What happened to this "most golden" track for "Pearl on the Crown"?

Text ｜ "China Science News" reporter Ji Hongmei

Yang Jian's respondents' picture confession

Since its establishment in September 2020, after multiple rounds of financing such as angel rounds, Pre-A rounds, round A, and A-B round, Mu Xi Integrated Circuit (Shanghai) Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as Mu Xi) has been raised Billions of dollars. However, from the first day of entrepreneurship, the "Pearl on the Crown" chip, the "crown" chip, will be selected as the goal of Mu Xi.

"In the next 10 years, it will be a period of rapid development of the GPU market." Recently, Mu Xi co -founder, chief technology officer (CTO) and chief software architect Yang Jian said in an exclusive interview with the China Science News.

In the past few decades, the GPU market has been led by foreign companies and has not replaced products in China. Today, Mu Xi wants to get a share, how the probability of success is?

One of the "most gold absorption" tracks

Before the 1980s, the graphics processing of the computer was responsible for the CPU (central processor). Later, as the graphic display requirements were improved, the microprocessor GPU specifically used for graphic processing was designed to reduce the dependence of the graphics card to the CPU, and the computer's graphics display capacity was improved.

At the beginning of birth, the GPU was originally used for graphics and images related operations, and was allocated by the CPU. In 2004, Patrick M. Hanrahan, a professor at the University of Computer Graphics Laboratory of Stanford University, developed a programming language Brook for the GPU, making it more feasible to perform general computing (GPGPU) on the GPU, and eventually spawned the heroic CUDA —— The industry's first parallel computing language.

In 2019, Hanrahan shared the Turing Award with computer scientist and Pixar animation studio co -founder Edwin E. Catmull with its contribution in the field of computer graphics.

"GPU is naturally suitable for parallel computing tasks." Yang Jian told the China Science Journal that compared with the CPU, the GPU's processing capacity and memory bandwidth in this area have more obvious advantages, and the cost and power consumption are relatively small. Essence

With the development of high -performance heterogeneous computing such as cloud computing and artificial intelligence, the advantages of parallel computing of GPUs have been further excavated, becoming a "darling" in the field of high -performance computing. Since 2020, the GPU has become one of the "most gold absorption" tracks in the domestic chip field, with a total financing of more than 20 billion yuan. According to statistics, from 2020 to 2021, nearly 20 financing incidents in the GPGPU field occurred.

"In the next 10 years, it will be a period of rapid development of the GPU market." Yang Jian said.

According to data from the market research company VeriFied Market Research, the independent GPU market in mainland China in 2020 was US $ 4.739 billion, and it is expected to exceed US $ 34.557 billion in 2027.

"It is also based on the optimistic of the GPU market, and Harbin Capital has been paying attention to the GPU's 100 billion yuan track since 2019." Xiao Peng, managing director of the Here Capital Investment Department, told the Journal of China that they were After considering all the domestic teams, he invested in Mu Xi's angel wheel in 2020 and followed 3 rounds in a row.

There is no "blind spot" team

In Xiao Peng's view, "Mu Xi is the most competitive of the GPU track." The reason why he is optimistic about Mu Xi is mainly because of his founding team.

Chen Weiliang, the founder, chairman and chief executive officer of Mu Xi, Peng Li and Yang Jian, CTO and chief hardware architecture, are Mu Xi's "three swordsmen". They were colleagues and friends when they were Trident and AMD, and they all had more than ten or even 20 years of large -scale chips and GPU software and hardware design experience.

In addition, "many years of cooperation also allows us to get along well and cooperate well." Yang Jian proudly told the Journal of China, "There is almost no 'blind spot' in our team, not only the post -repetitiveness is low, but also a strong complementarity."

In the founding team, Chen Weiliang always took the overall situation. Peng Li was responsible for hardware and Yang Jian was responsible for software. The remaining senior executive team members also have many years of experience in top chip manufacturers, and have rich experience in chip design, algorithms, markets and operations.

"For such a difficult chip, the team must be complete, otherwise, once there is a large lack, the risk will be magnified sharply." Xiao Peng said.

Starting starting a business from three people, and then gradually growing up, Mu Xi's goal is to design a global leading flagship product within two years. And Mu Xi is different from other domestic companies that target this track. Its high -performance GPU IP is independently developed from scratch. It has a complete instruction set and architecture, with complete software compatible with the mainstream GPU ecosystem. The stack has the advantages of high performance, efficiency and high -throughability.

