The Millennium Semiconductor Survival Guide.

Chapter 182 Xinxin Technology (8K!)
Hua Guo didn't know that in the future in the chip field, the division of labor would become more and more detailed, and semiconductor manufacturers would gradually specialize in a certain field.

The original vertical manufacturers, semiconductor manufacturers single-handedly from chip design to chip manufacturing are only Samsung and Intel.

Throughout the 90s, Huaguo's benchmarking learning objects in the semiconductor field were first neon companies and then Korean companies.

Samsung to be precise.

The appearance of Zhou Xin gave Huaguo another choice, which is to separate chip design and chip foundry, and design, manufacture, and other technologies in the upstream and downstream of the supply chain are all supplied by different companies.

As a big country, Huaguo will not abandon its original strategic line and cultivate a semiconductor company that takes both design and manufacturing into account.But they will not give up exploring new models, especially Shen Haishi, who hope to replicate the success of Silicon Valley in Zhangjiang.

Judging from Zhou Xin's experience, single-handed design and manufacturing will have technical advantages, and this advantage will become more obvious when the process is below 22nm.

Intel has mastered the chip design and manufacturing process in the 14nm field at the same time, which is an important reason why they can use 14nm to make the CPU with the strongest single-core performance.

Vertical manufacturing has technical advantages, but the development efficiency is not as good as the commercial division of labor of chip foundry and chip design.

The chip manufacturing department of later generations of Intel has always been in a leading position in the process, especially in the 2012nm process in 22, far surpassing TSMC and Samsung.

This vertical manufacturing model gave Intel great confidence, but after 22nm, the 14nm process was delayed for half a year. Later, Intel's process skipping became the norm, and then it outsourced chip manufacturing to TSMC.

So that in the end, it was able to single-handedly contract chip foundry and chip design on the most advanced manufacturing process, and only Samsung still persisted.

Chip manufacturing has reached the 3nm era, and Intel needs the support of TSMC's foundry capacity.

As strong as Intel, it has taken full advantage of technology in the first decade of the 21st century, but it will also fall behind due to the path dependence of technology research and development.Therefore, Zhou Xin did not have much confidence in this path.

It is not a sudden decision for Intel's future generations to find TSMC as a foundry, but the result of long-term accumulation.

There are two main situations in which Intel finds TSMC as a foundry. One is that the department that was originally acquired, such as Infineon’s wireless department, already has some RF circuits that use the older TSMC 28nm process. This is not necessary because of the original plan. Transfer order for transfer order.

Another situation is that Intel itself caused the problem.Production capacity planning is a long-term interlocking process, and a problem in one link will have an impact on the future.

Build a factory, prepare raw materials, train engineers, adjust machines, and start small-scale trial production after the technical department debugs the process formula.During the trial production process, the yield rate was adjusted on the one hand, and the chip design team started the design one to two years earlier on the other.

Finally, at the agreed time between the chip foundry and the chip design, the design team handed over the design plan to the fab, and began to make layers of masks slowly, and finally mass-produced, packaged, tested, and shipped.

Under the original plan, the development of Intel's 10nm process went smoothly. The 14nm factory is mass-producing, and the 10nm factory is slowly testing and getting ready.The chip design team has basically completed the design on the 10nm process.

For Intel, after the 10nm process is realized, which chip design department has priority?Graphics processor, because the architecture of the graphics processor is consistent, the design cycle is short, and the design blueprint can be produced quickly.Then CPU and Server began to produce 10nm chips. The output of 10nm continues to increase, and the production capacity of 14nm is slowly released.

Among Intel's 10 employees, apart from the core departments of TMG/CPU/Server, there are many peripheral organizations affiliated to Intel that also need chips.

Most of these peripheral organizations are collections bought by Intel's former CEO Brian, who squandered his money.For example, FPGA company Altera, which was a little famous but gradually forgotten, bought the Infineon wireless department in order to return to the mobile phone market, catch up with the popular artificial intelligence Nervana, and self-driving Mobileye.

After deducting these large luxuries, there are still some basic IP, IO, memory, and a small CPU Atom.Finally, there are some peripheral organizations that are not large and can be dispatched by an official car.Or a group purely doing research and publishing papers, helping TMG to be an advanced chip design organization for testing chips.In short, there are many mountains inside Intel, full of wonders.

