Rebirth 08: Rise from copycat phones

Chapter 402 Yu Taihe's Artificial Intelligence Materials Science

Early August, Guangcheng.

The early morning sun shines through the tight curtains, bringing some light into the room.

After the alarm clock rang, Yu Taihe was confused for a while before opening his eyes and turning off the alarm on his phone.

Yu Taihe was in a good mood after getting up, opening the thick blackout curtains and looking at the tall buildings outside.

It was a right decision to buy a high floor. The feeling of standing on a high floor in the city and looking down is very good.

In fact, he had never thought about buying a house at first, but as he got older, especially after he officially graduated with a doctorate last year and successfully joined Zhiyun, his parents at home began to plan his lifelong event.

In addition, during the years of studying for a doctorate with his teacher, he has worked on many large projects. The teacher is also a decent person and has given him project bonuses several times, which total hundreds of thousands.

The most important thing is that right after he graduated with a doctorate, he joined the Guangcheng R&D Center of Zhiyun Group and became a senior engineer in the R&D center... In fact, he had already signed an employment agreement with Zhiyun Group and could start work immediately after graduating with a doctorate.

Based on his academic achievements and academic qualifications, Zhiyun Group finally offered him a very generous package, with a basic annual salary of over 500,000, which does not include year-end bonuses, project bonuses, and stock options.

In fact, for senior technical talents like Yu Taihe, the basic annual salary is only a small part, and the various bonuses and options at the end are the bulk of the income.

Several of his senior brothers also joined Zhiyun, and their combined annual income is basically over one million!

Such a high salary is what supports him to buy a house.

He clearly remembered that when he went to buy a house and applied for a mortgage after finding out that he was a senior engineer at Zhiyun, the bank immediately granted him the loan... There was no so-called loan difficulty at all.

You have to know that he had only been working for more than a month at that time.

Banks have their own reasons...Zhiyun employees generally have high incomes, especially the senior engineers, who are all very rich.

Now that he has a house, Yu Taihe, who has studied and worked in Guangzhou for many years, suddenly has a new understanding of this city, as if this city has become even more beautiful.

After getting up and washing up, Yu Tai washed up again, and when he was about to go out, he saw a new message in the family group on his mobile phone.

His younger brother sent a message in the group, saying that he would be on a business trip to the Shenzhen base in half a month, and would also stop by Guangzhou on the way.

Yu Taihe is very pleased with his younger brother who joined Zhiyun two years earlier than him. His younger brother was admitted to Tongcheng United Semiconductor College in the college entrance examination, which is jointly run by a university and Zhiyun Group to train students specifically for semiconductor talents.

The admission score for this major was very high back then, and the competition was even more difficult than for some ordinary majors in Peking University and Tsinghua University.

However, his younger brother was admitted successfully. During his college years, he even did his internship at Zhiyun Microelectronics' Tongcheng base. He signed an employment agreement with Zhiyun Microelectronics when he was a junior and officially joined Zhiyun Microelectronics right after graduation.

Now he is a chip process R&D engineer in Zhiyun Microelectronics... and his income is quite considerable... because his brother and his group of people are basically the first batch of professional advanced semiconductor process development engineers trained in China.

Not the ordinary kind, but ones using advanced technology... things like seven nanometers and five nanometers.

This kind of talent is still very valuable.

I immediately replied on WeChat: "Okay, I'll pick you up when the time comes, and I'll also pick up my third sister when the time comes!"

He also has a younger sister who is also a very good student and is currently studying for a master's degree at a university in Guangzhou.

The three siblings in his family are all good at studying, and they are all among the group of people whose destiny has been changed by knowledge... For this, he has always been grateful to his parents for supporting their studies even though they were poor. He also feels that this era is beautiful and has given a way out to people like them who have nothing but hard work.

While chatting on WeChat, he simply changed his clothes, took the elevator downstairs, and got into a black navy car after reaching the basement.

