182. Chapter 181 Performance Squeeze
Chapter 181 Performance Squeeze
Regarding the price increase of key semiconductor components, major domestic assembly plants have all chosen to remain silent.
Not only are they silent, they also intentionally or unintentionally block and dilute this news as much as possible, and do not pass it directly to consumers, otherwise they will definitely be excited after hearing it, and may directly boycott their products.
Anyway, the price increase is not the first or second time, but the magnitude this time is more severe.
Their approach is to first guide public opinion and use excuses such as artificial intelligence to create an illusion of a serious global chip shortage, give the public a dose of vaccination in advance, and then slowly increase the product price to reduce consumer resistance.
Isn’t that what graphics cards do?
But before the price goes up, they can only buy one and lose money…
However, such explosive news can be concealed from the public, but not from Huawei and other companies in the industry.
Every crisis is always accompanied by opportunities.
When Mr. Yu of Huawei heard the news, he immediately realized that this chip crisis might be a serious crisis for the whole of China,
But for Huawei, it is an unprecedented opportunity! As the saying goes, it takes a thousand days to raise an army and only one day to use it. The hundreds of billions of R&D investment they have made over the years will finally show their value at this moment and will shine the brightest!
He immediately called Kang Chi, first explained the news to him, and then made his request:
”Mr. Kang, we want to advance the release date of the new product, so the debugging and optimization progress of the camera must be further accelerated…”
”Can you spare your precious time to come to Pengcheng to personally supervise the battle and help our imaging department complete the debugging and optimization of the camera as soon as possible?”
”In return, we can add another order of one million cameras, and if we can seize this opportunity together and become a hit, the next order volume is likely to be in the tens of millions!”
Kang Chi couldn’t help but frown when he heard the tens of millions of orders.
Because he knew that what Mr. Yu said was completely possible, and even according to the scale of China’s mobile phone market, tens of millions might just be conservative data.
Once they really seized this opportunity, 10 million flagship phones might be sold in two or three months.
And as Huawei’s camera supplier, he would naturally get a share of it.
With an initial investment of 100 million or 200 million in R&D, it is not impossible to make tens of billions in the end.
Kang Chi agreed to this matter directly. —— Although Chen Hai repeatedly emphasized that his safety was absolutely no problem, Kang Chi insisted on wearing a helmet when going out.
”It’s okay. Now even riding an electric bike on the road requires wearing a helmet. Improving safety awareness should start with me.”
So, with Chen Hai’s indescribable eyes, Kang Chi went to Pengcheng fully armed. Even when passing the security check, Kang Chi refused to take it off. In the end, Chen Hai and others showed their documents before they boarded the plane smoothly…
In fact, there is a big advantage of wearing a helmet when going out, that is, no one can recognize him. At most, everyone will suspect whether he is a celebrity who sneaks out, or a socially anxious freak.
After arriving at Huawei, Kang Chi first attended a technical meeting, and it was only after entering the meeting room that Kang Chi finally took off his helmet in the curious eyes of everyone.
“Mr. Kang?” He Yongbin exclaimed in surprise, “Why are you here?”
As the head of R&D of Daqin Optical Camera Department, he has been staying in Pengcheng with dozens of Daqin Optical R&D teams to cooperate with Huawei engineers to complete the lens debugging work.
Kang Chi smiled at the surprised He Yongbin: “Of course I came to help you.” Faced with Kang Chi’s joining, Huawei engineers also showed strong curiosity and expectation, wondering what kind of surprises this legendary boss would bring them.
For a mobile phone hardware, in fact, it is often not a simple assembly that can be used directly. The same hardware, under the tuning of different engineers, will actually produce completely different effects.
The same is true for cars. Some manufacturers can squeeze out more horsepower from the same engine, while others can adjust the oil-guzzling, including the same parts such as the gearbox.
In fact, Fang Qiming used to promoteThe prototypes that were sold had not been debugged in detail. Anyway, no matter how well they were debugged, the prototypes that were finally installed might not be the ones that were sold.
Besides, Daqin Optics only sells cameras. The specific debugging is usually the business of the mobile phone companies themselves. After all, the systems and components of each company are different, and only they know them best. It is already very good that the camera supplier can send technicians to help with debugging, not to mention that a big boss came.
After the meeting started, Kang Chi did not interfere with their work agenda right away. He simply looked at their progress list and then listened to the whole process.
After the meeting, General Manager Yu said goodbye to Kang Chi and said that he would go to Shanghai in person with He Boting, the president of Haisi, to discuss the issues of chip foundry such as processors with Shencheng Silicon Industry and Lianwei.
So the entire camera debugging team was handed over to Kang Chi, and nearly a hundred people began to work enthusiastically. The main work was still done by Huawei’s people, and they would consult He Yongbin when they encountered problems.
If even He Yongbin can’t solve it, then it’s Kang Chi’s turn to take action.
”Mr. Kang, this is the video bit rate and frame rate table provided by Huawei.” As a result, before Kang Chi even had time to warm up his seat, He Yongbin immediately took out the most controversial issue between the two sides to ask Kang Chi, ”I think their data indicators are a bit too conservative, and they can’t bring out our CMOS performance at all, but they said that their processor performance is limited, and the heat dissipation problem has not been solved…”
Kang Chi nodded, took the information and looked at it carefully.
This problem is actually quite embarrassing. In short, Daqin’s camera sensor has a very high tolerance, coupled with the powerful data processing and output capabilities of the digital circuit, resulting in a very large amount of data, especially when shooting 4K60P and 2K240P videos. Huawei’s processor can’t handle such a large amount of data, and can only castrate the performance of the camera in the end.
There are usually only two solutions to this problem. One is to improve the performance of the processor, and this solution is obviously unrealistic at present.
The rest is to optimize the image compression algorithm, reduce the amount of data processing, and reduce the size of photos and videos. For example, the H.265 algorithm is more advanced than H.264, and the video size can be reduced by about 39-44%.
But the problem is that they are already using H.265.
H.266 encoding is still very immature at present, and it is not compatible with other systems or devices. If the video taken by the user needs to be edited later or shared on other devices, it will not work.
In fact, the optimization of video encoders is also one of the core technologies of Kang Chi’s future national supercomputing plan. He even plans to create an encoder that is better than H.266.
But this encoder is not yet available for Huawei.
Kang Chi considered for a long time and finally decided to use a compromise transition plan.
Since the camera has excess performance and the processor does not have enough performance, it is better to use the excess performance of the camera to help them pre-process the data first.
Of course, if this is done, the camera’s ultimate performance will definitely not be brought into play. At most, the original 60% performance can be increased to 80%.
Kang Chi quickly wrote down this temporary transition plan and split it to the technical teams of both parties.
Because CMOS was developed by Daqin Optics and is most familiar with its performance and design, this optimization work is also led by He Yongbin.
(End of this chapter)