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li nan

deputy director of the wireless and terminal technology research institute of china mobile research institute. as the director of the joint laboratory of china mobile information and communication chip r&d enterprises, he led the team to withstand the huge r&d pressure, work day and night, overcome dozens of technical problems, and successfully jointly developed the country's first reconfigurable 5g radio frequency transceiver chip in three years. ——"pofeng 8676" achieved a breakthrough "from zero to one" in this field, filled the domestic gap, and won the title of "top ten national important weapons of central enterprises in 2023". on april 28, 2024, li nan won the "national may day labor medal".

in 2023, a chip the size of a pinky fingernail will keep pace with "big guys" such as my country's reusable experimental spacecraft and the country's first large-scale cruise ship "aida·modu", and won the title of "the most important weapon of the top ten central enterprises" " title. a small chip may seem small, but it is very powerful. hundreds of millions of transistors do not allow even a tiny error to occur. led by li nan, deputy director of the wireless and terminal technology research institute of china mobile research institute, the enterprise joint laboratory r&d team spent three years overcoming difficulties and finally achieved a breakthrough in the field of domestic 5g reconfigurable radio frequency transceiver chips. it is original. the proposed reconfigurable radio frequency transceiver technology can enable one chip to meet the differentiated needs of different operators, different operating frequency bands, and different equipment types, benefiting the entire industry chain.

li nan said that he and his team are willing to serve as "wind breakers", face the core shortcomings in domestic 5g network equipment, constantly overcome technical and industrialization problems, and contribute their youthful strength to the early realization of independent controllability of my country's mobile communications. carrying out the research and development of independent controllable chips is a precious opportunity given by the country and an important mission given by the times. they will surely live up to their time and bravely reach new heights.

set sail on communications standards

in 2000, li nan was admitted to beijing university of posts and telecommunications, majoring in communications engineering. at that time, li nan's hometown had just experienced changes from bp machines to mobile phones and then to the first generation of mobile phones. in college, to make calls, you still had to queue up to call the 201 landline number. no one would have thought that 20 years later, the domestic communications industry would achieve rapid development. we can watch high-definition videos, conduct video calls, and live broadcasts on mobile phones anytime and anywhere. my country's mobile communications industry will achieve a breakthrough from "1g blank, 2g follower, and 3g breakthrough." it has made a leap forward to "4g synchronization and 5g leadership", especially in 5g construction and development, and has achieved world-renowned results.

li nan joined china mobile research institute after graduating from graduate school in 2007, where he was engaged in international communications standardization work. when many people were unaware of 4g technology, li nan was already working hard for the international standards of the 4g communications industry. international standardization work is very important and is the fundamental guarantee that each of us can enjoy high-quality communication services in different places. in the past, we were in a marginal position in the formulation of standards. at the critical stage of the formulation of 4g standards, under the overall guidance of the ministry of industry and information technology, china mobile worked hand in hand with industry partners to conduct key technology research and development, and brought the independently innovative fourth-generation mobile communications to the international market. technology td-lte has become a mainstream international standard, laying a solid foundation for the subsequent prosperity of my country's mobile internet based on 4g.

cross-border core making breaks the trend and moves forward

cross-border core manufacturing, starting from scratch. at the project establishment stage, everyone is not very sure whether the chip can be made, whether it is easy to use, and will anyone use it? however, li nan has always had a firm belief and led the team to obtain the support of the company through sufficient technical demonstration and market analysis.

the 5g base station is an integrated device that contains dozens of core chips. which one to make is the first problem the team faces. "we need to do what the industry chain urgently needs, and it is difficult for chip design companies to succeed alone." in the end, the team decided to develop a radio frequency transceiver chip, which is a necessary core chip for 5g base stations and is the link between radio waves and the digital world. a bridge for interactive communication.

