"Mr. Jiang, the situation may not be as optimistic as you imagined", hearing Jiang Hui's words, Zhu Zhengfeng couldn't help but pour a basin of cold water.

Although Jiang Hui did not express, "Oh, it turns out that the chip industry is not difficult", but judging from the tone of what he said just now, it seems that there are SMIC companies in China that are engaged in chips, and if Guanghui Group enters this field, it will spend money to buy equipment and dig people, and it will produce results.

This frightened Zhu Zhengfeng.

If Jiang Hui throws tens of billions of dollars into it, and then he has to go to Zhu Zhengfeng to get a chip company close to the international mainstream level, then Zhu Zhengfeng will have to die of worry.

"I will stay in Shenzhen for about a week when I come to Shenzhen this time, and take this opportunity to introduce me to the core components of the mobile phone industry," Jiang Hui said.

"No problem, then let's move on to the chip situation first. In China, investing in the chip industry faces at least three problems", Zhu Zhengfeng began to continue his analysis.

"The first is equipment, chip production involves a lot of manufacturing equipment, the price is very expensive, the most important of which is the lithography machine. There are not many manufacturers of lithography machines, in the era of line width above 45 nanometers, Canon and Nikon in the island countries can be manufactured, but when the chip manufacturing process advances to below more than ten nanometers, Canon and Nikon currently do not have this lithography machine technology."

"Is the state-of-the-art lithography technology monopolized by a European company?" Jiang Hui interjected.

In his previous life, the issue of lithography machine was also noisy on the Internet for a while, and Jiang Hui had more or less heard some relevant information, but he couldn't remember the specific details.

"Yes, the world's most advanced lithography machine manufacturer is ASML, it is estimated that it will not be long before it is an independent company spun off from the semiconductor division of the Dutch Philips company, and the main shareholder is Philips, but Samsung, TSMC and Intel all have shares. ”

"ASML provides lithography machines and related services to semiconductor manufacturers, and the TINSCAN series is currently the world's highest-precision, most efficient and most widely used high-end lithography machine. AT PRESENT, THE VAST MAJORITY OF SEMICONDUCTOR MANUFACTURERS IN THE WORLD PURCHASE TINSCAN MODELS FROM ASML, SUCH AS INTEL, SAMSUNG, TSMC, SMIC, ETC.," ZHU CONTINUED.

"IN ADDITION TO THE TINSCAN PLATFORM THAT IS CURRENTLY BEING DEVELOPED, ASML IS ACTIVELY WORKING WITH SEMICONDUCTOR COMPANIES SUCH AS IMEC AND IBM TO DEVELOP NEXT-GENERATION LITHOGRAPHY TECHNOLOGIES, SUCH AS EUV (EXTREME ULTRAVIOLET LITHOGRAPHY), FOR THE MANUFACTURE OF INTEGRATED CIRCUITS AT CRITICAL SCALES OF 22 NM AND BEYOND.

AT THE SAME TIME, EMERGING TECHNOLOGIES SUCH AS DUAL EXPOSURE BASED ON THE TRADITIONAL TINSCAN PLATFORM ARE ALSO IN THE PROCESS OF FURTHER MATURING AND RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT. At the end of last year, Samsung announced the successful production of 36nm flash memory, which is based on double exposure technology. ”

"Samsung's 36nm chips have already started to be produced?", Jiang Hui asked a little surprised.

"Yes, SMIC has just obtained the 45nm technology license, and even the technology has not yet begun to be understood, let alone factory construction and mass production, but Samsung, as an international mainstream chip manufacturer, has begun to mass-produce 36nm chips", Zhu Zhengfeng said with some emotion.

"The first question you mentioned is equipment, does it mean that ASML refuses to sell lithography machines to the Celestial Empire?" Jiang Hui asked.

"Mr. Jiang, you guessed half right. It cannot be completely said that ASML is unwilling to sell lithography machines to the Celestial Empire, ASML produces only a few dozen lithography machines a year, selling more than 100 million US dollars each, and can only give priority to supplying its major shareholders," Zhu Zhengfeng said.

"It's Intel them?"

"Yes, just the three most advanced chip manufacturers: Samsung, TSMC, Intel. If the order of the Celestial Empire enterprise has to wait for the back, the delivery time will be nearly two years, and the production line will be debugged after delivery, and the process adjustment will take about a year, and it will take at least three years from the order to mass production. It is said that the U.S. government has asked ASML not to sell the most advanced equipment to the Celestial Empire, but through the normal business logic and process just mentioned, the Celestial Empire's chip processing equipment can lag behind the most advanced chip technology for at least three years."

"For the electronics industry, three years is a very long world, at that time, advanced equipment and ordinary, people already have more advanced equipment," Jiang Hui said after understanding Zhu Zhengfeng's words.

"That's true, so I say the first problem is the equipment, even if we start to invest in chips now, it will be two or three years before the product comes out, and at that time our product will definitely be far behind Intel."

"The most advanced can't be produced temporarily, and the ordinary ones can't be considered, after all, not all of our chips need to use the most high-end in the world, but this specific will be said later, you will continue first."

"Then the second issue I want to talk about is talent. Without enough talent and technology, even if all the most advanced production equipment is handed over to the Celestial Empire chip manufacturing enterprises immediately, they will not have the ability to mass-produce the most advanced chip manufacturing process within three years.

In fact, SMIC currently has a full set of equipment for the 130nm process, while their 300nm process is not neat. So the bigger bottleneck is the lack of technology and talent relative to the equipment. ”

"The chip production process is extremely complex, it is the most complex product produced by human beings, and without one of them, with the most advanced production equipment, such as giving us the highest grade brushes and paints, but we still can't paint a beautiful painting, because I can't paint at all.

We didn't know how to put pen to paper, how to hook line, how to color. The production of chips with chip production equipment requires a lot of process research and development, and it is necessary to know what materials to use, what shapes to make, how to layout, and so on, in order to ensure the yield rate.

However, there are too few talents who understand these technologies in China, and our own university microelectronics major is too far from the advanced level of the industry, and there are too few qualified engineers trained. ”

"It seems that if we want to enter this industry in the future, we will have to dig a large number of talents from Baodao, South Korea and other countries with high salaries."

"I think it's probably the fastest way to do it."

"Guanghui Mobile Phone Research Center can first set up a chip team to do some preliminary preparations, and we will definitely enter the chip industry. The more difficult it is, the more necessary it is, otherwise it will be a headache if you are really stuck in the neck by someone else," Jiang Hui said.

"Well, Mr. Jiang, you said that you want to enter the chip industry, then I have to talk about the third problem, that is, capital. Of course, judging from the current profitability of our glorious mobile phone, even if it is a chip factory worth billions of dollars, we have capacity building, but it is not enough to rely on a factory alone.

(End of chapter)