An EDA Unicorn - Xinqiyuan

When he first started working in Silicon Valley, it was during the explosive stage of the American chip industry's transition from IDM mode dominance to refined division of labor dominance. He also took advantage of the trend and began his "cheating" life in Silicon Valley.

Let's take a look at Mr. Lu Sheng's career experience overseas:

I joined Aspec Technology upon graduation from 1994 to 1996. Afterwards, the company went public on NASDAQ.

From 1997 to 1998, he joined the ArtX startup team and became the 12th employee of the company. He developed 3D GPU chips for Nintendo's gaming console GameCube, becoming the most advanced graphics and video electronic product of the year. The project was acquired by ATI for $400 million.

From 1998 to 2000, a new generation network switch chip was developed by Allayer's startup team and acquired by Broadcom for $276 million.

From 2000 to 2005, he served as a research and development executive at Broadcom, responsible for the development of his first generation network switch chip Hercules. He successfully produced a single chip and monopolized the market, establishing Broadcom's position as the world's number one network switch.

From 2005 to 2014, I served as the Senior Director of CTO Office and System level Chip Platform at Marvell, responsible for the customization and development of global core communication protocols. During my tenure, I led the development of Aspen chips, and successfully streamed them only once in six months. The chip received 100 million orders from Microsoft at once and was widely used in fields such as TV game consoles, e-books, and tablets, creating over $500 million in profits for the company and creating a legend in the American chip industry that year.

It is precisely during his more than 20 years of deep cultivation in the US chip industry that he has accumulated the experience and industry resources of a large enterprise, a large-scale development pattern, and the strength of Silicon Valley. At the same time, he also planted a seed of entrepreneurship in his heart.

In 2014, driven by work, he began to frequently travel between Silicon Valley and Shanghai, and gradually realized that China's integrated circuit industry was undergoing significant changes. He deeply feels that his abilities and resources will be of greater value in China. Therefore, he resolutely gave up the high salary benefits in Silicon Valley and carried a suitcase alone, embarking on the path of entrepreneurship in his home country.

"The rise of China is the main reason for my return to China," he explained. "Standing on the shoulders of giants, what others have walked in thirty years can be completed in ten years." He is full of confidence in the future path of entrepreneurship.

In 2015, Xinqiyuan Electronic Technology Co., Ltd. (referred to as "Xinqiyuan") was officially established with the vision of becoming a leading global supplier of intelligent network core chips and system solutions, laying the foundation for the localization of integrated circuits in the network digital infrastructure.

At the beginning of its establishment, Xinqiyuan relied on more than 20 years of industry resources and adopted a global operation model. The core team included Jim Finnegan, former Senior Vice President and General Manager of Network Processors at Intel, Dr. Chen Ying'an, a chip expert, and Xie Shuiyuan, an EDA tool expert. As of now, the Xinqiyuan team has nearly 300 members, of which 85% are research and development personnel; At the same time, there are offices and research and development centers in Shanghai, Nanjing, Wuhan, Beijing, Xiamen, Hong Kong, Hangzhou, as well as Silicon Valley in the United States, the United Kingdom, South Africa, and other places in China. "We are accustomed to holding video conferences with colleagues from all over the world, and our competitiveness lies in the cooperation model of Chinese team as the main body and global collaboration."

Xinqiyuan is committed to the core intellectual property (IP) of integrated circuits, chip design and development, production and sales, and provides the best chip and IP solutions. After years of effort, Xinqiyuan has successfully launched four products. Its domestically developed intelligent network card for the DPU core chip, high-end EDA tool SoC prototype verification and simulation system MimicPro, and network search engine TCAM chip have broken the monopoly of foreign giants, and have obtained China's first USB3.1 first generation (5Gpbs) IP certification and the world's second USB-C3.1 second generation (10Gpbs) IP certification. All products have received orders from top domestic and international enterprises.

two

Unintentional planting of willows, recognized by leading chip companies in Silicon Valley

The biggest difference between Xinqiyuan and other IC design companies is that it is involved in both the DPU and EDA categories.

Lu Sheng jokingly referred to his involvement in the EDA field as "unintentional insertion of willows". He explained, "Xinqiyuan mainly focuses on communication chips for 5G and data centers, which is our main battlefield. High end EDA and IP are essential secret weapons for us, and they are also the core competitiveness for us to engage in differentiated competition. In the EDA industry, due to the lack of competitive hardware simulation platforms and the oligopoly monopoly of technology, innovation is hindered. Initially, we did EDA for ourselves to use."

Lu Sheng is well aware that using a user-friendly EDA tool can greatly increase the probability of a successful chip casting. For nearly 30 years, Lu Sheng has been consistently improving the efficiency of chip design. "Can we, Xinqiyuan, achieve simulations that others can complete in 9 months or even 1 year in 6 months or even 4 months? To achieve this, we must innovate on EDA, which requires half the manpower and time compared to others."

In order to improve the chip development efficiency of Xinqiyuan, Lu Sheng led a team to start developing EDA in 2018. The core members of the team are Silicon Valley EDA veterans, who have been deeply involved in this field for 20 to 30 years. "We treat ourselves like guinea pigs, wading through all the pitfalls we need, and the products we produce can actually solve the problems of the entire industry."

