Chapter 255 The first customer of chips

Author: Quiet Thought

Chapter 255 The first customer of chips

"This is." Hirataro Nakajima looked at the vermilion building in front of him, a little dazzled.

"Namco Palace?" Yamazaki Kuro said strangely.

Shirakawa Kaede smiled and said, "Let's go."

He did not explain much about the company in front of him, but took them directly into the reception hall.

Half an hour later, Shirakawa Kaede and others sat down in Masaya Nakamura's office one by one.

"Shankawa Sang, Takashi's handheld machine has performed quite well in the market recently."

As soon as he sat down, Masaya Nakamura sighed enviously.

Since Shirakawa Electric improved the display screen of the handheld machine, sales have been steadily rising.

Although Nintendo followed up with this idea just two months later, Shirakawa Electric's handheld machine still occupies the majority of the market.

This kind of winner-takes all grand occasion naturally makes Masaya Nakamura envious.

Although the profit of handheld machine is not too high, it is better because of the large quantity.

Moreover, it cultivates its own user group and develops related industries in the future, which can be said to bring its own traffic.

At least Masaya Nakamura knew that this person was ambitious and wanted to enter the home console market.

"It's all for Fukuo who was hired by Nakamura, and Namco's games are also one of the reasons why Shirakawa Electric's handheld machine is popular."

Since the two companies signed and licensing each other, their cooperation in the field of electronic games has become increasingly close.

Many games on Shirakawa Electric’s handheld console come from the Namco in front of you.

However, the more Shirakawa Electric's handheld machine is sold, the more Namco's share will be.

Therefore, Masaya Nakamura is quite welcome to the arrival of Shirakawa Kaede.

"I wonder what Shirakawa Sang came here this time. Could it be that he has a new cooperative project in the field of electronic games?"

"It can be said that," Shirakawa Kaede replied with a smile.

"Oh~" Nakamura Masaya became interested, "Shankawa Sakaki, please be sure to inform him in detail."

He is naturally quite happy to cooperate with Shirakawa Electric, after all, the small money is real.

The profits obtained from Shirakawa Electric Appliances in the past year have also become a major source of Namco's income.

"Nakamura San, ask a risky question. Which chip is used in Namco's arcade machine now?"

"Hmm?" Nakamura Masaya felt very strange about Shirakawa Kaede suddenly turned the topic into arcade production.

Is Shirakawa Electric also interested in entering the arcade market?

It shouldn't be. If the other party really has this plan, there is no need to go to Namco to discuss with him.

So although I was curious, Nakamura Masaya still answered truthfully.

"Z80 chip from Zilog, the United States."

As expected, this 8-bit chip is widely used in Neon.

In later generations, the Z80 was known as the longest-lived CPU, arcade, communication equipment, and automation products.

Until later generations, it is still used in some fields.

Now it's not just Namco. Shirakawa Kaede estimates that the chips used by Taidong, Sega, and Nintendo should be most likely Z80.

Shirakawa Kaede saw that Nakamura Masaya looked confused, but he still didn't explain, but continued to ask.

"What is the approximate price of the Z80 chip purchased by Guishe?"

“About USD 25-30”

As a well-known chip, its price has been roughly transparent, so Masaya Nakamura did not deliberately hide anything.

Shirakawa Kaede nodded, almost the same information as he learned.

"So does Nakamura know about Intel's 8088?"

"Of course" this model is also a well-known chip, and Masaya Nakamura has naturally heard of it.

"How is the performance of 8088 compared to Z80, and how much is its purchase price?" Shirakawa Kaede continued to induce.

"The performance needs no need to say more, the 8088 is much stronger than the Z80.

However, its price is also very impressive. The price of nearly $100 is really unbearable for arcades."

Obviously, as a science and engineering person, Masaya Nakamura is also aware of some of his arcade designs.

"But Sang Shirakawa, you asked these questions for the sake of."

Until now, Masaya Nakamura didn't know what he sold in Shirakawa Kaede's gourd.

