Recently, 36氪 was informed that Zun Pai Communication Technology (Nanjing) Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as “Zun Pai Communication”) announced the completion of hundreds of millions of RMB Pre-A round of financing. This round was funded by Xiaomi Group, Hushan Capital, Skyline Capital, It is composed of well-known financial investment institutions and industrial investors such as Jiayu Capital, Haiwang Capital under Shanghai Kechuang, and Pingzhi Information.
Previously, Zun Pai Communications completed an angel round of financing of nearly 100 million yuan in May 2021, led by Gaorong Capital and joined by Jiangbei Jiakang Technology, and Gaorong Capital continued to increase its investment in this round. It is reported that this round of financing will be mainly used for R&D investment, film screening, market expansion and company operations.
Founded in March 2021, the company is headquartered in Nanjing. It is committed to providing high-performance, full-ecological smart scene chipsets and solutions for homes and businesses. It is currently developing Wi-Fi 6 router chips and complete solutions at full speed.
According to Gartner, a total of 4.4 billion Wi-Fi chips will be shipped worldwide in 2020, and it is expected to reach 4.9 billion in 2022. In terms of market segments, according to the data collected by the semiconductor industry, the market size of my country’s router/gateway Wi-Fi 6 chips in 2019 is about 300 million yuan, and it is expected to reach 4.5 billion yuan in 2023.
As Xiaomi, Huawei and other companies successively release Wi-Fi 6 mobile phones, the first year of Wi-Fi 6 commercial use will be launched in 2020, and the Wi-Fi 6 router market will also explode, bringing the Internet of Things to Wi-Fi 6 upgrade.
Wi-Fi chips are divided into three categories, namely AP (Access Point) used in routers and gateways (optical modem/CABLE MODEM/DSL, etc.), Station chips used in terminals such as mobile phones, tablets and TVs, and Wi-Fi in IoT scenarios. Fi chip. Among them, as the backbone of the Wi-Fi network, the router AP can be analogous to the base station in the cellular network, which needs to process the transmission and reception of signals. Its chip design has the highest complexity and compatibility requirements, and the most technical difficulty. At the beginning of the establishment of Zunpai Communication, it chose the most difficult router AP chip.
From the perspective of the global market, router Wi-Fi 6 chips have players such as Qualcomm, Broadcom and Mailing (formerly INTEL Home Network Division), HiSilicon, Taiwan MediaTek and Realtek. At present, only a few manufacturers in mainland China are engaged in the research and development of router chip APs. By the end of 2021, most domestic manufacturers have only launched router AP chips of the Wi-Fi 5 standard. In 2021, Zun Pai Communication, Longli Semiconductor and other startups with the Wi-Fi 6 router AP chip as the entry point were established, and companies such as Espressif Technology, Broadcom Integration, and Aojie Technology have also successively launched Wi-Fi 6 products.
The first router Wi-Fi 6 AP chip of Zunpai Communication adopts the 2X2 MIMO architecture, aiming at the 3Gbps (3000Mbps) market, which is also the highest transmission rate that Wi-Fi 6 can achieve under the dual-stream design. Currently, only Qualcomm, Broadcom, Mailing , HiSilicon and MediaTek have achieved this specification for commercial use. According to Zhang Kun, the company will also cover the development of higher-performance chips such as 4×4 and Wi-Fi 7 in the future.
Zunpai Communications has recently obtained the RFIC film that was cast at the end of last year and successfully lit up. From the test results, the performance of this key component meets or even exceeds expectations. Zunpai Communications will launch Wi-Fi 6 at the end of this year and early next year. Router mass-produced chips. In terms of process, the chip adopts 28nm process, which can achieve a balance between performance, power consumption and cost.
Zhang Kun said that the router AP chip contains three core technologies of radio frequency, digital and solutions. The completion of the radio frequency chip return verification means that a big risk in product development has been eliminated. Digital circuits and software solutions can be verified through simulation platforms such as EDA and FPGA platforms. However, in the design of RF analog circuits, there is often a certain deviation between EDA simulation and actual measurement. Ultimately, it is necessary to verify the real performance of the chip through film casting. higher requirements.
Zunpai Wi-Fi 6 RFIC
In terms of competitive advantages, Zhang Kun said that compared with international manufacturers, most of the world’s router equipment is produced in China, and Zunpai Technology can serve customers from a distance; in the face of domestic manufacturers, Zunpai Communication has experience and technical advantages .
Compared with Wi-Fi 5, Wi-Fi 6 has a major upgrade to the architecture due to its performance improvement. There are large thresholds in each core module of the product, such as software, computing power, digital, baseband, radio frequency, and analog. Only companies with strong comprehensive capabilities can polish it. Technically competitive products. Zun Pai Communication has an institutionalized and experienced team, and the research and development speed has an advantage.
When serving customers, ZMP will provide a complete set of solutions including chip, software and even product prototype testing, and adjust it according to customer needs.
When asked if the establishment and entry in 2021 will miss the market opportunity, Zhang Kun, CEO of Zun Pai Communication, told 36Kr: “Limited by the lack of semiconductor production capacity in recent years, the popularity of Wi-Fi 6 is not as fast as expected, and it is relatively slow. Many Wi-Fi 6 demands will be replaced by Wi-Fi 5. As the semiconductor production capacity problem is resolved in the next 2-3 years, when the suppressed demand for Wi-Fi 6 breaks out, the company’s products will also be in the stage of market introduction, ushering in a development period In addition, Wi-Fi technology is upgraded every 4 to 6 years, and Wi-Fi7 will be upgraded in 2024-2025, and the company will also deploy Wi-Fi7 technology in advance.”
Talking about the vision, Zhang Kun introduced that Zunpai Communication wanted to do smart scene solutions since its establishment. Most smart factories and smart homes communicate via Wi-Fi, and routers are the nerve center of smart homes and smart factories. All connections and controls need to be completed through the router, so the router chip was chosen as the first product.
With the launch of Wi-Fi 6 router chips, Zunpai Communication will continue to enhance the products and marketization capabilities of short-range wireless communication, and will quickly launch Wi-Fi 6 Station and IOT side chips to form an “AP+ end”. Product layout, through the combined punching method of end-pipe synergy, fully open the Wi-Fi market.
Zhang Kun, founder and CEO of Zun Pai Communication, has more than 20 years of experience in the semiconductor industry. He has served as senior technical director/senior technical expert of well-known chip companies at home and abroad. He has presided over the development of a variety of short-distance interconnect chips, with shipments exceeding billions . The founding team of the company also comes from major chip manufacturers such as Qualcomm, Marvell, and Zhanrui.
At present, Zunpai Communication has hundreds of employees, and R&D accounts for more than 90%. It has talents in various core sub-fields such as software, digital, baseband, radio frequency and analog, and the corresponding members have more than ten years of work in this field. experience. The company’s headquarter is located in Nanjing, the global R&D center is located in Zhangjiang, Shanghai, and there are also offices in Shenzhen and Beijing.
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