What's more, there are some wandering warrior organizations who have been silently floating in Intel for decades to make a living for unknown reasons.When Zhou Xin was an intern at Intel, a senior in the industry he knew collectively referred to these groups as the children raised by his stepmother who were not cared for.

In fact, these wandering warrior organizations used to belong to formal organizations.It’s just helpless that these formal organizations have been disbanded. Like Intel’s foundry on a whim, the leaders of the design department had to help others within Intel for the survival of their employees.

For example, the server department needs to do a memory control IC. There is not enough manpower, so temporarily let the wandering warriors take over the job. If you face too much competition, like encountering Indian Bangalore who uses crowd tactics and loves to boast that everything is fine, take away the job. Or if you meet a Chinese engineer who is desperate to work in Bincheng, Malaysia, you can only touch your nose and pick up some leftover jobs that others can't see the future.

Intel also made chips for ZTE, and these groups that help ZTE make chips are the wandering warriors.In short, Intel is such a world where the weak can eat the strong.
These various internal organizations decide whether to enter 10nm or continue to use 14nm excess capacity according to the importance of their contribution to the company's profits.
As a result, Intel's 10nm production was difficult, and the chip design team was idle.More importantly, what about CPU/Server/GT?Had to continue to occupy 14nm production capacity.

The worst situation is coming. The unit in charge of process research and development in TMG is TD (technology development). TD is already in the limit state of everyone’s overwork. Before 14nm was done, the main force went to 10nm.A small group of engineers are left to maintain 14nm, and then a small part of elites are separated to go to 7nm.Now 14nm will continue to be developed, but also 14nm+, 14nm++, 14nm+++, which is Intel’s criticized toothpaste squeeze.

There will be fewer people assigned to 10nm, and even fewer people will be assigned to 7nm.Forcibly let yourself sink deeper and deeper.Leading to one wrong step, one step at a time.

Moreover, the 14nm production capacity has been given to the company's lifeline CPU/Server, so what about other departments?Life is still going on, and ICs still have to be shipped. In order to survive, everyone has made troubles. Infineon’s wireless department, which is relatively powerful, jumped out and said, we used TSMC in the Infineon era, and we have a happy cooperation. Let us Go ahead and use it.

The AI ​​team said that our AI chip can't wait, how much data is waiting for us to train, Nvidia has surpassed us by several blocks.So we must use the best manufacturing process. Without Intel's 10nm, give me TSMC's 7nm.

Some fringe departments that help the server system to make peripheral chips started to speak loudly. If they don’t ship to us, the server will not be able to ship either. Everyone will die together.

At this point, Intel has no other choice, and opening up orders to TSMC is the last resort.As a listed company, Intel has the obligation to make profits to its shareholders, but making profits does not mean that it must produce chips by itself.

As for Intel's starting to place orders with TSMC, it had serious side effects on its own company system, and the production of CPUs also began to use TSMC inexplicably.

Zhou Xin is very familiar with this period of history. Hu Zhengming originally went to TSMC as the chief technology officer. Later, Liu Deyin, the chairman of TSMC, was just Hu Zhengming's follower in the first decade of the millennium.

To be precise, Zhou Xin has a good understanding of TSMC's history. TSMC's 7nm process foundry was forced to start at the beginning.

In the beginning, it was all to compete with Samsung for orders. Judging from the OEM price and the good product rate at that time, even the cost could not be recovered, and it was completely relying on government subsidies to smooth out the losses.

Of course, the advantage is that after the initial stage, relying on market monopoly, TSMC's gross profit rate is close to 50.00%, which is much higher than that of Samsung, which only designs its own chips.Samsung also accepts a small amount of chip foundry from Qualcomm and Nvidia, but Nvidia and Qualcomm are particularly aggressive in lowering prices.

Both TSMC and Samsung are backed by the government, and the government would rather give them high subsidies than let them fall.

This is even more so for Intel. Even if Intel loses money in its own chip production, TSMC and Samsung can achieve higher profits, and they cannot give up chip foundry.

Because Korea and Wanwan, where Samsung and TSMC are located, are too close to China, if there is a Cold War in the future, these two regions will be on the front line of confrontation. The risk is too high, and American will lose its source of chips.

