Zhang Zhongbo has a lot of dealings with Zhou Xin, and he can be regarded as witnessing Zhou Xin from a poor Chinese student with a schoolbag and a suitcase to a famous entrepreneur now.

Therefore, he can still maintain a normal heart when facing Zhou Xin, and some jokes can be said directly naturally.

Zhou Xin laughed after hearing this: "Senior brother, as far as the professor is concerned, he definitely doesn't mind that you have a better place to go."

You come to help me, I am very short of talent, and I can definitely pay more than the professor.

It's a win-win, and as for the professor, if you can't function properly without it, then you won't be able to go to Texas Instruments. ”

Zhou Xin later started running a semiconductor company himself, and only then did he know how profitable companies like Texas Instruments and Qualcomm were.

You can survive completely on the cost of patent licensing.

Although Texas Instruments' mobile phone chipsets were killed by Qualcomm in the process of moving from 2G to 4G, the patents accumulated by Texas Instruments in the long era of feature phones are still creating value for them.

Texas Instruments collects more than $700 million in royalties annually from Freescale Semiconductor, Samsung Electronics, Sony and other companies for chip packaging technology alone.

In the era of mobile Internet, Texas Instruments' patent prosecution focuses on chips such as computers, digital cameras, and mobile phones.

Therefore, Xiaomi's reluctance to pay patent fees to Huawei is actually a very common business behavior, and only Sony and Siemens are honest in paying the patent fees of Texas Instruments, and other companies are willing to pay until they are sued.

This is one of the important reasons why Nokia can survive well after selling its mobile phone brand and mobile phone production capacity to Microsoft, because they have a large number of patents and a communications business.

Whether it is now or twenty years from now, being able to go to Texas Instruments as an engineer is definitely a good place for a Ph.D. in the field of integrated circuits.

Zhang Zhongbo put down the mouse in his hand and looked at Zhou Xin: "For me, treatment is secondary, and it is more important to be able to do interesting things."

I don't have much interest in EDA, this direction is more biased towards computers, but you need to have experience in analog ICs, and the designed EDA functions can be enough to meet the needs of actual engineers.

Most software developers with computer science majors, when they are engaged in EDA development, they always have a little bit of meaning from understanding functions to developing them in computer languages.

Because they haven't done analog ICs themselves.

For me, I still prefer to do partial chip design work, I went to Texas Instruments mainly to do DSP direction, they have done a good job in this direction recently, and the market recognition is very high.

That's one of their main strategic directions lately, and there's a lot I can do since I got there. ”

Zhou Xin retrieved the DSP information from his memory, and after the retrieval, he quickly dispelled the idea of letting Zhang Zhongbo work for him.

"You'd better go to Texas Instruments for a few years and then come and help me work." Zhou Xin thought to himself.

DSP refers to digital signal processor, and Texas Instruments' TMS320 series digital signal processors are widely used in mobile phones and communication equipment, providing audio and video processing capabilities for subsequent feature phones.

Including the OMAP processor platform launched by Texas Instruments, the core of the platform is composed of processors and DSP cores based on ARM architecture.

Matrix's first mobile phone cannot be completely developed by itself, and the processor cores in it must still need to find a supplier, and there is a high probability that Texas Instruments will be chosen.

But this does not mean that their processors will always use processors from other companies, and Huawei also used chips from other companies in the early days.

It is more difficult to find talents in mobile phone chip processors, and this field is basically monopolized by large manufacturers, such as Texas Instruments, Qualcomm, Samsung Electronics, Sony, etc., and it is even more difficult to poach their core design talents from these companies.

Zhou Xin realized that Zhang Zhongbo could be the right person for this.

For mobile phone chip design, Zhou Xin has a complete idea, including the technology obtained from Samsung, including the S series chip designed by Samsung in the era of feature phones.

Because later entered the era of smart phones, Samsung's mobile phones switched to the Exynos series of chips, so the S series chips in the era of traditional feature phones lost their value.

There is still some market for feature phones in underdeveloped areas, so Samsung chose to package and transfer all the S-series chip technology to other companies at that time.

After careful research, Zhou Xin found that this series of technologies also includes three chips designed by Samsung, but not mass-produced due to the loss of the market in the era of smart phones.

However, these three chips are all 90nm and 45nm processes, and the most advanced semiconductor process in 2000 was only 130nm.

There is no chip design scheme, no manufacturing capacity.

In addition to these three chips, the value of the S series chips is also immeasurable at the moment.

Including the S5L8900 applied to the first-generation iPhone, the 90nm process chip based on the ARMv6 architecture; S5L8730 applied to the 5th generation iPod nano and so on.

It's just that with so many chip solutions in hand, it still needs to have independent research and development capabilities.

