiaxin, BBK, Wanlida, Hualu, and Jieke, as well as international brands such as Philips, Pioneer, Panasonic, and Yamaha.

Consumers are crazy about it, and the huge industry has attracted many chip players. Two Silicon Valley companies, C-cube and ESS, made huge profits from VCD (MPEG-1 codec standard), so they took the lead in developing DVD codec chips (MPEG-2 codec standard).

However, MediaTek from Taiwan has suddenly emerged and once reached a market share of more than 70%. Let’s introduce the rise of MediaTek.

In 1997, Tsai Mingjie and the multimedia chip design department he led separated from UMC and established MediaTek. With "third-rate price, first-rate quality", MediaTek has successfully found a way to survive in the computer optical drive chip and computer CD-RW (rewritable optical disc) chip markets, which are all PC peripherals. In 1999, its market share in the global optical disc chipset market reached 50%, seizing food from SONY, Toshiba, and OAK, and achieving success for the first time.

MediaTek has grown rapidly along with the mainland's DVD player industry. MediaTek's DVD single-chip solution integrates analog signal front-end processing, disc servo control, audio and video decoding, CPU, etc., becoming a system-on-chip (SoC), which greatly reduces the cost of the entire machine. There is not only one company that makes SoC, so MediaTek also provides system software to form a turnkey solution of software and hardware to surpass its opponents. Around 2003, its market share in the mainland once exceeded 70%.

The tens of millions of copycat manufacturers in the Pearl River Delta are the ants that represent China’s market power.

It is worth mentioning that although MediaTek was born out of UMC, it is a strategic partner with TSMC because the latter is more advanced in advanced processes.

DVD patent fees are a hot topic, and the intellectual property fees paid amount to several dollars per unit. Containers of DVD players have been detained at foreign customs due to lack of patent fees.

After 2005, the prices of major chip companies plunged to compete with MediaTek, and the price of DVDs also accelerated. APEX, a strange company in the United States, emerged. This DVD brand started by a Chinese entrepreneur is all made in China. It is sold in large supermarkets in the United States like a household department store. The price has dropped all the way, from more than 100 US dollars to more than 50 US dollars. In 2008, the lowest was only 30 US dollars, which is only equivalent to the price of three discs. . When customers buy meat and vegetables at Wal-Mart, they just grab a DVD and put it in their shopping cart. APEX has become the largest selling DVD brand in the United States.

According to Yang Chengjin, MediaTek’s No. 1 Lu Gan, BBK DVD initially did not use a large amount of MediaTek chips, but the technology level was high and innovative, so MediaTek was patiently playing with it.

It is worth mentioning that although MediaTek was born out of UMC, it is a strategic partner with TSMC because the latter is more advanced in advanced processes.

In 2002, the new generation of DVD technical standards was launched. The two routes of HD-DVD and Blu-ray (blu-ray) experienced a long and fierce competition and reached its climax in 2007. In 2008, Toshiba announced that it would stop promoting HD-DVD, and Blu-ray finally successfully entered our field of vision. Today, 4K ultra-high-definition UHD blu-ray has also entered the market, using H.265 encoding.

However, with the popularity of digital cinemas, digital TVs, set-top boxes and online videos, barbarians are coming outside! The Blu-ray camp is not as popular as it was in the DVD era. MediaTek has invested heavily in Blu-ray chips and has not made much money.

At present, Blu-ray DVD is difficult to see in China, but there is still a certain long-tail market overseas. The largest supplier is Shenzhen Aishang Technology (ASA, founded by Song Li), and its Blu-ray DVD movement is sold by OEM around the world.

The international audio and video codec standard AVS initiated by China has also entered the technology stage. I have written an article with relevant content: 50 years of movie viewing history, including Avatar, China Core and Standard, and midnight screenings in video halls

In the 1970s, Hong Kong's telephone industry developed and was exported to developed countries in Europe and the United States. After the reform and opening up in the 1980s, Guangdong's telephone industry developed rapidly.

Ordinary telephones do not need chips, but caller identification telephones need to use MCU (including LCD driver) and FSK/DTMF decoder chips. Early suppliers include American, Japanese and Korean suppliers (Epson, Freescale, Toshiba, Samsung, etc.) and Taiwanese suppliers (Elan EMC, Sunrise, etc.). Elan once held a leading position. However, the September 21 earthquake in 1999 caused a sharp decline in its supply capacity. It gave priority to ensuring the demand of large manufacturers, while many small telephone manufacturers were "hard to find".

