Reborn since 1993

Chapter 395: A Solitary Sail from the East

The two core businesses of Doxin Semiconductor are lithography machines and chip research and development. Doxin Semiconductor has basically been doing these two things since the moment it was founded, and this will continue in the future as long as Doxin Semiconductor exists!

In terms of chips, Doxin Semiconductor is currently only responsible for design and R&D, while production is outsourced to Shougang NEC Corporation.

If we only talk about the chip business, then Doxin Semiconductor is definitely profitable, and it earns much more than you might imagine.

Other chip manufacturers are also affected by the industry cycle and have unstable orders, but for Dongxin Semiconductor, all the orders it receives are internal orders from its parent company. The entire Dongling Hi-Tech's chips, motherboards, optical sensors, etc. are all orders placed with Dongxin Semiconductor.

But the lithography machine project is different. The difficulty in this regard is really too great. The most critical thing is that domestic lithography machine companies have basically been wiped out.

This is not as simple as saying one sentence. The companies that developed lithography machines are gone, and there are no chip manufacturers. The domestic companies that provide parts and components for the entire lithography machine industry chain have basically disappeared in the past decade.

When countless people determined that the domestic lithography machine industry was completely hopeless, many companies and practitioners had already withdrawn or changed careers in the past decade.

This is just like NASA in the past, which advertised its trip to the moon all over the world in the 1960s and 1970s.

But decades later, when questioned, NASA found it difficult to prove itself. It only needed to repeat the feat of that year and send people to the moon again to break all doubts and prove America's technological dominance to the world once again.

But it was difficult for NASA to achieve everything it had originally planned. After much difficulty, it launched a star-rated passenger plane through Boeing and sent people to the space station, but in the end... they could not come back.

The interstellar airliner that was praised to the sky had a leak. Of course, the leak was definitely not caused by America. It was because the aluminum alloy supplied by India, no, it was the titanium alloy that was substandard. In any case, Boeing and NASA will not be blamed.

As for the people sent to the space station, what should they do if they can't come back? What else can they do? They can only play mahjong and throw eggs on it...

In this day and age, when America is at its peak, no one in America would believe that they could be so lame as to send a person to the space station.

The reason why NASA could no longer send people to the moon in the past was that over the past few decades, most of the companies in the American aerospace industry chain had basically disappeared. Almost all of them had transformed or closed down. Even if they assembled parts according to the drawings, they could not find the companies that made the parts. The drawings were no different from waste paper.

There are only a few laboratories left in China that are still engaged in the research and development of lithography machines. The most famous ones are the Huaqing Laboratory and several research and development teams of the Academy of Sciences. They are not companies, but just keep the spark for domestic lithography machines.

However, the current market situation of domestic lithography machines has put Dongxin Semiconductor in an awkward position. It has no suppliers of parts and components at all. It has to either buy them from overseas or develop them on its own. For overseas purchases, it mainly buys parts from Nippon Benzene, but even if it wants to buy them, it may not be able to get them.

This makes the research and development progress of Dongxin Semiconductor's lithography machine project really disappointing. It is only because of Li Dongling's support that the Dongxin Semiconductor lithography machine research and development team has been given enough funds and time. Otherwise, if there was another big sponsor, this research and development team would have been disbanded long ago...

As for Dongxin Semiconductor, whether it should continue to develop lithography machines, just look at what happened to the previous Chrysanthemum Factory and domestic companies that needed chip manufacturers after they were banned from selling chips by America.

It is estimated that Canon, which just released a 350-nanometer FPA lithography machine for etching 8-inch wafers this year, probably did not expect that this lithography machine, which could be considered an antique after decades, and has been through many hands, would be snapped up in China more than 170 years later, with the price of one machine being driven up to million US dollars.

You should know that this brand new Canon lithography machine is now priced at about 350 million US dollars. It has been used for years and has been promoted by so many companies that it is now out of use. After more than years, it can still retain half of its value and is still being snapped up.

A few years ago, those who were hoarding pagers and preparing to sell them at a higher price must have cried with envy after hearing about the experience of the lithography machines. Although they are all collecting antiques, the difference in treatment is too great. If they collected a batch of second-hand lithography machines of this era and kept them for a few decades and then sold them, they would probably still make a profit.

This is the influence of lithography machines in China. The price of an antique can be hyped up 17 times. It is easy to imagine to what extent the latest model of lithography machines can be hyped up.

Sometimes, having and not having are two completely different concepts. If you don’t have it, the other party will really take action to cut your losses. Similarly, if there are no domestic products, foreign companies will really take advantage of you!
"Dongxin Semiconductor's current chip production capacity has been severely affected. Shougang NEC's production capacity is used to produce chips for NEC, and it is impossible to give all the production capacity to Dongxin Semiconductor!"

