It was busy until April 30, approaching the May Day holiday.

With the participation of Hu Yiting and Kang Yaoxiang, after the communication between Chongguang and UMC's process engineers, the tape-out process discussion was completed, and Chongguang sent someone to send the photomask glass plate engraved with the design of Zhongzhi CPU to Taiwan, intending to put it into production as soon as possible after the completion of the tape-out.

It is necessary to communicate on the technical process before tape-out, because Zhongzhi, a CPU-level chip, is more complex than products such as memory, and there are many technological processes involved in manufacturing.

Because Hu Yiting has a special identity and is forbidden to go to Taiwan for safety reasons, in order to receive orders, Taiwan Union Power specially sent a vice president with a technical person in charge to the northern capital for discussion.

Although the Taiwan Strait crisis has just passed, the bond of interests has brought these two companies together, after all, the island is currently fiercely competitive in the field of chip foundry, due to the technology diffusion effect after the technological highland, in addition to TSMC, a number of newly established enterprises such as UMC, Powerchip Semiconductor, and Hongwang Electronics have emerged on the island, all of which are competing for foundry share.

Of course, newly established companies such as Lianhua, Lijing and Hongwang are not comparable with UMC and Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., Ltd. in terms of technology, and they can only eat away at the share of the two power companies in the low-end chips.

However, since the smoke has risen and the low-end share has been snatched away, the production capacity vacated by the two power plants needs to be filled by more high-end chips in order to maintain the growth of performance.

Under the increasing pressure of competition, TaiUMC is now paying special attention to large customers like Chongguang, and wants to win over and consolidate the cooperative relationship.

Taiwan UMC came to Beidu with Vice President Hong Jiacong this time, and it was a three-person technical team led by Sun Shiwei, who joined UMC in 95.

Chongguang arranged for the company's only luxury car, a top-of-the-line Mercedes-Benz S600 worth 1.72 million, and took an Audi 100V6 with a new purchase price of 580,000 yuan to pick up people at the hotel.

After some greetings, the two sides sat down in the conference room of Chongguang, and chatted for a while and learned that Sun Shiwei is a doctor of electronic materials from Northwestern University, and worked in the Motorola Advanced Product R&D Laboratory for ten years after graduation.

Hu Yiting is very enthusiastic about this kind of powerful talent who is fighting, but he also knows that it is difficult to poach people from the island in these years, and in front of the vice president of the other party, he can't do it, so he has to secretly keep it in his heart, hoping to have more contact in the future.

Hu Yiting and Kang Yaoxiang and other main technical personnel of Chongguang introduced the main technical parameters and process requirements of Chongguang Zhongzhi CPU to each other, and explained the matters that need to be paid attention to in the production process.

Listening to the other party's eloquent talk on the 0.35 micron process, Hong Jiacong, vice president of UMC, had a dreamlike feeling.

"Since when has the mainland's manufacturing process level become so advanced? ”

Sun Shiwei focused on technology, but he also admired the depth of understanding and technical accumulation in Chongguang, and felt that this mainland customer was really experienced, and it was not inferior to the large American companies that UMC took over.

As Sun Shiwei asked Kang Yaoxiang questions again and again on the process requirements, Kang Yaoxiang answered most of the content, and some key links were directly answered by Hu Yiting.

The two sides have different processing methods in some processes, and Hu Yiting is of course reluctant to reveal Chongguang's process technology, after all, in his previous life, he has been exposed to some technologies of the 22nm process at the highest, and has an extremely mature grasp of the process above 50nm.

"What is the principle of this part...... Hu Yiting scratched his head in the face of Sun Shiwei's questioning: "...... I can't disclose it, but I can guarantee that this design is reasonable, and the laboratory proves that it will not affect the yield rate, although you do it according to the parameters we provide, it has been proven in our process laboratory of Chongguang Lake Research Institute that it is feasible and will not go wrong. ”

Sun Shiwei saw that Hu Yiting refused to answer the design principle, so he had to nod: "Then I will do this part according to your parameters first, if it doesn't go well, we UMC will solve it in other ways, here is actually very close to the process of the embedded processor that IBM gave us last year, and we are already very familiar with it." ”

"That's good. ”

"I have one more question here......"

Due to Chongguang's profound skills in the process, Sun Shiwei hopes to conduct in-depth technical exchanges on the process technology adopted by the other party, and he intuitively realizes that Chongguang has some unique means in the process, and to be able to come up with such a design, it must have been successfully verified many times in the laboratory.

But Hu Yiting was very tight-mouthed and did not reveal the details of the process to him. Similarly, Sun Shiwei is also bound by the company's regulations and will not disclose his own process to Chongguang, so after confirming that the entire design can be projected by UMC, the two sides have nothing to continue to discuss.