There are a number of embedded software development and solution design companies in Shenzhen, such as Tianxunlong and Chengdian (the predecessor of Goodix Technology), which mainly provide solutions for many small factories. Tianxunlong responded to the demand and replaced the hardware decoder with software on the MCU, and gradually replaced Elan's solution. By using a mask (MASK) in a wafer factory (such as Huajing) to write into the built-in memory (ROM) of the MCU, a chip with caller ID and telephone functions is formed.

As a result, hundreds of white-brand phone companies emerged in the Pearl River Delta, and they were called the predecessors of white-brand mobile phones (copycat phones). Domestic telephones have developed to have many functions: supporting voice announcements in up to eight different languages, polyphonic music ringtones, real-life original singers (recorded ringtones such as "Dad, there's a call"), and animated patterns (such as a kitten swinging) , clock and alarm clock time, calculator, perpetual calendar and electronic desk calendar, intelligent power saving, long-distance lock and full lock, automatic IP, lanterns, electronic directory and other functions that are popular among the people. The shapes of telephones are also rich and colorful, and they are no longer "one size fits all".

The small telephone circuit board below uses a combination of three PCB installation processes: SMT, COB, and through-hole welding. My consultant's Octavia Ideal can provide comprehensive PCBA automatic visual inspection functions.

Note: SMT China awards the "China Achievement Award" to Octavia Ideal

In fact, in addition to the phone chip, the main control chip of the repeater, the MP3 main control chip, the touch chip of the smart phone, and the main control chip of the forehead thermometer described in this article are all developed based on MCU.

Reference article: The first popular "Chinese chip" sold around the world was created by "Liu Fang, the best retail investor in history"

In 1990, I went to Nanjing to study at university and bought a Jinghua cassette "Walkman" at Xinjiekou Department Store. My original intention was to learn English, but I ended up listening to music instead.

When you like a song, such as Qingwang, Mengtuoling, right here waiting, sailing, etc., you listen to it over and over again (now called single loop). Press the rewind button and then press PLAY. Once you become proficient, you can accurately rewind to the beginning of the song every time.

1. The inventor of the repeater gave up his patent

The repeater was invented by Major General Zhong Daolong, a Chinese electromechanical expert, when he was the deputy dean of the People's Liberation Army College of Communications Engineering (now the People's Liberation Army Army Engineering University) in Nanjing.

In 1979, Zhong Daolong visited Germany and France. Zhong Daolong, who studied Russian, was constantly translating. After returning to China, the 45-year-old began to learn English by himself. I studied 5 to 7 hours a day on weekdays and 14 hours of English on Sundays. I used the method of learning Peking Opera and listened to English sentences over and over again. In 14 months, I broke through 17 cassette recorders and two dictionaries. I finally learned a lot. and created the “reverse method of learning English”. A few years later, Zhong Daolong went abroad again and became the official translator of the Chinese delegation.

Spring 1991: After scrapping countless machines at his own expense, Zhong Daolong completed the "Language Learning Machine". July 29, 1991: 57-year-old Zhong Daolong applied for the patent of "Electronic Language Learning Machine Computer Language Learning Machine" to the Jiangsu Patent Office. He published the working principle of the repeater in Shanghai International Studies University's "Foreign Language Audio-visual Teaching" magazine, and gave up his personal patent ownership to facilitate the promotion of repeater technology. He told Cui Yongyuan on CCTV's "Tell the Truth" program: " If you don’t give up, you won’t be able to turn it into productivity as soon as possible. “The heart of planting peaches and nurturing plum blossoms is beyond words, and it is really commendable to be upright and honest.

On the basis of the "Walkman", the repeater adds a microprocessing chip and a digital storage chip, enabling "infinite loop" listening to a sound.

2. The repeater industry is heading towards glory

From 1996 to 1997, Shanghai Yonghua Repeater, Shenzhen Education Enterprise Company's "Education Star" language computer repeater, and Shenzhen Aojing Company's "Magic Parrot" repeater. This is still in the trial phase. Because I was a graduate student at Sun Yat-sen University at this time and was practicing my oral English, I also saw an advertisement for the Magic Parrot.