It is impossible for him to rely on the S series chips to win the world, and the advantage of Samsung's S series chips will be maintained until about 2010 at most, and the follow-up will lag behind the times.

How to maintain the current technological advantages in SOC in the future still requires continuous investment in research and development.

This also requires talent, and a lot of talent, continuous investment and the right direction are all indispensable.

Once capital has accumulated to a certain extent, there is no need for the right direction, because no one knows what direction is the right direction.

The development of science and technology is not a straight line, it is a tree, and each branch has the potential to bear fruit.

Human intervention is not necessarily more rewarding than allowing him to grow naturally.

Whether it was Bell Labs or later IBM's R&D center, a large number of achievements were not necessarily enjoyed by themselves, but the derived technologies created the prosperity of Silicon Valley.

"Well, that sounds great, Texas Instruments' DSP technology is really good, and based on the feedback I've gotten from the enterprise side, Texas Instruments' DSP performance and power consumption have a good balance.

Brother, if you don't go to Texas Instruments, you can consider helping me with my work.

Of course, even if I go to Texas Instruments, if I don't like what I do there, you can still consider helping me work. ”

From Zhang Zhongmou, the founder of TSMC, to Zhang Rujing, the founder of SMIC, both have a history of working at Texas Instruments.

Among them, Zhang Zhongmou became the deputy general manager of Texas Instruments.

Zhang Rujing helped Texas Instruments build 10 chip processing plants, mainly producing DRAM chips.

In the 80s, faced with neon competition, Texas Instruments gradually withdrew from DRAM manufacturing and turned to profit by selling technology patents.

In 1997, Texas Instruments packaged and sold all the chip factories established by overseas joint ventures.

In this year, Zhang Rujing left Texas Instruments and returned to Wanwan to build a factory and established Shida Semiconductor.

Zhou Xin thought of this history, and then thought that in the future, Zhang Zhongbo would not also embark on the same path as the two Zhang.

However, with his financial support, Zhang Zhongbo can go further in the field of chip semiconductors.

After chatting with Zhang Zhongbo, Zhou Xin walked to Hu Zhengming's office and sat on the two-seater sofa waiting for him.

Hu Zhengming usually comes to the office after breakfast at Crossroads on the edge of the residential area.

"Zhou Xin, why did you come so early today? You'd have been arriving half an hour later than this point in time. ”

Hu Zhengming did not wait for Zhou Xin's answer and continued: "The relevant approval of CAAS is estimated to come down next month, and we will organize an inauguration ceremony in San Francisco at that time."

After the inauguration ceremony, our initial members will use their influence to spread the word to the universities.

As a member of the executive council, remember to participate when the time comes. ”

Eventually, after the establishment of CAAS, the first president was Hu Zhengming, and then Ding Zhaozhong and Lee Tsung-dao were honorary presidents and permanent honorary members. The two Nobel laureates are old and just helping out on the platform.

Everyone else is one of the first board members, and because most of the funds for the establishment of CAAS were raised by Zhou, he is also the executive director.

Because of the establishment of CAAS, Hu Zhengming has a feeling that he is too busy, he also has to teach at Berkeley, and he has to start a business there, and he has to take care of CAAS's mess.

Zhou Xin nodded: "After Riot Games is listed, I won't have a lot of things to do recently, and I will definitely attend the founding ceremony of CAAS when the time comes." ”

Hu Zhengming continued: "You asked me before if I knew Lin Benjian, and you wanted to know each other.

I recently spoke to him on the phone, and he was coming to San Francisco for an international symposium on imaging technology hosted by SPIE.

I've got you in touch and he'll come and see you then. Including him is also interested in joining CAAS"

SPIE stands for International Society of Optical Engineers, and every year SPIE hosts an international Impact Science and Technology Symposium.

"But it's unlikely that you want to dig up Benjian, unlike the Internet, you don't have much fame in the field of integrated circuits.

It's hard to convince other engineers that your achievements on the Internet are hard to transplant to the field of integrated circuits.

Benjian's company Timon is doing well in Tampa, Florida.

You want to dig him, it's too difficult. ”

When Zhou Xin troubled Hu Zhengming to help find Lin Benjian, he told Hu Zhengming the reason.

In Hu Zhengming's view, it is too difficult to build a lithography machine from scratch.

To put it bluntly, at present, ASML is far from monopolizing lithography machines, and the field of lithography machines is a field with great competition and poor efficiency.

With the exception of ASML, Nikon, and Canon, which entered the market early, no other company wanted to do this.

ASML invests 1 billion euros in R&D every year, and the profit is less than 100 million euros.

In order to remain competitive, it is necessary to continuously invest heavily in research and development.

Either way, lithography machines are not a good business.

There are still today, plus what I had to make up yesterday, and today my plan is to write 10,000 words!

(End of chapter)