This is why American has to use various means to force or lure TSMC to build a factory in American.It's just that TSMC was stunned for a while, and Samsung delayed infinitely by dragging words.

From a long-term perspective, Zhou Xin is more inclined to separate chip foundry and chip design.As strong as Apple, the chip foundry should also be handed over to TSMC.

The only Intel that persists has a strong advantage in the entire ecology. Most of the software in the server, such as operating systems, compilers, databases, etc., are all developed on the Intel chip ecology.

All of these require a long period of running-in and debugging to reach a stable state.

If it is replaced with another company's CPU, theoretically there should be no problem with direct compatibility, but in the actual operation process, it will definitely require a lot of debugging to reach the state of production.So unless the CPUs of other manufacturers, such as AMD, are much better, the company has no incentive to replace Intel's CPUs.

In the future, some countries will replace Intel out of national security considerations, which will expand unlimited prospects for their own IT manufacturers.

Therefore, if he wants to adopt Intel's model, Zhou Xin will face two problems. The first is that it is not a success if he is stronger than Intel, and Zhou Xin also has no confidence.

In the absence of a system, it is impossible for one person to control all nodes from chip design to chip foundry, not to mention climbing upstream lithography machines and high-end materials.

There are too many nodes involved, and the approach of innovative enterprise clusters is the most feasible.

The second problem is that no matter how good Zhou Xin is in the semiconductor field, he cannot convince all Huaguo companies to replace American's IT software and hardware with domestic equipment and domestic operating systems at this point in time.

Therefore, the government appropriately tilts resources and cultivates a group of competitive companies in the integrated circuit field through marketization. These companies were able to occupy a certain market share in the upstream and downstream of the semiconductor industry chain by their own capabilities 18 years ago.

Then, after 18 years, under the changing macro environment, these companies will grow rapidly relying on the Huaguo market and replace foreign industrial chains.

This is why Zhou Xin values ​​​​Zhang Jiang so much.

In the original time and space, Zhangjiang did not play the role of planning, and there is a gap from the planning when Zhangjiang Hi-Tech Park was established.

And Zhou Xin hopes to rely on Xinxin Technology, a model project, and capital advantages to attract talents and form a scale effect in the industry.

Xinxin Semiconductor and Xinxin lithography machine are just the first step.

And Matrix is ​​the second step. Later generations of Apple rely on the high profit margin of mobile phones to improve performance in the field of mobile phone chips regardless of cost.Because in any case they will be able to make a profit through the brand premium of the iPhone.

Qualcomm needs to consider the cost of designing chips. Even Android phones with the most advanced manufacturing process cannot match the price of iPhones.

Another thing to say is that in the field of chip manufacturing, wage costs only account for a fraction of revenue, and the most expensive cost comes from equipment depreciation.

Only by relying on the success of the matrix and forming high profits, relying on high profits to improve performance in the chip field.

At this stage, SMIC will not be stuck by foreign countries, and can catch up with the most advanced progress of foreign countries under the tilt of orders.

After SMIC catches up with the most advanced foreign manufacturing process, it will gradually allow the domestic chip supply chain to enter the SMIC supply chain, starting from testing.

Only in this way can a positive cycle be formed.

When Zhou Xin went to Zhangjiang for research, he thought that after he did this, a large number of semiconductor companies located in Zhangjiang would definitely cause Zhangjiang's housing prices to soar faster than expected.

In future generations, even those who have achieved modest success in entrepreneurship like Zhou Xin will grit their teeth looking at the housing prices in Shanghai, and feel that it is not worth buying, and feel that something is missing if they don’t buy it.

The progress of Xinxin Technology in Zhangjiang is smoother than Zhou Xin's expectation.

Unlike Xinxin Technology's success, Guan Jianying's cooperation with SMIC was very difficult.

According to the original time and space, SMIC's 250nm process will be in trial production in September 2001, and mass production will start in the first quarter of 9.

That is to say, the current 220nm prototype of Xinxin lithography machine can fully meet the requirements of SMIC.

Guan Jianying, as the general manager of Xinxin Technology, will also be responsible for part of the business of Xinxin lithography machines. In his opinion, a new chip foundry company has emerged in Huaguo, and it was founded by the well-known Zhang Rujing in the industry.