Since the State Education Commission officially announced in 1999 that in the future, foreign language teaching and examinations for college, middle and primary school students in my country will focus on students’ comprehensive speaking and listening skills, the repeater market has been rapidly incubated by national policies into a mature market with a capacity of tens of millions of units. . According to statistics, the sales of repeaters in the Chinese market in 1998, 1999 and 2000 were 500,000, 3 million and 8 million respectively. In 2001, the sales of repeaters exceeded 10 million, reaching 13 million in 2002, and 13 million in 2003. It will increase to 15 million units annually. It began to decline rapidly in 2005.

1998: BBK launched its first repeater BK680, followed by BK898 the following year.

Note: Stephen Chow endorses BBK repeater

In the summer of 2002, BBK launched the "Speed ​​King" series of repeaters with five-level variable speed repeating as its core function, leading a technological revolution in the repeater industry. Last year, it launched the "All-round Variable King" series with more powerful and complete functions. Repeaters have once again become the vanguard of technological development in the repeater industry, and many second- and third-rate brands have followed suit and launched models with similar functions. In one year, the "all-round variable speed king" has become synonymous with the new generation of repeaters.

Manufacturers such as BBK, Zhida, Soko, Jinzheng, and Wanxin began a price war. Many repeater manufacturers have spent money to invite celebrities to endorse their products. Stephen Chow endorsed BBK, Li Yapeng endorsed Wanxin, Zhao Wei endorsed Aidela, and even Milu joined in to endorse Kim Jong.

Most repeaters support 120 seconds of repeat, and later generally upgraded to 240 seconds, which is almost the length of a song.

2002: Domestic sales of repeaters reached 13 million units, and there were more than 200 repeater manufacturers nationwide.

Reference: IT History Serial 47-China Learning Machine: Those things about the repeater machine around 2000

3. Rockchip enters the market from repeaters

In the early summer of 1994, Limin invited Huang Xu, a colleague of Fulian Technology from Zhejiang Province. The two raised 100,000 yuan and jointly initiated the establishment of Fuzhou Ruike Electronics Co., Ltd., with the business target of answering machines.

In 2001, 12 people from Rockchip started to work on the repeater solution, wrote embedded software (assembler) and loaded it into the MCU, and got the opportunity to work for BBK. Guo Yang, who also worked on the repeater solution and participated in the competition, told me that the relationship between Zhejiang University alumni was the most important reason for the successful cooperation between Rockchip and BBK, and Wang Hongjie and He Xiangyang, two Zhejiang University alumni who was working at BBK at the time, also did a lot of work in the process.

In 2002, in response to BBK's needs, Rockchip developed a "variable speed and constant adjustment" solution, and shipped 4 million chips by using the MCU's mask (MASK). Rockchip sold 4 million chips within a year. It made tens of millions of net profits, with a net profit rate as high as 60%, and the company only had 13 people at the time. In one fell swoop, it surpassed Sunplus Technology (Sunplus), which ranked fourth among Taiwanese chip design companies, and ranked first in the language repeater main control chip market share.

In 2003, Rockchip completed the research and development of an 8-bit MCU (3 Stage Pipeline MCU) chip, using an 8-inch 0.35 micron digital-analog hybrid process, and began to transform from an embedded software development solutions company to a chip design company. In its heyday, Rockchip's repeater chip accounted for 80% of the market.

In the retro mood, there is a saying: The essence of human beings is a repeater. History keeps repeating itself.

MP3 is an audio compression standard, and its full name is MP3 (MPEG-1 Audio Layer-3). The VCD mentioned above uses the MPEG-1 audio and video compression standard, and the corresponding audio is MP3.

In 1987, Germany's Fraunhofer IIS began the development of music compression formats. They spent 4 years improving algorithms and improving sound quality. Finally, in 1993, they developed this lossy compressed audio format that was very advanced at the time and determined Extension .mp3.

MP3 was once popular all over the world, but WALKMAN based on tapes and CDs has become increasingly declining.

In 1998, Korean company MOON launched the world's first MP3 player - MPMan F10, which used flash memory which was extremely expensive at the time.

In May 1999, Shenzhen Netac Technology Co., Ltd. was established and launched the "U disk" to replace the floppy disk. It was only the size of a key and did not require any driver. The launch of this product directly defeated all storage tools on the market at that time. . During the development process, they removed the flash memory chip from the MP3 player. After destroying countless MP3s, I created a USB flash drive with a capacity of 8MB.