This is a sea blue SLMC 17 pure electric freedom version, and the landing price is about .

After buying a house last year, he spent a lot of money on decoration, so Yu Taihe waited until he stepped down this year to save enough money to buy a Hailan car that he had been dreaming of for a long time. He only picked up the new car in July.

He loves this car!
After picking up this car, he also gave a second-hand car he bought a few years ago to a junior fellow student who had just enrolled... This is a rather interesting little tradition that has been formed among them in recent years. Several senior fellow students who graduated previously gave their second-hand cars to new junior fellow students.

Their teachers and fellow disciples usually get along very well with each other.

In addition, these senior graduates are rich, and basically all of them join Zhiyun's R&D department. The annual salary is hundreds of thousands at least, and one or two million at most.

It’s fine to give away a second-hand car worth tens of thousands of dollars.

When I was studying, I accepted gifts from my senior classmates when I was very poor. Now that I have graduated and have a high salary, it is natural that I want to help my junior classmates.

After getting in the car, Yu Taihe drove to Guangcheng Zhiyun Technology Park, which was 20 minutes away by car. However, after entering the technology park, he continued driving for about ten minutes before arriving in front of a building and entering the underground parking lot.

This technology park, which takes more than ten minutes to drive on the internal roads, has Zhiyun logos and geographical signs with the two words "Zhiyun" everywhere, fully demonstrating the Zhiyun attributes of this place.

Guangcheng Zhiyun Technology Park is a super large base invested and built by Zhiyun Group in Guangcheng, with a total investment of more than 15 billion US dollars.

It covers a very large area, with three super-high-rise office buildings and more than ten medium and low-rise office buildings.

There is also a Zhiyun Supercomputing Center and a semiconductor base under Zhiyun Microelectronics, which is a large wafer factory nearby.

The entire science and technology park is exclusively occupied by Zhiyun Group, with no other companies. However, even with only Zhiyun Group, its scale is still very large.

In the entire science and technology park, there are more than 30,000 direct employees of Zhiyun Group working here, and this is just a main base. There are two branch bases not far away. In total, there are more than 60,000 Zhiyun employees working and living in the three bases.

It can accommodate tens of thousands more employees than Zhiyun’s Shenzhen headquarters.

Of course, this does not mean that Zhiyun Group has only 50,000 employees in Shenzhen... In fact, Zhiyun Group has a large number of employees in Shenzhen.

The Shenzhen headquarters park of Zhiyun Group is staffed by people from the headquarters and core R&D institutions, and there are no factories or the like inside.

But at the same time, Zhiyun Group actually has several branch bases in many places in Shenzhen.

In addition, Zhiyun Microelectronics' Shenzhen base is also a separate factory built in Anhua. Zhiyun Microelectronics alone has a large number of employees in the local area.

Generally speaking, operating a 12-inch wafer fab with a monthly production capacity of 50,000 wafers requires approximately 1,500 to 2,000 people.

Zhiyun Microelectronics has three production bases in Shenzhen, with a total of eight wafer fabs of various sizes. The employees who operate the factories and other employees in technical support, administrative support, marketing support and other fields, total about 15,000 people.

The number of employees of the entire Zhiyun Group in Shenzhen is about 80,000, which is still a very large number... After all, this is Zhiyun's hometown.

Guangzhou is the second city with the largest number of employees employed by Zhiyun Group, with more than 60,000 employees.

The entire Guangcheng Zhiyun Technology Park is actually similar to a small city... It is large in scale, has a large population, and has very complete supporting facilities.

The reason why Zhiyun Group established this large R&D and production base in Guangcheng is mainly to utilize the abundant local technical talent resources.

After all, Guangzhou, like Shenzhen, is a city for migrant workers, and many people from other places come here to look for jobs. Among them are not only some low-end laborers, but also a large number of high-level technical talents.

After all, for high-level technical talents, suitable job opportunities are only available in first- and second-tier cities, especially in a few first-tier cities.