At present, Xinqiyuan's self-developed EDA product, called MimicPro, is an integrated platform for prototype verification and simulation acceleration ®， With the competitiveness of our products, technological innovation, and leading advantages, we have not only gained recognition and procurement from Jingchen Semiconductor, Xindong Technology, Deep Flow Microelectronics, as well as leading domestic CPU and GPU customers, but also received purchase orders for overseas chips AMD Xilinx and SiFive.

Xinqiyuan's EDA products also compete with the three major American EDA giants Synopsys, Cadence, and Siemens EDA. "The fact that leading companies in Silicon Valley chip design can abandon the products of the three major EDA giants in the United States and instead use our products demonstrates that we possess value that the three giants do not possess."

"Many Chinese chip companies, when they first came into contact with this product, believed that it came from an American company and were surprised to find out that we were actually a Chinese company."

At present, Xinqiyuan has decided to separate its EDA business and operate it independently.

three

On par with international industry giants
DPU is the first to achieve mass production in China

In the era of big data, DPU chips are undoubtedly internet celebrities.

Why focus on the DPU track? Lu Sheng explained that the United States has been developing CPU and GPU chips for over 30 years, and China needs to catch up with the ecosystem accumulated over the past 30 years. But DPU is an emerging track, and as the first year of DPU in 2021, world leading chip companies such as Broadcom, Intel, AMD, and Marvell have just entered this track, so we now have the opportunity to compete equally with world leading companies.

Related studies indicate that by 2025, the global DPU market is expected to reach $13.57 billion, and the Chinese DPU market is expected to reach $3.74 billion. Xinqiyuan is facing a blue ocean that covers a total market size of over one trillion yuan.

"The core competitiveness of DPU lies not in the thickness of the 'interface pipeline', but in how to perform more efficient data processing within the DPU." Lu Sheng has professional insights into DPU's technical solutions, "just like the current GPU does not use a universal instruction set, but instead adds specialized computing instructions for image processing and parallel computing needs, thereby achieving more efficient computing performance." In his view, DPU cannot use a universal instruction set, and must use a dedicated instruction set for network data processing to save energy and achieve efficient computing. ".

At the same time, it can be seen that Nvidia's GPUs also rely on the support of the CUDA ecosystem, enabling developers to efficiently utilize the parallel processing capabilities of GPUs to solve complex computing problems. Lu Sheng believes that the success of chip casting is only 30% of the work completed, and the remaining 70% is focused on building a software ecosystem. Without an ecosystem, solutions cannot be implemented. Currently, the ecological construction of Xinqiyuan has achieved results, ranking first in the world in terms of contribution to the Linux NetDev community. In terms of global contribution to the latest version of code in the DPDK community, Xinqiyuan surpasses Nvidia and ranks third in the world. In addition, after years of polishing, "we have completed the adaptation work with most mainstream server vendors."

Xinqiyuan's 10G and 25G network card products designed based on DPU1.0 have achieved large-scale mass production and become the first supplier of 25G network card chips in China.

In addition to leveraging the commercial value of DPU cost reduction, efficiency improvement, energy conservation and emission reduction, Xinqiyuan's DPU based network card products can also promote network data security. "The CPU is the commander, and as a communication and intelligence officer, the importance of DPU for network security and data security is self-evident."

Huang Renxun stated at the 2024 NVIDIA GTC conference that the current computing efficiency of AIGC servers is only 40%, and 60% of the time is forced to idle due to waiting for data synchronization. Smart network cards can save this time. "Solving the bottleneck of high bandwidth and low latency data synchronization in the entire industry is exactly the task that DPU needs to do, and it is also the direction that Xinqiyuan is committed to exploring."

In addition, Xinqiyuan's DPU products can also save energy consumption in data centers. "We are providing the latest intelligent network card solution for Zhejiang Mobile, which can save 3 million kilowatt hours of electricity per year. If the solution is promoted nationwide, the energy savings will be considerable."

Lu Sheng summarized the advantages of Xinqiyuan DPU products in 12 words: cost reduction, efficiency improvement, energy conservation and emission reduction, safety and controllability. "Cost reduction and efficiency improvement are one-time capex investments, energy conservation and emission reduction are daily opex investments, and safety and controllability are the cornerstone of the digital economy."

Since its establishment nearly 10 years ago, Xinqiyuan has been deeply involved in the DPU track. They rely on their unique insights into the industry, constantly keep up with the times, and steadily cultivate their own technical and product skills. According to Lu Sheng, Xinqiyuan's DPU2.0 product is about to be produced in 2025, and its performance parameters will be comparable to international industry giants, bringing more competitive products to customers and the market, empowering the rapid development of China's digital economy, and competing in the international market.

At the same time, Xinqiyuan has also gained recognition from the industry and capital. Up to now, Core Qiyuan has completed multiple rounds of financing, with investors including China Internet Investment Fund, Chaoyue Moore Fund, Pudong Science and Technology Innovation, etc. In addition, he was promoted to the 2022 GEI China Unicorn Enterprise.

I believe that in the near future, local EAD companies such as Xinqiyuan will surely bloom with incredibly brilliant flowers.