ASM shipped a total of 217 units in 1999, 22 of which were refurbished.

This compares to 162 units shipped in 1998, including 7 refurbished machines.

This reflects the gradual improvement of the entire semiconductor market.

For the full year 1999, net sales were 1,197 million euros, while net income was only 81 million euros, with a gross margin of 33.4 percent.

Net R&D costs in 1999 amounted to 138 million euros, including significant labor costs, and by the end of 1999 the entire ASML employed nearly three thousand people.

Zhou Xin wanted to buy ASML before 2004, the first difficulty was to convince Philips Semiconductors and ASM International, and the second problem was to circumvent regulatory restrictions.

It is highly likely that Ameriken will intervene in this matter.

If you can't buy ASML, you can consider buying other second-tier lithography machine factories and use the cognitive advantages of key nodes to achieve corner overtaking.

Of course, the localization of the semiconductor industry chain is far from so simple, and ASML cannot produce a lithography machine on its own.

They also need to supply him from 5,000 suppliers around the world.

Therefore, even if Zhou Xin has the opportunity to buy ASML, he must cultivate related enterprises in the upstream and downstream of Huaguo's industrial chain.

"How was it going, how did you feel about this ISSCC conference?"

On the way back to Berkeley from San Francisco, Hu Zhengming asked.

For Hu Zhengming, this kind of conference is to absorb the most cutting-edge knowledge in the industry and understand the industry dynamics, and the second is to communicate.

With many friends and multiple paths, I am sure that I will have to jump from academia to the industry.

"I don't feel anything, everyone is doing great things, and I still have a lot to be desired.

At the same time, the deeper feeling is that Huaguo still has a long way to go in the field of integrated circuits as a whole. ”

In 1999, the sales of semiconductors in mainland China were only a little more than 40 million US dollars, accounting for 0.04% of the global proportion, which was even less than a fraction of ASML's annual net sales.

Zhou Xin's only regret when he participated in the ISSCC this time was that he did not meet Zhang Rujing.

In 2000, before China joined the WTO, it decided to return to China to build a factory, which is a very courageous thing.

In April next year, SMIC was incorporated in the Cayman Islands.

Zhang is a figure that cannot be bypassed in the development of Huaguo Semiconductor.

At this time, Shida Semiconductor, which was founded by Zhang Rujing, has achieved mass production and profitability.

In addition, Zhang Rujing planned to build the first and second factories of the World University in Bend, and the third to tenth factories were all placed on the mainland.

Just when Zhang Rujing was about to make a big move, the major shareholder of the World University secretly negotiated with TSMC without Zhang Rujing's knowledge, and would sell the company to TSMC for $5 billion next year.

It was also after the sale of Shida that Zhang Rujing returned to China to establish SMIC.

However, even if Zhou Xin saw Zhang Rujing, he had no angle to remind the other party, and the price offered by TSMC was a price that the major shareholders of Shida Semiconductor could not refuse.

Not everyone has a sense of serving the country and a long-term vision.

"At the ISSCC meeting, I didn't see any scholars from China, which made me feel a little frustrated." Zhou Xin continued.

(I have a bit of a doubt here, that is, the information I found on the Internet says that in 2005, IDT-NEWAVE, a foreign-owned company in China, published the first paper on simulation in ISSCC on behalf of China, and it is generally believed that 2005 was the first time that China published a paper in ISSCC.)

IDT-NEWAVE is a joint venture established by IDT after the acquisition of Xintao Technology, in which Yang Chonghe, one of the founders of Xintao Technology, later founded Montage Technology, which is now listed on the Science and Technology Innovation Board.

Then I found on the homepage of Gai Weixin, dean of the School of Integrated Circuits of Peking University, that he had published a paper in ISSCC in 1999, which was entitled:

A 2B Parallel 1.25 Gb/s Interconnect I/O Interface with Self-Configurable Link and Plesiochronous Clocking，” 1999 IEEE International Solid-State Circuits Conference (ISSCC)， San Francisco， CA， USA， pp.180-181.

However, I did not find this paper on the official website of IEEE, and I did not find it on his personal homepage, so I first wrote it according to the first ISSCC conference paper in China in 2005 before getting the answer. ）

Hu Zhengming saw that Zhou Xin's mood was not very high, and he knew that he was worried about the development of Huaguo Semiconductor, so he said: "The transfer of the semiconductor industry is a process.

As long as China can smoothly join the WTO, it will be able to undertake the transfer of the semiconductor industry in Europe and the United States.

In the future, Chinese scholars can always be seen.

It takes time, and that's how Wanwan and Goryeo came back then.

It takes a process. ”

......

After going to ISSCC for a while, the sense of urgency that had been relieved with the era of financial freedom and integration was once again filled.

Zhou Xin's whole person fell back into a state of workaholic, originally thinking of hooking up with Ai Mo, enjoying the exotic atmosphere, and after re-filling the rhythm of work and scientific research, there was no time to see her at all.

Or that Zhou Xin is also a cold-blooded animal who only looks at his face and has no feelings.

"We will do the last version of the test, we expect to release it on Friday, together with electronic payment, the earliest transfer payment method, we still support, but using electronic payment, we will give him some additional discounts."

After returning to Silicon Valley, Zhou Xin's game production company is now renamed Flamingo Game Development Company, and the company's logo is an angry red flamingo.

They plan to bring Flamingos to the game by the time of the 10th anniversary of Angry Birds.

Now it's just a company logo.

The design began at the beginning of the year, and the team of 50 people worked for more than half a year to develop the new game, "Plants vs. Zombies".

It's also a market-proven and timeless game, while also staying true to their usual style.

Therefore, the design of the game has been unanimously approved by everyone from the moment it was taken out.

When the first demo was made, Stephen and Ashley realized that this was going to be another blockbuster game.

This made the two who were dissatisfied with Zhou Xin's monopoly on Riot Games' shares, and Riot Games' valuation exceeded 3 billion, and their psychology was balanced again.

Inferior to each other in terms of vision and ability, Zhou Xin is their core competitiveness, and Ashley and Stephen, who realized this again, began to devote all their energy to the production of new games after adjusting their mentality.

Zhou Xin has high hopes for "Plants vs. Zombies".

This high hope does not mean to achieve financial success, but to open up the living space for NewPay, which is about to be officially launched.

Complete the accumulation of original customers.

For the launch of "Plants vs. Zombies" and the launch of NewPay, Zhou Xin began to prepare for a long time.

Riot Games was advertising about a month ago that they were about to launch their own electronic payment software, and everyone who paid with electronic payment software could enjoy a 20% discount on the first order.

Each subsequent order can enjoy discounts ranging from 10% off to 9.5% off.

As for Plants vs. Zombies, players were attracted through the game's layout and a small number of demo screens.