The richest man starts with a blind box

Chapter 913 Lithography Breakthrough
"Today, we officially announce to you that the wall of lithography machines that has plagued the industry for more than ten years has been officially broken by our AMSL company. From now on, the 70nm process will no longer be the limit of lithography machines. We It is about to enter a new era of single-digit lithography machines!" At this moment, facing hundreds of reporters in the audience, the person in charge of AMSL said in an extremely excited voice.

On July 2005, 7, this day is definitely the most memorable day for AMSL, because on this day, AMSL officially held a press conference and announced to the world the new products produced by its own company, which are also brand new. The first product of the XT series, the XT:1i.

On the stage, the person in charge enthusiastically explained the data of this equipment to all the audience, and the reporters also did not hesitate to record their films and recorded this exciting historical moment.

However, there are more representatives of various technology companies in the audience than the reporters. Their expressions may be excited, deep or playful, but they all understand that the entire lithography machine market may be rewritten.

As I said before, since the mid-90s, the development of lithography machines has basically stagnated.Due to the limitation of light source technology, human beings have been unable to produce lithography machines below 70 nanometers, and thus cannot produce corresponding chips.

The reason why the chip has terrifying computing power is that it first wraps an insulating layer on the monocrystalline silicon, and then burns the insulating layer under the covering with a very thin light.

It's like turning light into a pen, drawing semiconductors one after another directly on the single crystal silicon, and finally forming a computer chip with terrifying computing power.

At the beginning, the lines drawn by humans were drawn by hand, and the fineness was at the millimeter level, so only a few semiconductors could be drawn on a single crystal silicon chip.

Later, it became a precision-processed metal mold to press, but the fineness of such lines is only 0.1 mm, and at most it can only draw hundreds or thousands of semiconductors.

Until someone discovered that light can be used to write on single crystal silicon, so the first lithography machine was born, but it could only draw lines of 1 mm, which is about 0.01 microns, on a piece of single crystal silicon. Thousands of semiconductors.

However, with the continuous breakthroughs of human beings, the light source and lens are constantly replaced, and the light becomes thinner and thinner, and finally it becomes the current 70nm-level lithography machine.Tens of millions of semiconductors can be drawn on a single crystal silicon.

But this is astonishing. By the mid-90s, humans discovered that both the lens and the light source, humans have broken through to the extreme.Unless you can get a light source that is thinner than lasers and ultraviolet rays, or simply replace the light and use another way to describe, otherwise this is a dead spot that cannot be broken through.

But for more than 10 years, no company has been able to do this, and the development of lithography machines has limited the precision of chip production. Therefore, in the past 10 years, the hardware technology of the computer chip itself There is no development.

However, the corresponding software technology, that is, the chip architecture has developed rapidly, so that the computer chip does not have the situation that it cannot be iterated, but this cannot change the hardware limitations after all. Since around 03, the development of computer chips has basically been slow. into an extremely slow state.

Take Intel as an example. Although they release the latest high-end computer chips every year, the performance improvement of each new model is only about 10% compared with last year, which is very different from the previous 100% performance improvement every year.

Intel's behavior is called by users as squeezing toothpaste, and then Intel has the title of a toothpaste manufacturer.

There has always been a saying in the room that Intel actually has about 200% room for computing power improvement in its hands, but they are afraid that computer chip technology will never be able to break through, and they may not be able to launch new products with computing power iterations in the future.

So I simply squeezed toothpaste, so that 200% computing power can be used for a few 20 years. After 20 years, I can always break through the technical bottleneck of computer chips!
Facts have proved that Intel does not need to wait for 20 years, that is, about five or six years. AMSL, a newcomer in the lithography machine industry, gave the world a big surprise by first launching a lithography machine below 70 nanometers.

It stands to reason that the most excited people in the audience should be chip companies such as Intel, but the expressions of the representatives of these companies are very calm, because they have received the news a long time ago... In fact, as early as half a year ago, AMSL had already produced the first 1 prototype, and now this prototype is still in Intel's headquarters for production testing, which is no surprise for Intel.

Other chip manufacturers, such as TSMC, Samsung, Philips, and some companies in the United States and Europe, are all shareholders of AMSL, and they naturally knew the news long ago.

The real most excited person in the audience is Lao Huang, the boss of Nvidia who will be called father by countless miners in the future. Now he is emotionally watching the latest technology announced by AMSL on the stage, and then he walks to the representative of TSMC, which is The vice president of TSMC whispered next to him, "Brother, you must give me a hand this time!"