the next step is to determine the chip specifications. chip indicators are the key to determining market competitiveness. a chip has hundreds of indicators. if it is set too high, the cost investment will be unsustainable. if it is set too low, it will not meet application needs. each indicator level needs to be carefully weighed. li nan put forward his own idea. we cannot completely imitate other people's functions and indicators. we must have our own characteristics and create differentiated advantages from competing products. only in the future can we have market competitiveness and form a closed business loop.

to this end, the team proposed the n2c (network to chip) chip specification definition method, developed an industry-leading system-level simulation platform and radio frequency-level simulation platform, and mapped network planning indicators to the core indicators of the chip layer by layer, realizing the "chip indicator" "tailor-made", creating a chip index that meets the needs of my country's 5g base stations with "neither excess nor shortage", and also lays a scientific basis for the low-power, low-cost differentiated design of the chip.

after the indicators were set, the team began the chip design work. the chip is highly miniaturized. a small chip is only 45 square millimeters, which is equivalent to the size of a pinky fingernail. however, there are hundreds of millions of transistors inside, so there is no room for error. the traditional chip design is one station, one core. li nan led the team to propose a reconfigurable radio frequency transceiver technology system. through the reconfigurable design of core functions, core algorithms and core parameters, the chip can meet the requirements from milliwatt level to hundreds of watt level. different deployment types of power and application requirements of base stations in different operating frequency bands realize one "core" for multiple purposes, solving the urgent needs of the industry to the greatest extent.

debugging is far more difficult than expected

looking back at the most stressful moment of chip development, it was actually the power-on of the chip after tape-out. at the end of 2022, the team members got the first batch of chips back from the factory and began basic testing. when the power was turned on, everyone held their breath. the moment the chip was successfully lit up, all the team members were particularly excited. this meant that the chip had achieved the expected functions and had taken a key step from the research and development stage to the application stage. but what follows is the most complex and difficult phase of debugging chip performance indicators. "pofeng 8676" has more than 30 modules, covering digital, analog, and radio frequency multi-level units, nearly 100 performance indicators, involving about 570,000 registers, and debugging is very difficult. the testing time left for everyone at that time was very limited, and the team members were under tremendous psychological pressure. they were busy testing during the day, and had a regular meeting at 9 o'clock in the evening to discuss the test results and formulate a test plan for the next day. wang dapeng, chief technical expert of china mobile, as the general person in charge of debugging, has to provide solutions and solutions to every problem that arises. he is under great pressure and often hosts regular meetings until the early morning. at 9 a.m. the next day, the team continues to retest. the entire team tested intensively day and night and even on weekends, but the test was still far more difficult than expected.

in order to achieve a certain indicator of the chip, the configuration of several registers must be changed. once changes occur, other indicators will also change accordingly, making the entire debugging process very arduous. "the chip does not mean that one indicator fails, and you can make do with it. if one key indicator fails, all efforts will be in vain." especially when everyone has achieved more than 90% of the indicators one after another, there are still a few the most painful situation is when the indicator cannot be passed after trying various methods for a long time. at that time, many members of the team were so anxious that they had insomnia. in this moment of crisis, li nan, as the team leader, needs to stabilize his mentality, calmly analyze the problem, point out the direction for the team, and strengthen everyone's beliefs. "i always firmly believe that we can do it. we are relying on china mobile's strong industrial resource integration capabilities, and we have joined forces with excellent chip design companies, adopted scientific design methods, and tried our best, even if this if it doesn’t work in the next version, it can work in the next version. i enlightened them in this way to relieve the pressure on the team. after the team got back to work, they finally cracked this hard nut.”

finally, after more than half a year of intense debugging, all problems were resolved and the chip finally passed all function and performance tests. on august 30, 2023, “pofeng 8676” was officially launched, causing a sensation in the industry.

in july this year, china mobile, baicaibang and zedmobile successfully launched the first high-power macro base station based on the "pofeng 8676" reconfigurable 5g radio frequency transceiver chip design in zambia, and based on this base station's 5g service, the three parties conducted remote video online conversation, this is the first time the "pofeng 8676" chip has been commercialized overseas.