In January 2000, the big brother innovation in the field of audio hardware (Singapore's Sim Wangfu, inventor of the Sound Blaster card) launched the world's first hard drive MP3 - NOMAD Jukebox, which uses a 2.5-inch hard drive as the storage medium and can store the equivalent of more than 100 CD of MP3 music.

Apple relied on MP3 to regain its position as king. The first-generation iPod was launched in October 2001. It had a 1.8-inch (?) micro hard drive with 5GB of storage space and could store 1,000 songs (an average MP3 file is 5MB) and sold for $399.

Sigmatel of the United States is the main control supplier of Apple's iPod digital player.

Microhard drives were once considered a development direction, but flash memory (flash memory) developed too fast. Because Moore's Law is in effect, in about 18-24 months, the performance of the chip will double (i.e. more transistors make it faster), but the price will remain the same. Beginning in 2005, Apple's iPods switched to using Samsung's flash memory chips instead of microhard drives.

Domestic brands of MP3 entered the market in 2001. In the Pearl River Delta, many manufacturers invested and appeared on the market at low prices.

Under the leadership of Zhao Guangmin, the "Father of Chinese MP3", Torque once occupied more than 50% of the global MP3 market, mainly serving the mid-to-low-end market.

In 2001, the entire team of Zhuhai Yali was transferred to Zhuhai Actions, which was registered in the Cayman Islands. As one of the co-founders, Zhao Guangmin served as the general manager of the company and jointly held a small number of shares with his team members. In 2003, a few MP3 manufacturers such as Shenzhen Jinghua Electronics, Zhongshan Keyi Electronics, Shenzhen Netac, Shenzhen Century Dongtang and Shenzhen Hongtiantai used Actions' chips, with shipments of several thousand pieces per month. By 2004 In the second quarter, Actions' cumulative MP3 chip shipments exceeded 1 million pieces. In the first quarter of 2005, it exceeded 10 million pieces. In the third quarter of 2006, it exceeded 100 million pieces.

This is the first time that an IC design company in mainland China has established, mastered and provided internationally leading core technology products on a large scale in the global consumer electronics field. Mainland China has also become the main output base for global MP3 products.

At the end of 2005, Rockchip developed an MP3 chip sample. Entered the market in 2006 and competed on the same stage with companies such as Actions, Telechips Korea, Sunplus, and Philips.

MP3 is really popular. When I returned to China from Kenya, I sat next to a black brother who had come to China to purchase MP3 players and then returned home. Several friends from Argentina told me that his family had established a brand in Argentina, and he stayed in Shenzhen to purchase MP3 and audio products.

As more and more mobile phones integrate MP3 functions, MP3 has reached the end of its life. A large number of copycat phones in Huaqiangbei are equipped with music playback functions. In the streets and alleys, there are many stalls that can help copy a large number of songs. XpressMusic is a music mobile phone brand launched by Nokia in 2006. On December 1, 2007, Korean actress Song Hye Kyo officially endorsed the BBK music mobile phone.

MP4 comes with a small screen that can play music videos like MTV. I also bought one. Guangzhou Ankaiwei has been making AP (multimedia application processor) and entered this market.

Car-mounted MP3 players are now widely used in cars, and songs are played through car-mounted FM radios.

Reference article: Ten years of passion! Looking at the development history of the MP3 industry from classic products

Beginning in 2006, copycat GSM mobile phones exploded, spawning several "first-generation boxing champions", including: Taijing (Silicon Valley)'s mobile phone analog TV chip, RDA's FM radio chip and GSM PA (power amplifier), and Spreadtrum's baseband Chips, Ankai Micro's AP (application processor), Geke Micro's 300,000-pixel CMOS, Awinic's audio amplifier chip and DuoCard multi-standby chip, etc. It is worth mentioning that ODM manufacturers (Huaqin, etc.) have played an important role in the introduction of domestic chips.

In fact, after MediaTek, the "King of Copycats", became a "popular chicken" by providing the main chip for copycat GSM mobile phones, Qualcomm launched a package solution (QRD) for 3G smartphones. MediaTek once fell into a low ebb, and it took several efforts to get out of it. mud.

In 2004-05, everyone in the communications industry believed that 3G would kill 2G, just like 2G's GSM wiped out 1G Big Brother. Technology veteran Dai Hui believes that the low-cost GSM can fully meet the needs of people around the world for calls, photography, and music. Therefore, he has developed a world-class benchmark project and successfully changed the direction of global communication technology.