Xinxin Technology and SMIC naturally have a lot of complementary places. Xinxin lithography machine can fully cooperate with SMIC in depth, and the test of Xinxin lithography machine can be carried out in parallel with SMIC's factory construction.

Moreover, when Zhou Xin was in Shenhai, he also had a good talk with Zhang Rujing. Both of them expressed that they would strengthen cooperation in the future, especially in the field of lithography machines.

As a result, after Zhou Xin returned to San Francisco, Guan Jianying wanted to push the matter away, but SMIC did all kinds of Tai Chi and didn't accept it at all.

Zhou Xin felt that there were still too few bargaining chips, and even SMIC couldn't handle it.

Unlike what the outside world thinks, SMIC recruited people from TSMC with high salaries. The salary given by SMIC was only about [-]% of that of TSMC.Most of those who choose to go to SMIC are marginalized engineers at TSMC.

Zhou Xin generally knows why SMIC is unwilling to cooperate with Xinxin lithography machine. The fundamental reason is that Xinxin lithography machine is immature.

For SMIC, which wants to start production as soon as possible, where does it have the time and energy to help Xinxin Semiconductor test prototypes?

Zhou Xin thought to himself, still looking for an opportunity to hold SMIC. Although it is divided into different companies to do this, the chip foundry and chip design are separated, which has little impact now. After the 22nm process is below, it will affect performance.

After the 22nm process, chip design must be done together with the chip foundry.

The pros and cons of a chip don't just depend on the process.The most typical case is that Nvidia defeated AMD's TSMC 14nm chip (GTX 7 vs Radeon VII) with TSMC's 2080nm process, which has higher performance and even lower power consumption. This is the charm of architecture design.

After 22nm, the design rules of the chip manufacturer will not tell the chip design company. TSMC will help HiSilicon to manufacture. It is impossible for it to tell HiSilicon how to set the NAND gate layout of the 7nm chip, and the MOS of the inverter on the clock line. in which position.

This is a unique secret accumulated by chip manufacturers based on experience, and it belongs to TSMC's housekeeping skills.Therefore, Huaguo's chip design company will only give TSMC a general pattern, and then add a logical sequence.

These logic sequences need to be taped out multiple times to realize. HiSilicon is responsible for the general direction of the chip, and TSMC will make adjustments in the general direction, how to design the specific layout, and how to do the mask.

The effect is naturally not as good as Intel and Samsung, and it can start from the bottom.

This is why chips from Qualcomm and AMD are no match for chips from Samsung and Intel.

700 billion may seem like a lot, but in fact it is not the same thing when it is actually operated.

When the Nasdaq bubble burst, Zhou Xin acquired ARM and NVIDIA. In fact, Zhou Xin was most coveted by Applied Materials.

Applied Materials has almost monopolized all equipment except lithography machines, but these equipments are not as famous as lithography machines.

But even if the bubble bursts, the market value of Applied Materials is still 1000 billion U.S. dollars. If you want to hold shares, you must prepare at least twice the capital.

Of course, the acquisition is not very useful. It is impossible for American to watch you move the R&D and production of Applied Materials to Huaguo.

"Newman, I came to the school recently, and I need to communicate with you about some details about your thesis." Chenming.

"Okay, Professor, I'll stop by as soon as possible," Newman said.

In addition to promoting enterprise qq among companies under Zhou Xin’s name such as Riot Games, Matrix and NewPay, academic organizations such as CAAS have also purchased enterprise qq.

When the enterprise qq was first launched, the members thought: What is the difference between this thing and ICQ?
However, considering that most of the funds for CAAS came from Zhou Xin, the procurement company QQ had no objection, since it was spending Zhou Xin's own money anyway.

Moreover, in order to expand the business of Tencent, the enterprise qq was sold to CAAS at a very low price.

At the beginning, most of the members were not accustomed to using corporate QQ to communicate, and everyone was still accustomed to email.

One is because you have formed a habit after sending and receiving emails, and the other is that you can reply to emails after writing intermittently, and you don’t need to reply to others immediately.

Instant messaging software is different. The communication on instant messaging software is a continuous conversation. It is not good for you to stop for too long in the middle of the conversation before replying to others.