Shirakawa Kaede did not answer directly, but smiled and took a small blue bag from Yamazaki and handed it to Masaya Nakamura.

"Is this..." Seeing the things in the bag in his hand, Masaya Nakamura's eyes widened slightly.

"As Nakamura Kan saw, this is a chip." Shirakawa Kaede finally revealed the answer.

"Chip?" Masaya Nakamura looked him up and down as if he knew Shirakawa Kaede again.

"This is a SIC's generation of commercial chips, benchmarking Intel's 8088."

Masaya Nakamura finally understood the reason why Shirakawa Kaede visited this time.

"So Sakawa Shirakawa wants to cooperate with Namco in the field of electronic games, the new project that is chips?"

Shirakawa Kaede nodded, affirming his guess.

After understanding Shirakawa Kaede's purpose, Masaya Nakamura was mostly in a state of interest.

"San Shirakawa, I believe you also know that the cost of arcades is already very high.

The $30 for the Z80 is still within the scope of Namco.

But the $100 for 8088 is really powerless for Namco."

Nowadays, the production cost of an arcade machine is more than 100,000 yen, and the more expensive ones are even hundreds of thousands of yen.

In addition to various production materials and props, the CTR monitor and various chips on the motherboard alone account for a large part.

CTR monitors are the big butt TV screens we used to be common. The larger the size, the more expensive it is.

Now a 14-inch TV in Japan costs about 100,000 yen, and the screen of the arcade is even larger, mostly around 21 inches.

So a screen alone costs tens of thousands of yen, and in addition to this, another major cost of arcade machines is the gaming substrate, that is, the circuit board.

The rough cost of the entire circuit board is also more than 50,000 yen, and there is no doubt that the chip is the big one.

There are more than one chip on the circuit board, and of course the most expensive one must be the CPU processor chip.

A Z80 chip is about 7,000 yen. If it is replaced with 8,088, the cost will instantly soar to 25,000 yen.

The production cost of more than 100,000 yuan is reduced for every 10,000 yen extra.

Namco's arcades are usually sold to the arcade owner for a complete set of 300,000-500,000 yen.

This selling price is basically a fixed range in the market. In this case, the production cost will increase and the profit will naturally decrease.

So Nakamura Masaya subconsciously gave up the chip recommended by Shirakawa Kaede to compete with Intel 8088.

"San Nakamura is calm, so don't you ask how much the SIC chip price is?"

Seeing Masaya Nakamura's face looked embarrassed, but Shirakawa Kaede asked slowly.

"Huh?" Could it be. Nakamura Masaya looked at Shirakawa again, "Shankawa San means that Takashi's chips have an advantage in price?"

"$40!" Without further explanation, Shirakawa Kaede directly gave his own price.

"What?!" Nakamura Masaya's first reaction was that he didn't believe it, "Shankawa, are you sure that the chips of your company are targeting Intel's 8088?"

"Of course" Shirakawa Kaede pointed to the bag in his hand, "SIC8089 external bus 16 bits, internal bus 8 bits.

It has integrated more than 30,000 transistors, with a main frequency of 5.6MHz."

The more Masaya Nakamura heard, the more incredible he looked, the more outstanding he looked. This parameter is even better than Intel's 8088.

"At the same time," Shirakawa Kaede continued to introduce, "SIC8089 is based on embedded system development and is compatible with the software assembly of Intel8086 and 8088.

In addition, the SIC8089 also comes with an assembler-based development system, which will greatly facilitate the development process of developers.

Of course, if needed, SIC can also provide peripheral IC and auxiliary chip design, or even custom chips."

Nakamura Masaya blinked and asked tentatively.

"If I heard it correctly, the performance of the chips of Shirakawa Sang are better than Intel's 8088?"

Shirakawa Kaede nodded, "It's true in theory, and of course the actual test results also meet the theoretical estimates."

"Intel8088 is priced at $100, and the SIC8089 performance is close to 1.5 times, but it is priced at $40 less than half of it?" Masaya Nakamura continued to confirm.
To be continued...