Wu Xinyi mentioned to Li Dongling the problem of insufficient production capacity of Doxin Semiconductor.

Currently, there are only two companies in China that can manufacture chips, Shougang NEC and Huajing. However, the latter is only nominally capable of production. It has been built for six or seven years, but has never been able to start production. As for major players in the domestic chip industry, such as Shanghai Microelectronics and SMIC, they have not yet started to emerge. After all, even TSMC and VIA in Taiwan have just begun to emerge. Currently, there is a technological gap between players in the chip and lithography machine industry around the world, but there is no generation gap.

Even though the domestic lithography machine industry has weakened in the past few years, it was not because it was crushed into ashes by Japan's Nikon's lithography machines. It was just because of the gap in production cost, yield rate, and technology. Foreign chips were cheap and easy to use, so naturally they started to purchase them from abroad. Without domestic chips, domestic lithography machines naturally had no place and began to die out.

Doxin Semiconductor's chips are manufactured by Shougang NEC. As for Shougang NEC, just by hearing the name, you can tell that it was jointly established by Shougang and NEC Corporation.

Shougang NEC's technology and semiconductor equipment are all provided by NEC NEC. NEC is also the second largest shareholder of Shougang NEC, holding 40% of the shares. But in fact, in terms of technology, Shougang NEC is completely controlled by NEC NEC, and even the entire Shougang NEC is greatly influenced by NEC NEC.

The reason why NEC cooperates with Shougang is to increase its production capacity.

Therefore, in essence, Shougang NEC is a chip foundry for NEC, and producing chips for Dongxin Semiconductor is in a certain sense a "private job". When there is a conflict between the orders of Dongxin Semiconductor and NEC, Shougang NEC must give priority to completing NEC's orders even if it wants to make money from Dongxin Semiconductor.

Who let NEC control the technology? If Shougang NEC doesn't obey, the subsequent technology, equipment and production lines will not be able to be upgraded...

But this made Dongxin Semiconductor helpless. Its parent company was placing orders like crazy, but it couldn't deliver the goods. The production capacity of Xiaolingtong was insufficient. Not only Duan Youli was angry, but Wu Xinyi was too.

This year, Wu Xinyi has gone to Yanjing countless times to coordinate chip production capacity issues with Shougang NEC.

"To increase chip production capacity, Dongxin Semiconductor has two options. The first option is to find other chip foundries, such as TSMC and UMC in Taiwan, or seek help from chip foundries in Japan and America.

As for the second option, it is for Dongxin Semiconductor to build its own semiconductor production base! "

Hearing Wu Xinyi's words, Ren Yuefeng, Hu Zixian and others couldn't help but rub their teeth. They knew that semiconductors would burn money, but they didn't expect that it would burn so much money. Although it doesn't cost billions of dollars to build a semiconductor company now like in later generations, as long as the construction starts, a few hundred million RMB can be thrown in and basically no bubble will come out.

For example, Shougang NEC cost about 500 million RMB to build. However, Shougang NEC is very special. It was a student taught hand-in-hand by Nippon Benzene NEC. The factory construction, technology, equipment and experience were all provided by Nippon Benzene NEC. These are difficult to measure with funds.

The most obvious example is Huajing. It claimed to have invested 2 billion yuan, but now it is still unable to produce. I don’t know how many engineers have changed, including Wu Xinyi, who also came from Huajing...

Li Dongling rubbed his brows. The current situation of Doxin Semiconductor basically met his original expectations.

When Dongxin Semiconductor was first established, Li Dongling planned to let Dongxin Semiconductor learn from MediaTek. MediaTek never acted arrogantly or anything, and its mission was to survive and make money.

So MediaTek, by bending down, can develop movements for VCD manufacturers and mobile phone chips for MP3 and copycat mobile phones. It may not look very high-end, but it is these orders that keep it alive.

Li Dongling also planned these tactics for Doxin Semiconductor. No matter what the order was, as long as it could make money, he would do it first. Only if he survived, he would be qualified to challenge companies such as Intel, Texas Instruments, Infineon, and Toshiba.

But designing chips is different from producing chips. The latter requires a huge amount of money to survive.

But if we don’t produce chips ourselves and chips cannot be produced domestically, and we have to find other manufacturers to do the manufacturing, that is equally unsafe. In the past, HiSilicon was tricked by TSMC.

"call"

Li Dongling looked at Wu Xinyi and said, "Use both solutions together. We can first place orders with other chip foundries. In addition, if necessary, Dongxin Semiconductor can build its own semiconductor production company!"

Wu Xinyi was delighted. Since Li Dongling didn't refuse, that meant there was a chance!

(End of this chapter)