When enterprise qq was first launched inside CAAS, few people used it.It wasn't until the first anniversary of the establishment of CAAS that Zhou Xin started to use the software slowly after he pulled in a few groups with his enterprise QQ.

The most used function is to create a group, and then upload some paper materials in the group for everyone to discuss.

Members of CAAS call this a discussion group, which is mainly a discussion group for topics, and later there are various groups for eating, drinking and having fun, and local friends groups are established.

Sometimes the promotion of software needs an opportunity.

This does not include Hu Zhengming. Hu Zhengming liked the enterprise QQ very much from the very beginning, because he could finally communicate with others whenever he thought of anything, without having to think about the email format.

Therefore, the most frequently used enterprise QQ is not Zhou Xin, but Hu Zhengming. Too many friends who join CAAS can exchange feelings through enterprise QQ.

At present, only enterprise qq is a social software that requires the real names of acquaintances.

After the enterprise QQ entered American, personal QQ was also aggressive in American.

NewPay’s second round of financing, the main participants are the investment banking departments of Wells Fargo and Citibank, two mainstream American banks. In addition to banks, it is Wal-Mart.

As the only non-financial institution, it has invested in NewPay, which has become Wal-Mart's biggest benefit in the millennium capital market.Shares jumped 7% on the day the news was officially announced.

After Wal-Mart invested in NewPay, Wal-Mart purchased Enterprise QQ from Tencent, and Wal-Mart deployed local Enterprise QQ on servers in large and medium-sized cities in American.

"Walmart can regard the group as an online release board. After inviting users to join the group, it will regularly release some discount information and limited-time discount information.

Not only can you send discount information, but you can also send information about the latest products on sale. "

This is also the key point for enterprise qq to attract Wal-Mart to purchase enterprise qq.

Compared with offline leaflets, it is much more convenient to rely on group chat to send information.

Of course, there will be a problem with this, that is, the communication cost is too high, because there are too many customers in Wal-Mart stores, it is impossible for you to help customers add groups one by one, and now there is no QR code scanning to add groups.

In addition, the number of computers is limited, and it is impossible to put some computers in every store to help users add groups, which is very costly.

At present, Walmart can only print the group number under the receipt, and when handing it to the user, the cashier will remind you.

At the same time, advertisements are placed on the media, reminding users that they can join groups to receive benefits.

This strength is too weak and the conversion rate is limited.

Even after users join the group, they rarely pay attention to group messages in real time.

Therefore, the explosion of the use of enterprise QQ among the user groups must be based on Thanksgiving in December, when the online supermarket created by NewPay and Wal-Mart went online, and the situation improved.

After the user selects a specific offline store on the Wal-Mart online supermarket, after purchasing the goods, he completes the online payment with NewPay. After the online payment, the mobile phone number registered with NewPay will receive a text message.

The text message contains the order number, mobile phone number and SMS verification code.

The user takes the mobile phone to the offline store and reports the order number to the dedicated online service clerks, who will check the mobile phone number and verification code and package the goods directly to the user.

That is, online shopping, offline pickup.

This model of ordering online and picking up offline did not become popular in Europe until 2015.

Wal-Mart took the lead in launching this model, and the new e-commerce model made Amazon feel like a formidable enemy.

The results proved that their vigilance was correct. After Wal-Mart launched online ordering and offline pickup, Amazon was the first to be hit.

Because I choose online shopping, it is to save trouble. Millennium American’s online shopping is not cheap, and many products are even more expensive than offline.

And online shopping is also easy, and there is no shipping fee. You can buy it before you go out, and you can take a taxi to Walmart on the way home from get off work, and you can buy what you want to buy in 5 minutes.

Millennium Wal-Mart's offline stores have a much wider range of radiation than express delivery sites.

"Newman, you're giving Wal-Mart at least 5% of your idea, and I'm kind of jealous of Wal-Mart.

This plan is enough to support an Internet company with a scale of tens of billions. If it were before 2000, the scale of hundreds of billions was possible. "After Wal-Mart's online shopping function was launched, Bill Gates complained when he was having dinner with Zhou Xin.

"For Wal-Mart, they have a new growth point. From the perspective of business form, they have given users more choices and opened the gap between them and other supermarket brands.

The advantage of online Wal-Mart will last at least half a year.If other supermarket brands cannot access NewPay, the advantage will be longer than half a year.