At the same time, the local educational resources in Guangzhou are also good, much better than those in Shenzhen!

Zhiyun Group likes to build R&D centers in places with good educational resources and recruit high-level talents nearby. This is the case in Guangzhou, Jiangcheng, and then in Shanghai and Beijing. The reason is similar... there are many local talents.

Another thing that is different about the Guangcheng Zhiyun Technology Park is that, in addition to the messy R&D center that is very common in the Zhiyun Group, there is also a semiconductor factory.

This is the 28th factory of Zhiyun Microelectronics' Guangcheng production base, which was officially put into production at the beginning of this year. However, this factory does not produce logic chips, but storage chips.

To be precise, it produces DRAM and runs memory chips.

Although Zhiyun Microelectronics' chip manufacturing business is best known in the field of logic chips, its actual production capacity is the largest in storage chips. Moreover, its technology in the field of storage chips is at the world's top-notch level, and has even surpassed four stars in some cutting-edge fields.

The newly-commissioned Factory 28 is the best symbol of Zhiyun Group's achievements in storage chip manufacturing.

Because Fab 10 uses the B process, which is the second-generation process in the -nanometer process era. Of course, this name is just a nickname for the process, and the actual process node is nanometers. Fab does not have this level of process for mass production yet, and the industry predicts that it will take a few more months to see it.

In other words, in fact, Fourstar Semiconductor has fallen behind in the process competition in the running memory field and Zhiyun Microelectronics in the running memory field.

To do this is not easy.

It is mainly the sixteen nanometers in the field of storage chips. It is not the equivalent sixteen nanometers in the field of logic chip production, but the actual technological advancement of the sixteen nanometer process, which directly reduces the transistor spacing of the storage chip to this level.

The technical and process difficulty is extremely high, almost reaching the physical limit of Gulf Technology's most advanced HDUV-600B immersion lithography machine.

This lithography machine is currently the most advanced lithography machine in China. Except for its slightly lower production efficiency than ASML's NXT1980, its performance data in other aspects are similar... and the price is even cheaper.

Of course, it is not actually that cheap. One unit costs 80 million US dollars, which is 2 million more expensive than the previous Type A.

The expensive two million is mainly reflected in the increase in stability and production and sales.

As for the overlay accuracy, they are all the same, which is 2.5 nanometers.

At present, only by using this most advanced lithography machine can we stably produce logic chips with an equivalent of 10-nanometer process or even -nanometer process, and can we produce B process, and storage chips with an actual process node of -nanometer process.

The LPDDR10 chip produced by the 4B process of the 17th Factory is the running memory chip used in the new generation of Zhiyun S series mobile phones!

So when the S17 is released, the various chips it will be equipped with will not only be the world's top SOC, but also the DRAM, that is, the running memory chip, will also be the world's top; and the storage chip will also be the best.

Zhiyun's S series mobile phones use the best components and push the limits in every field. This is the design concept of Zhiyun's S series mobile phones and an important reason for establishing it as the world's top high-end mobile phone brand.

So when many mobile phone manufacturers, especially other domestic mobile phone manufacturers like to play with stacking materials, the stacking materials they play with are all marketing concepts. For example, the running memory can turn 3G into 4G, or even 6G...but they will not tell you what level of running memory they use.

The performance and cost of running memory under different technical standards can vary greatly.

Zhiyun Group's S series mobile phones also use stacking materials, but they use stacking materials to the limit of technology. While others use 20-nanometer node running memory, it uses -nanometer process node running memory.

When other competitors also used the running memory of the 18nm process node, Zhiyun turned around and used the new generation running memory of the 16nm process node.

It’s the same stacking, but the direction of stacking is different…

Zhiyun is pushing the limits of technology across the board, which has led to the emergence of S series phones with explosive performance in front of consumers. At the same time, due to the huge production and sales volume, the cost can be spread out. Therefore, although the S series phones are expensive, the entry-level version can still keep the price at just over 5,000 yuan.