on september 20, at the "china mobile's fifth technology week" series of events, li nan introduced the latest progress and results of the "pofeng" chip research and development project. china mobile's "pofeng 8676" chip has been integrated into more than 30 devices from 14 manufacturers, and 18 complete products have commercial capabilities, enabling deployment in existing domestic networks and existing networks in "belt and road" countries.

character dialogue

be willing to be a windbreaker and bravely venture into no man's land

beiqing daily: what advantages does “pofeng 8676” have over competing products?

li nan: after testing by a domestic third-party authoritative testing agency, the power consumption of "pofeng 8676" is 30% lower than that of foreign competing products, and the cost is reduced by 25%. in addition, we innovatively propose a reconfigurable system that can achieve "one core for multiple purposes" and greatly increase the flexibility and adaptability of the chip. according to the needs of different service scenarios and different base station types, the core functions of the chip and the core algorithm and core parameters are reconfigured to realize that one chip can meet the needs of different application scenarios, different technical standards, different frequency bands, and different equipment types, from hundreds of watt-level macro base stations to milliwatt-level home base stations, to maximize the solution the industry is in dire need. without this technology, we may need to develop chips of different specifications for different equipment needs. the development cost will increase exponentially, and the amount of chips used for each specification will be very small, making it impossible to achieve a commercial closed loop.

in addition, under the guidance of the science and technology innovation department of china mobile group, we innovatively proposed the "1+n+1" research model. in the past, operators made demands to the complete machine manufacturers, and the complete machine manufacturers contacted chip manufacturers for production. it was a serial r&d model. our model is to form a joint team of a chip manufacturer, n machine manufacturers and an operator. through the pre-demand and full participation of equipment manufacturers and operators, we can achieve one chip research to meet the needs of n equipment and shorten the development cycle. and nearly 30% of the workload.

beiqing daily: what goals did the entire team pursue during the development process?

li nan: we always take the needs of the country and the future direction as our goals, bravely venture into the "no man's land" of science and technology, give full play to the advantages of network, equipment, and chip linkage, carry out cross-border technological innovation, constantly conquer cutting-edge technologies, and pave the way for my country's future mobile communication realizes independence and controllability and contributes the power of youth.

during the development process, we were courageous, perseverant, and willing to be the "wind breakers" to pave a way for subsequent chip research. the technical challenges and industrialization problem-solving experience accumulated during the research process, as well as the cooperation models explored, will lay a solid foundation for subsequent research and provide useful reference for independent and controllable chip research in more fields.

the team's first achievement chip is named "po feng", which also expresses the determination that "success does not have to be mine, success must be mine."

beiqing daily: what is the future research and development direction of individuals and teams?

li nan: our team will delve deeply into the design field of communication core short board chips. in addition to continuing to accelerate the large-scale application of "bofeng" chips, our team will also carry out research and development of 6g ultra-high-speed radio frequency chips. our team will also continue to improve its chip design technology and industrial influence as we continue to tackle key problems, and contribute our youthful strength to the realization of independent controllability in my country's information and communications field.

news memory

58 projects completed by units in beijing won the national science and technology award project award

on june 24 this year, the 2023 national science and technology awards were announced. academician xue qikun of tsinghua university won the country’s highest science and technology award. fifty-eight results completed by units in the beijing area won national science and technology award projects, including 1 special prize, 7 first prizes, and 50 second prizes, accounting for 28.7% of the total number of general project awards, ranking first in the country. among them, the only special-prize project and the only first-prize national natural science award project were completed by beijing units; among the five first-prize national technological invention award projects, beijing units hosted 3 projects.

in recent years, beijing has been oriented to serving the country's major strategic needs, gathering strength to carry out original and leading scientific and technological research, and has repeatedly achieved breakthroughs in key core technologies. in 2023, 16 achievements in beijing won the national technology invention award, highlighting its independent innovation capabilities in the fields of integrated circuits and equipment manufacturing, injecting continuous power into the development of high-precision industries.

text/beijing youth daily reporter kuang xiaoying