If I were you, I would choose to make this product myself and cooperate with all supermarkets. You are responsible for the purchase and payment on the Internet, and the supermarket is responsible for the offline supply. "

In order to obtain this idea, Wal-Mart signed a long-term exclusive cooperation agreement with NewPay. In the next five years, NewPay will be Wal-Mart's only electronic payment channel.

If it wasn't for this condition, Zhou Xin wouldn't have helped them design this mechanism.

Because Wal-Mart is a listed company, this exclusive agreement will be announced sooner or later, so Zhou Xin directly explained it to Bill Gates, and then continued:
"The business model of ordering online and picking up offline is very simple, and the only threshold is electronic payment, but besides NewPay, there are several electronic payment options on the market.

And even if they choose NewPay as their partner, NewPay will not refuse. In this way, the advantages of electronic payment are gone.

This business model requires strong control and influence. I need to control the update of goods in each supermarket, I need to connect with different supermarkets, and I need to ensure that users can pick up goods offline, which is related to warehouse management and goods supply.

Then there are countless supermarkets in 51 states of the United States. My reputation is too great to do this. I am afraid that even before the San Francisco Bay Area is occupied, a bunch of Internet companies with the same business model will emerge.

Not to mention that traditional supermarkets can also do this business.This is the category of cakes that look delicious but are actually unpalatable English dishes.

Only a company like Wal-Mart has the control and confidentiality capabilities to allow the entire United States to go online at the same time.

And before the launch of the commercial, there were only rumors, but no more specific news. "

Before the online Wal-Mart was launched, there were rumors that Newman had reached an in-depth cooperation with Wal-Mart and designed an app for Wal-Mart.

This news is especially popular among Wal-Mart investors. They swear: "If Newman doesn't cooperate deeply with Wal-Mart, why would NewPay accept Wal-Mart's investment? Obviously Newman sees the potential of Wal-Mart."

It was later confirmed that Zhou Xin did help Wal-Mart design the online Wal-Mart. Sometimes the news of the secondary market is true, but the timing of retail investors getting the news will be lagging behind.

The CEO of Wal-Mart claimed in an interview with reporters: “Yes, Newman helped us design the online Wal-Mart. He is a genius in the product field. 10 billion in revenue, this is a very exaggerated figure."

Wal-Mart's annual revenue in 2000 was only 1650 billion U.S. dollars, and it was only about 1500 billion U.S. dollars in the American area.

As American's largest e-commerce website, Amazon's annual sales in 2000 were only 58 billion.

After the Wal-Mart CEO's interview was released, Amazon's stock price continued to plummet. Originally affected by the burst of the Nasdaq bubble, Amazon's share price shrank by 80%.

Online Wal-Mart’s revenue in the first month has reached 10 billion, and its annual revenue is expected to far exceed Amazon’s when it just launched. Why do investors still invest in Amazon?

Wal-Mart feels that it has made a profit. Not only has it acquired nearly 10% of NewPay's shares, but it has also successfully found a second growth point for the company.

It is very difficult for traditional enterprises to integrate with the Internet, and it is even more difficult for traditional retailers.

It is not a loss for Zhou Xin and NewPay. With the two payment scenarios of Wal-Mart and Riot Games, NewPay can be guaranteed to be invincible.

When the mobile Internet matures, NewPay will firmly occupy the first place with the help of hardware.

Since the current mobile phone does not have a browser function, the payment confirmation can only be done through the verification code, and there is no way to scan the QR code.

If you have a browser, you can jump to the web page to display the QR code through the SMS link.

2G networks can do this.

Therefore, Zhou Xin is eagerly looking forward to the launch of Matrix. When Matrix is ​​launched, online shopping and offline pickup will be more convenient.

The success of online Wal-Mart is just another verification of Zhou Xin's halo.

This caused Bill Gates to be obsessed with NewPay. With NewPay showing its power in various channels, after the launch of Xbox, Microsoft is bound to accept the electronic payment function.

Bill Gates has fully realized the importance of NewPay, which is by no means as simple as an online bank.

　I know the progress is slow, I can only add updates to make up for the progress, and I updated 8K today!

　　Within the scope of the crow's ability, the crow will try to update as much as possible.

　　
　
(End of this chapter)