This is a unique advantage that is difficult for other mobile phone manufacturers to obtain... Without the technical ability, you can’t learn how to do it like Zhiyun.

The running memory produced by the new 10B process will not only be supplied to the S series mobile phones with the new generation of LPDDR4 chip process, but will also be supplied to a series of other smart terminal products to be released in the second half of this year.

Including tablet computers, smart watches, business notebooks and other fields.

At the same time, it will also be officially supplied to the outside world.

The launch of the 10B process at the 1th plant actually created tremendous pressure on the semiconductor storage chip department of Four Star, because their Y process of the same level has not yet been put into large-scale production.

The reason why this technology can be put into production has something to do with Yu Taihe!
Of course, Yu Taihe is not working in semiconductors... the professional difference is too big. Yu Taihe is working in computer materials science... which is also different from traditional computer materials science. His research direction is more accurately called artificial intelligence materials science.

It’s quite simple to say. It is to use the big data model of artificial intelligence to conduct various analyses on materials, find various possibilities, and finally develop some new materials.

This is an important branch field of materials science within Zhiyun Group in recent years, and it has produced significant results many times.

Many of the key materials for Hailan Automobile's semi-solid-state batteries and Zhiyun Microelectronics' key semiconductor materials were developed by Yu Taihe, who is engaged in "artificial intelligence materials science."

Otherwise, why do you think he and his fellow seniors can easily earn high salaries of millions... Because they are working with the most cutting-edge materials technology of the time, and it is worth the price.

There isn't even a specialized discipline for this subject abroad... Even if there is, it's useless because their artificial intelligence technology is not good enough for practical application, let alone in the field of material research.

However, in Zhiyun Group, artificial intelligence materials science has been under development for many years, and a large number of material results have emerged, including a large number of various new materials!

Of course, there are relatively few new materials that can be used...but with so many random new materials out there, you never know when they can be used.

Last year, Yu Taihe worked on a materials project and produced several excellent new materials... Actually, he was not aiming for semiconductors. His main research direction is still in the silicon-based field. These new materials are actually by-products of the research process.

But when you’re dealing with materials, you don’t know what you’ve produced or what its use is.

So after Yu Taihe came up with several new materials, he also conducted a simple analysis, wrote a report, uploaded it to the database, and then threw it aside... As for whether they are useful or not and where they can be used... naturally there will be a lot of applied research project teams to search for information on various materials.

Coincidentally, one of the materials was discovered by the process department of Zhiyun Microelectronics and was found to be able to effectively improve process precision, so it was used directly.

Thanks to this new material, Yu Taihe also received a bonus of over 200,000 yuan, which was a pleasant surprise.

It’s always like this when it comes to dealing with materials… you never know what materials you’ll make tomorrow.

After a day of work, Yu Taihe left the institute at 5:30 in the afternoon, and on the way back he received a call from his hometown.

On the phone, his parents came to Guangcheng to reunite with him, and said that they now had a house, so the two of them could come and enjoy their lives, and there was no need to work so hard in their hometown.

But he was still rejected by his parents.

"It's not like I didn't go there last year, but I just couldn't get used to it. I didn't know anyone and didn't know where to go. It was like being in prison in my room every day."

"But if you get married and have kids, I'll come over and help you take care of the kids!"

"You are not young anymore, it's time to think about it!"

Listening to his parents' nagging, Yu Taihe did not feel impatient at all. Instead, he just listened to them until they finished nagging before hanging up the phone!
As for getting married and starting a family, he doesn't reject it, but he is unwilling to settle!

He has met some girls of the right age over the years, and several of them actively pursued him, but he rejected them all.

The reason is actually quite simple: they dislike the other person’s ugliness!

Even though he was born in a poor family and had no chance to meet goddesses during his studies and growth... but it did not stop him from yearning for goddesses... otherwise, why would he study so hard and strive for success?
Then it's all in vain.

(End of this chapter)