Reference article:

GSM 30 Years Ago: Chinese Technology Promotes the Development of Human Civilization

China’s chip past: four wandering memories ;

China’s chip past: The rise of copycat phones and the rise of the ODM industry behind Gekko and Awin

When I was young, I also loved digital. I bought a PDA. At that time, there was a saying that "pagers, mobile phones, and business communication, none of them can be missing." I also bought a NETBOOK and made a special trip to the electronics market on Fa Yuen Street, Mongkok, Hong Kong. I didn't use these two products much and threw them away.

In January 2010, Apple released the iPad, ushering in the tablet computer trend. Even though the production site is right next to my house, I still had to go to all the trouble to get one from across the ocean. The surprising thing is that both the one-year-old child and the 70-year-old mother at home can learn how to operate the tablet computer skillfully and play games by swiping back and forth without a teacher.

After Apple iPad led the trend, the Android industry chain followed suit and developed rapidly. Tablet computers were once a hot commodity found by small and medium-sized manufacturing enterprises in Shenzhen after MP3/MP4 and copycat mobile phones. The rear-mounted car navigation system was once a popular product, and the hardware was often a tablet computer product based on a resistive screen and a tailored LINUX operating system.

I once visited the production line of Shenzhen Jinghua Electronics, and its tablet shipments were once very large.

Tablet computers reached their climax in 2012, but declined rapidly in 2014 due to the popularity of smartphones.

Rumor has it that Quanzhi not only made the main chip, but also connected the main peripheral devices (cameras, storage, power management chips, etc.) to form a complete solution to ensure that the price of the tablet does not exceed XX yuan.

Fuzhou-based companies such as Rockchip, MediaTek (Morning Star), and Amlogic are not to be outdone. Highly cost-effective local chips have enabled China’s tablet market to grow rapidly.

In terms of learning, tablets are a good product, and they are also known as “learning computers”. BBK, Wenquxing, and Noah's Boat are three of the more famous ones. I once visited the Noah's Boat company located in Chegong Temple, Futian.

Yingluck Shinawatra, who served as Thailand's Prime Minister from 2011 to 2015, proposed the slogan "One computer per student", which is tablet computers purchased from China.

The tablet has also demonstrated home service products such as intelligent early education machines, children's robots, and companion robots. There is a legend in the market: the so-called home service robot is four wheels and a tablet.

The smartphone that Apple redefined in 2007 was essentially a joint creation of the United States and China, just like Tesla's Gigafactory in Lingang, Shanghai. Many process problems are solved by Chinese engineers.

Many functions were developed by Chinese mobile phone manufacturers , such as full-screen smartphones (including under-screen fingerprint chips), fast charging and flash charging that can "charge for five minutes and make calls for two hours" (later developed into fast charging for electric vehicles), and many more. Features such as photography, AI beauty, multi-SIM and multi-wait all require chip support. Short video is a 4G killer application, as well as 5G mobile phones.

As we all know, smartphones integrate many functions: telephone, mobile phone/walkie-talkie, recording phone, radio/broadcast, recorder/recording equipment/repeater, MP3/MP4, camera/DV, game console, navigator, watch, alarm clock, stopwatch, Calculator, electronic dictionary, flashlight, netbook, PDA, disk and USB flash drive, etc. It even provides the capability for PCs, TVs, remote controls (such as remote control of car air conditioners), smart locks, and car keys. People are buying fewer notebooks, pens, mirrors, newspapers, magazines and books, and cosmetics (for beauty photos).

Many new types of chips have been applied. For example, the step counting function brought by gravity sensors allows countless people to keep walking. For example, VCSEL chips are used for facial recognition, and NFC chips are used for near-field payment and access control.

Many new smart hardware are becoming popular in China, such as smart home IoT (sweeping robots, smart speakers, large-screen TVs, body fat scales, smart sockets, home service robots, etc.); wearable products such as smart watches/bracelets (with computer steps, heartbeat and blood oxygen detection functions)/TWS headsets, gaming phones (enhanced gaming capabilities, using independent ISP), etc.

Cars are becoming more and more like large electronic products, whether they are fuel vehicles or electric vehicles. Many new functions require sensing and control chips, such as forward collision prevention, lane deviation warning, driver fatigue detection and alcohol consumption detection, etc.

Technology veteran Dai Hui believes that China already has strong capabilities in the design and manufacturing of complete consumer electronics machines, and has driven the development of chips. If we hold on to the electronics industry and don't mess up our position, we don't have to worry about being "circumvented."