Compared with the CPU architecture and instruction set system, there are only a few types such as X86 and ARM. Since the first -generation GPU programming instruction set was born in 2001, no company's GPU instruction set is the same as another. Yang Jian told the China Science News that this left a lot of room for GPU's innovation.

In January this year, Mu Xi's first high -performance universal GPU chip was smooth. This chip uses a 7 -nanometer process, mainly artificial intelligence reasoning, and can be applied in the fields of artificial intelligence, autonomous driving, industrial and manufacturing automation, smart cities, natural language processing, edge computing and other fields. "From January to the film to the film in July, the functional test is subsequently. At present, everything has progressed smoothly, and the functions of the chip are in line with expectations." Yang Jian revealed that they hope to send samples to customers before the end of this year. Start mass production.

Mass production is a difficult level of many chip companies. Therefore, "the founder or founding team has a deep understanding of the track, and has the research and development experience, mass production experience, and system implementation experience of similar products, which is the prerequisite for investment." Xiao Peng told reporters that Mu Xi ’s core team members have the average ownership In the past 20 years, high -performance GPU products end -to -end R & D and operation have led more than ten mainstream high -performance GPU products research and development. It is a team with rich technological and industrialization experience. This is also an important reason why Hepaic Capital is optimistic about the company.

"Want to wear a crown, it will be inherited"

When he started his business, Yang Jian was still a little embarrassed: one is to worry about whether he will be accepted by the target market, and the other is whether he has the ability to make the chip.

After a period of market research, Yang Jian was relieved. "We find that the market's craftsmanship for domestic GPU chips is very strong. Moreover, as the team gradually stronger, it is not a problem to make our ideal chip."

In fact, the long -awaited market for foreign giants is very much looking forward to the "third pole sound". Yang Jian told the China Science Journal: "Some customers told us the demand for software and hardware two or three years later, and trusted us very much. This has a sharp contrast with a few years ago."

In addition to the research and development chip, Yang Jian told reporters that one of their key tasks is to protect intellectual property rights. On the one hand, they protect themselves and prevent employees from bringing the intellectual property rights of other companies to Mu Xi. As of now, Mu Xi has applied for more than 90 patents and has authorized more than 20 patents.

In addition, the construction of software ecology is also where Mu Xi is focusing on. "At present, in this regard, we are still in the chasing stage." Yang Jian admitted. In the future, they hope to form an ecological closed loop from students, universities to scientific research institutes, and in -depth cooperation with industry associations such as the Chinese Computer Society, the Chinese Artificial Intelligence Society and other industry associations and biological computing, pharmaceuticals and other vertical fields.

In the Mu Xi Angel Wheel, PRE-A, round A, and even the recent Pre-B round financing, you can see the "national team", such as the China Internet Investment Fund, the Structural Adjustment Fund of China State-owned Enterprise, and CCTV The media industry investment fund, etc., can also see partners in the upstream and downstream of the industrial chain, such as Lenovo Venture Capital, and the support of local governments, such as Shanghai Guosheng Capital, and cooperation with vertical industries. "While we are absorbing capital, we are also building our ecosystem and industrial chain." Yang Jian said.

"We hope to take the domestic GPU chip as the core to form a final complete solution with availability, ease of use, and good use for users." Yang Jian revealed. In his opinion, this is the core competitiveness of Mu Xi.

GPU chip technology is difficult to technology. It is a large investment and long -term industry. It requires enterprises to carry out long -term technical accumulation and talent accumulation in order to create chip products with international competitiveness. Hede Capital has always focused on investment in the semiconductor field. Xiao Peng told the China Science News that from the establishment to the present, Mu Xi has achieved results in team building, product development, customer excavation, supply chain management, company operations, and foreign cooperation.

He admits that due to the impact of the external environment, the investment in the semiconductor field has declined this year, and investors and companies that need financing have a certain degree of anxiety. However, "want to wear a crown, it will be heavy. A qualified entrepreneur must face various tests."

The same is true for Mu Xi.

"China Science News" (2022-09-05 The 4th edition of science and innovation was originally titled "Picking the Pearl on the Crown", domestic high-performance GPU on the road)

Edit | Zhao Lu

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