After a day-long discussion that lasted from morning to evening, the two sides finally technically completed the confirmation of the handover.

Hong Jiacong said: "That's it, it seems to be going well." ”

As he spoke, he got up, smiled and stretched out his hand to shake Hu Yiting across the table.

To be honest, at present, in the mainland, the only company that can make us admire Taiwan's electronics industry is that you are re-glorified. ”

At present, we are still very weak in the core equipment of the process, packaging and testing equipment and technology, high-purity wafer manufacturing and photoresist and other material production, and the design cannot be made, which is also a headache. ”

Hong Jiacong said with a smile: "Where is it, Mr. Hu is modest, it can be seen from the CPU design of this current mainstream process that the process capability of your laboratory is already very strong, we are all experts in this, and we know it in our hearts." In terms of equipment, we in Taiwan also rely on imports, which everyone knows about globalization. ”

Sun Shiwei nodded when he heard this: "We are still leading in process capacity, but looking at this trend, if your mainland can't buy advanced equipment, it will probably catch up in the process soon." ”

Kang Yaoxiang listened to Sun Shiwei's praise, and he was quite proud, and said with a smile: "There is no way, we always can't get the latest generation of linewidth lithography machines, and other equipment is also backward, so we can only solve experimental tape-out in the laboratory." ”

Sun Shiwei shook his head: "Mr. Kang is modest, the laboratory has solved it, which means that your equipment is close to breaking through, if it can be put into production, the United States will soon lift the export restrictions on this generation of products." ”

Hu Yiting said with a smile: "Yes, when the time comes, there will be a situation where it is better to buy than to make, we are used to playing this set with Lao Mei, so we have to grit our teeth and catch up, so as not to face a sudden blockade and embargo one day, there is no alternative means, no matter how low the yield rate of laboratory technology is, once it comes to a difficult period, it can also be emergency." ”

Sun Shiwei nodded: "There are indeed a lot of restrictions, otherwise I think we and Chongguang can still have some technical exchanges." ”

Hong Jiacong also nodded: "At present, we in Taiwan do not have the ability to independently design advanced CPUs, if the two sides can lift the technical restrictions, I think it will be beneficial to everyone." Like the patented technology of heavy light on the 0.35 micron MLC flash memory chip, if it can be exchanged, we at UMC are also willing to do it. ”

Hu Yiting only smiled at Hong Jiacong's rather tentative words, but did not speak, and said in his heart that if there were no import restrictions on equipment, would I need to find you to OEM.

Hong Jiacong didn't know what he thought, and continued: "But I came this time, and I also took the intention of our UMC board of directors, hoping to get Chongguang's patent technology transfer on 0.35 micron MLC flash memory chips, we are very optimistic about the prospects of the flash memory market, if Chongguang can sell technology to us, we must give priority to Chongguang OEM MLC flash memory." ”

Hu Yiting thought for a while and said: "The transfer is impossible, we are not short of money, if we cooperate, we can do it, you come to the mainland and build a 0.25 micron wafer factory with us, and I will store the MLC flash of the next generation 0.25 micron process here for you." ”

Hong Jiacong looked embarrassed: "This technology embargo is not something we have the ability to break through, the factory has invested, and the equipment cannot be shipped in, and it is in vain." ”

Hu Yiting spread his hands: "So there's no way, but we will still give priority to you in the future, the premise is that you want to give us a discount, and the price can't be higher than TSMC." ”

Hong Jiacong: "I'll ask when I go back, you can rest assured in terms of price, we won't let old customers suffer." ”

Kang Yaoxiang: "How are you doing with the 0.25 micron process now?"

Hong Jiacong: "We can take orders as late as September this year, if Chongguang has the ability to improve the line width of the previous chip design in the future, as long as the design is completed, we hope to be able to undertake foundry." ”

Hu Yiting said: "Our current needs are not so simple as line width improvement, we now have a new product, a graphics card chip, 0.25 micron process design, the design has just been completed, and we are waiting for the chip!"

Hong Jiacong was taken aback and blurted out: "What? You have designed a chip with a 0.25 micron process? Could it be that your laboratory has broken through the 0.25 micron process process?"

Kang Yaoxiang looked at Hu Yiting with a smile, only to see the technical genius in front of him nodding expressionlessly, and said to everyone in Taiwan: "It's just a laboratory process, you know the yield rate." ”

Sun Shiwei saw that Hu Yiting was not joking or bragging, so he was surprised: "Then you are really powerful, as far as we know, there are only a handful of companies in the United States that have mastered the chip design technology under the 0.25 micron process!"

Hu Yiting pouted: "You can be faster, otherwise, I will find TSMC or Samsung foundry for the 0.25 micron business, and people will start to take orders now!"

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