Huawei unveils new commercial chip! Announced the termination of cooperation with the American EDA company!
Recently, Huawei announced that the "Da Vinci Project" has made new progress. Huawei's Senteng 910 commercial chip is coming soon, as is MindSpore, an AI computer framework that goes with it.
As we all know, EDA tools are essential to developing chips. Due to the further escalation of the trade war, Huawei official sources said that currently Huawei is no longer able to cooperate with some EDA companies in the United States.
What is EDA? What difference does it make if Huawei can't work with them?
EDA means electronic design automation in Chinese. So what exactly does EDA do? The role of EDA has three main aspects.
First of all, some complex physical problems can be expressed by the data model. That is to say, in order to prevent problems in the manufacturing process of the chip, the process of manufacturing the chip should be rehearsed first, and if problems are found, they can be solved in time. In this way, the manufacturing process can not only ensure the smooth progress of the manufacturing process, but also solve some problems that may occur in the manufacturing process in advance.
The second aspect is that in the process of rehearsal, if a problem is found, EDA can calculate the best solution with mathematical formula under the premise that the logic function does not make mistakes. Generally speaking, it is to be able to come up with a set of best solutions after encountering problems. At the same time, it also provides the best solution for chip manufacturing.
The third aspect is to verify that the chip can be manufactured in accordance with the expected plan. This is the function of electronic design automation, which can be said to be an essential part of the chip manufacturing process.
So what will happen if Huawei doesn't work with these EDA companies in the US?
Today's electronic chip companies are their own research and development, take the sample piece to the foundry flow piece, only after the success of the flow piece, the whole chip is really successful research and development. At present, the most advanced Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing 7nm process flow a piece of more than 30 million dollars, it can be said that the cost of the flow is quite high. What is the success rate of streaming films? We can take a look at Xiaomi research and development of the paper s1 chip when the probability.
At that time, Xiaomi's ThepaperS1 chip is the use of EDA tools before being sent to the foundry for streaming. In addition to the large and small many problems during the streaming film, Xiaomi a total of five streaming film, that is, the fifth time to succeed. These five streaming films directly cost Xiaomi nearly a year's profit. Imagine how bad it would be if Huawei chips didn't use EDA tools. Since we can't cooperate with EDA companies in the United States, there is no problem in cooperating with domestic EDA companies, right?
At present, there is only one EDA company in China, but compared with those EDA giants in the United States, the scale of Huada Jiutian is pitifully small. Huada Jiutian's team is only about 300 people now. Therefore, it is unrealistic to rely on domestic EDA companies. Can Huawei develop EDA by itself? It can be, but EDA tools are extremely difficult to make.
EDA tools are a collection of mathematical and physical problems that have been poached almost exclusively by America's EDA giants. Therefore, it must be difficult for Huawei to make EDA tools by itself. Huawei's announcement of the Centeng 910 chip shows that it has really worked hard on the chip side.