The cost of setting up a factory in the United States was too high, and Qualcomm considered building a factory in Asia.

However, the United States must at least have its own wafer factory. First, it can be used as a technology research and development base. Second, the three holes of the cunning rabbit, the factories are all established in Asia, in case there is a good one, the factories are all seized, wouldn't the company be able to produce its own chips?

So, now it's safest to build a factory in the U.S. and then a branch in Asia!

The established fab wants to achieve the 8-inch specification, and the technical requirements are very strict. If Qualcomm wants to do it in one step, it really has to spend a lot of money! To improve the specification level of the wafer factory, it mainly depends on the production materials, advanced production equipment and production technology!

The material is okay, and the expensive one is not an exaggeration.

The production equipment is so expensive that people want to vomit blood!!

Let's not talk about other equipment, let's talk about the lithography machine to be used!

Lithography equipment is the most critical equipment for the production of semiconductor chips, and it is one of the most expensive!

High-end lithography machine is known as the world's most sophisticated instrument, if you hear that a high-end lithography machine sells for tens of millions of euros, don't be surprised, this is very normal, especially is so expensive!! high-end lithography machine can be called the flower of the modern optical industry, its manufacturing is so difficult, only a few companies in the world can manufacture. The international brands are mainly the three major brands of the Netherlands A**L (lenses from Germany), Japan's Nikon and Japan's Canon.

What is a lithography machine and why is it so complicated?

In fact, to put it simply, the lithography machine is an enlarged SLR, which prints the designed integrated circuit pattern on the mask to the light-sensitive material through the exposure of light to form a pattern. However, the core is the lens, and this lens is not an ordinary lens, 2 meters high and 1 meter in diameter, or even larger! How small the nanometer is, anyway, it is difficult to distinguish with the naked eye! And the lithography machine has to engrave lines on the chip...... That's a lot of difficulty!!

The United States is far inferior to Japan in terms of lithography machines, but the best lithography machine company is still the Dutch A**L company! A**L company's lithography machine occupies 60% of the market share in the mid-end market. It occupies more than 80% of the market share in the high-end market, completely beating the two lithography machine companies in Japan!

Intel, TSMC, and Samsung Group will all invest in A**L in the future......

So here's the problem. The fat is right in front of you, what to do?

Actually, there is nothing to hesitate about, "eat" and then say......

Like Intel, TSMC. Samsung Group Company, in the future, they will have dozens of lithography machines in any factory under their control, and if all the factories are combined, I don't know how many lithography machines are needed...... A rough calculation, each 50 million euros, more than half of the profit, even if only 100 lithography machines are sold a year, it will not be net 2.5 billion euros!

It's 1991, and semiconductors aren't as advanced as they used to be. The market capitalization of natural production equipment companies will not be very high!

If you want to buy early, you have to spend a lot of money if you are late!

TSMC spent 870 million euros and could only get 5% of the shares, and now 870 million euros can buy the entire A**L company!!

What's more, once the company develops, it has obvious development prospects. Then, it's not that if you have the money, others are willing to accept the acquisition!

Applied Materials, the world's largest supplier of semiconductor equipment, has deep pockets, but it has done little when it comes to lithography machines. Two thousand years later. It wanted to buy A**L, but it was refused!

So, the acquisition should be sooner rather than later!

Qualcomm had no money to buy A**L, so Henry had no choice but to let Silicon Valley Electronics Group acquire it. Other than that. There is another advantage of Silicon Valley Electronics Group to acquire, because Silicon Valley Electronics Group has obtained part of Carl Zeiss's patented technology and can develop its own lenses!

Although Japan's lithography machines are not as good as A**L's, the core components of their lithography machines, lenses, are all self-produced. And the lithography machine lens of the Dutch company A**L. But it's from Carl Zeiss in Germany!!

Although the lens technology of Silicon Valley Electronics Group is not as good as that of Carl Zeiss, it can catch up, and I believe that increasing research and development efforts will be fruitful!

The benefits of acquiring A**L are enormous.

First, after the acquisition of A**L, the cost of chip production will be greatly reduced. If the scale of Qualcomm's wafer fab surpasses that of TSMC in the future, it will be able to save at least tens of billions of euros in 20 years! This is just the money saved, and I am afraid that the money will be even more......

Second, the core competitiveness of the fab is the production equipment. In the 80s, the equipment was bought and required to be debugged in various ways, combined with the factory's own production process, and it was not possible to start work immediately! But in the 90s, due to the equipment production company's deep cultivation of technology and a complete set of solutions, basically, the equipment can be started directly after buying the equipment! Therefore, whether the wafer factory is awesome or not, depends on whether the production equipment is awesome or not. After the acquisition of A**L, the competitiveness of Qualcomm wafer factory will be in the leading position in the industry!

Naturally, if you want to produce chips, you can't only have lithography machines. Lithography machine is only one of the most important equipment in the chip production process, there are many other equipment, such as etching equipment, measuring equipment, ion implantation equipment, CVD/PVD deposition equipment, silicon wafer cleaning equipment, RTP rapid annealing equipment and so on.

If you want to build the strongest equipment production company, it is too difficult!

However, this is a long-term goal!

If all the strongest equipment production companies are merged, then each production equipment is the best, and the wafer fab established will not be blown up?!!

Just think about it, my saliva almost flowed out!

It's just that the road has to be taken step by step, first win the most important lithography machine production company, and then expand and merge with other equipment production companies!

Henry also didn't expect that Qualcomm's release of CDMA chips this time would involve so many problems at once, mobile phone manufacturers, wafer factories, equipment production companies and crystalline silicon raw material supply companies, etc., to create a perfect industrial ecological chain, these companies have to be acquired!

Mobile phone manufacturer, targeting Nokia.

Nearby production company, target A**L company.

As for the crystalline silicon raw material supply companies, Henry prefers the American MEMC company. MEMC is a market leader in silicon wafers, providing polysilicon feedstocks, semiconductor wafers and solar wafers, with technologies for the production of fluidized bed and granular polysilicon, and has a subsidiary, SunEdison. SunEdison is also a global solar energy giant and a leader in solar engineering and solar services!!

In the future, the development of photovoltaic cells and the manufacture of solar cars do not seem to be worse than Tesla cars......

(To be continued.) )