The biggest winner of the 1982 Golden Horse Awards was undoubtedly Hong Kong films. Among the four most important awards, Best Director and Best Picture were won by the Hong Kong and Taiwan co-production "Xinhai Double Ten". and "Marginal Man", which won the Best Actor, and "Wu Song", which won the Best Actress, are also from Hong Kong's New Arts City Company and Shaw Brothers Company respectively.

After participating in the Golden Horse Awards, Li Xuan rushed to Hsinchu City, north of Taipei City, the next day to complete the last task of his trip to Taiwan, cutting the ribbon for the start of the Hsinchu wafer factory of Oriental Semiconductor Company.

The fab is not technologically advanced, using 3-inch wafers and a 2.5-micron process. The new factory built by Dongfang Semiconductor in the United States at the same time has adopted a 4-inch wafer and a 1.5-micron process. The wafer factory that the American company Deyi started construction not long ago is said to be likely to use 5-inch wafers.

However, the positioning of each plant is different, which is not to say that the more advanced the technology, the better, because the new technology means high investment, and the yield rate is far inferior to the mature mainstream technology. Dongfang Semiconductor's Hsinchu wafer fab is mainly used to produce 6502 processors and small and medium-capacity DRAM chips.

The technical content of these products is not high, relying on small profits and quick turnover. If you use a new process that needs to be improved, you may lose all your pants. Of course, as far as Taiwan is concerned, Dongfang Semiconductor's Hsinchu wafer fab is enough to be called the most technologically advanced factory.

Taiwan's first semiconductor production company, UMC, also owns a 3-inch wafer fab. But its main products are chips used in electronic watches, toys and remote controls, and the technology content is much lower than that of Dongfang Semiconductor's Hsinchu factory. This is also the reason why Taiwan favors Dongfang Semiconductor Company to invest, hoping that the new technology it brings can further promote the development of Taiwan's semiconductor industry.

The Hsinchu plant has three production lines and has a monthly production capacity of 30,000 wafers. Dongfang Electronics' internal orders do not meet its needs. Therefore, it is necessary to undertake external orders to increase the operating rate. Since last year, new semiconductor design companies have been popping up in Hong Kong and Taiwan.

These companies are attracted by Dongfang Semiconductor, and they themselves cannot afford to spend tens of millions of dollars on the construction of a fab. And the emergence of Dongfang Semiconductor Company happened to solve their production problems.

The Hsinchu plant is also the real beginning of Dongfang Semiconductor's practice of the wafer foundry model. The 3-inch, 2.5-micron process has been the mainstream process that has been successfully developed for three or four years. Therefore, with the technical team recruited by Dongfang Semiconductor in the United States. Achieving a high yield rate is not difficult. This provides a guarantee for the company to accept commercial orders.

"At the last meeting, there were many voices within the group who were worried that you would take too big a step and that the operating rate of the new factory would be too low!" Li Xuan smiled at Zhang Zhongmou beside him.

He had a gentleman's agreement with Zhang Zhongmou before that the affairs of Dongfang Semiconductor Company would be fully responsible for the other party. And Li Xuan has always kept his promise and never interfered in the company's affairs. Previously, Dongfang Semiconductor Company announced to the public. The Hsinchu wafer fab, together with the supporting large-scale chip packaging and testing plant, has a total investment of up to 40 million US dollars.

In fact, the two production lines of the Hsinchu factory are both from the old equipment of another wafer factory acquired by the company in the United States. While it costs some money to upgrade the technology, it's still much cheaper than buying new equipment. Therefore, the actual construction cost is only about 30 million US dollars. However, the internal cash flow of Dongfang Company is relatively abundant, and Li Xuan's reserved funds are indeed 40 million.

So Zhang Zhongmou simply revised the plan. The scale of the original Hsinchu factory was further expanded, and a new production line was added, bringing the factory's monthly wafer production capacity to 30,000 wafers. Depending on the area required for each chip design, a wafer can be divided into hundreds or hundreds of chips. If the Hsinchu wafer fab is fully operational, the annual production of chips will be at least more than 80 million, which is not a small number.

"The orders within the group have made us at least not starve to death, and the development of external customers is also steadily advancing! Yesterday, the sales department just came to the good news, and the ICS company decided to cooperate with us, and we will be responsible for the OEM production of a variety of chips, including 555 time-based chips!" Zhang Zhongmou said with a smile.

A time-based chip is a type of digital integrated circuit that is widely used in a wide variety of timers. Pulsers and oscillators, etc. And ICS is the company that invented this circuit.

"Oh, it seems that their management was scared by the injury case a few years ago, no wonder they haven't invested in the construction of a new wafer factory in the past two years!" Li Xuan said.

Two years ago, at ICS's wafer fab in California, USA, on-site workers became unwell due to repeated exposure to chemical gases in the factory. This is the U.S. semiconductor industry. The first-ever case of an employee being injured in an occupational injury.

Although ICS strongly denied it, the matter was finally closed. But the incident still dealt a serious blow to its reputation. At the same time, the continuous entanglement of the US National Occupational Safety and Health Agency has also seriously disrupted ICS's plans for a new factory. It seems that the top management of ICS has decided to take a different path. Oriental Semiconductor will be the foundry for their new production capacity.

This is indeed a good news for Dongfang Semiconductor Company, which is one of the semiconductor companies in the name of Silicon Valley. If it is not ready to build a new wafer factory by itself, and hands over part of the chip production task to Dongfang Semiconductor foundry, this order can eat up at least 30% of the production capacity of the Hsinchu factory.

Coupled with a large number of orders within the Eastern Group, the Hsinchu plant has been able to break even. This means that the first step of Dongfang Semiconductor's foundry model is very smooth. Although Li Xuan knows that the OEM model is the general trend in the future, if the Hsinchu factory loses money for a long time, whether it is him or Zhang Zhongmou, the pressure within the group will be increasing.

The most difficult part of a new fab is often in the early stages of construction, because the market still doesn't approve of your technology. When the factory of Seiko Epson was built, it fell into the quagmire of insufficient operating rate. It was the large number of orders in the early stage of the development of Dongfang Electronics Company that allowed it to survive the most difficult stage. Now Seiko Epson's wafer business is very profitable, and the construction of a second wafer fab has begun not long ago.

Li Xuan returned to Hong Kong happily with this good news. (To be continued)