"What did you say?" As the vice president's expression changed slightly, he asked pretending not to understand the situation.

"Brother, let's not talk dark words. Of course, it is the first batch of 1nm chips. You must give it to us first. Our 50GTX is pointing to this batch of chips!" Lao Huang said bluntly.

"Your request is a little difficult to deal with. Don't look at the above. Thank God if there are more than ten lithography machines shipped this year. Half of the 10 must be from Intel, and the remaining five will be let Other companies are going to grab it, and our company can grab two, thank God!"

"The chips produced by these two companies must be given priority to other people, so don't even think about it!" The vice president said bluntly.

"I know, so I don't want this year's new film, I want next year's, but this year you have to give me a few hundred samples for me to develop, so around 07, our new generation of 8800GTX can be launched!" Lao Huang Said quickly.

"This... is a bit difficult!"

"For the sake of the national army, give me a hand!" Lao Huang grabbed the vice president's hand, and at the same time drew his little finger vigorously in the vice president's palm a few times. A clear expression suddenly appeared on the president's face and said, "Forget it, I'm afraid of you, next year I will try my best to win 1 slices for you!"

"Only 1 pieces? Isn't that too little? They will all be sold out in less than a day!" Lao Huang said hastily.

"Let's not talk about it, do you know how many companies in the world are staring at the goods now? Let me tell you, not only next year, but in the next three years, the supply of this goods will definitely be in short supply, and it will be impossible to grab it. I can agree Giving you 1 tablets next year is already a big face for you."

"Don't worry, I understand what you mean, you can get 1 chips from us anyway, but AMD will never get a chip in the next three years at least, Intel will not give them a chance!" The president said with a rather contented expression, and Lao Huang who was beside him also smiled slightly.

If this is the case, even if there are only 1 pieces, it would be a great thing.At present, my only competitor is AMD's graphics card. Now the market competition is very intense, and no one can beat anyone.

Then if two years later, Nvidia took out a high-end graphics card produced using the latest generation of chips, but AMD has nothing, then Nvidia can completely suppress AMD and dominate the graphics card field.

AMD will not be able to launch corresponding products until at least three years later, but this year is enough to completely defeat AMD.

As I said before, some of the expressions in the audience were joyful and others were worrying. The expressions of the representatives of AMD were the worst. They also realized that they might be doomed.

AMD has always been Intel's biggest competitor in the market, and the two sides fought back and forth at one time.But after the 90s, AMD was completely at a disadvantage, and it once reached the point of filing for bankruptcy several times.

If it weren't for the fact that someone borrowed money for blood transfusions at critical times, then AMD would have been dead for a long time, and there would be no ashes left.

Of course, if it wasn't Intel who lent money to itself.

That's right, it was his competitor Intel that lent money to AMD at a critical time to help the company survive.This kind of behavior looks very weird, and Intel is a big wrong, but in fact, Intel has nothing to do.

After all, the anti-monopoly law was still very strict at this time. Even Microsoft was almost divided into two by the anti-monopoly law, and Intel itself was the product of the birth of the anti-monopoly law, and they were terrified of opposing the anti-monopoly law.

The best way to get rid of the threat of the anti-monopoly law is to make the conditions for the establishment of the anti-monopoly law not exist, that is to say, there is a competitor in the market, and it is a competitor who occupies at least about 10% of the market.

But such a competitor is really hard to find. Under the strong strength of Intel, all the early competitors died out, and in the end, only an old rival like AMD remained.

Therefore, Intel must do everything possible to keep AMD alive, and even take the initiative to give up part of the market so that AMD can maintain a market share of about 10%, so that the anti-monopoly law will never be able to take effect.

Well, there is a not-so-appropriate idiom to describe this kind of practice in ancient China, which is called raising the bandits' self-respect.

It's just that Intel never dreamed that Kou would be killed by Kou himself.

After entering 2000, with the stagnation of lithography machine technology, AMD stood on the same level as Intel in terms of hardware. At this time, AMD introduced several masters in architecture and launched a new generation of architecture. In terms of performance, it is only a little bit worse than Intel, but the price is very beautiful, only about 2/3.

As a result, Intel was hit to the point where its market share was less than 60%, and this competitor really wanted to kill itself.

(End of this chapter)