Now if you want to do it in one step, all the upstream and downstream manufacturers of the semiconductor industry chain choose domestic manufacturers and form a system of their own, which is unrealistic.

There are too many equipment involved in semiconductors, just air filtration equipment and water production equipment, and there is no domestic manufacturer doing this.

The construction of chip factories has high requirements for the environment, and the dust concentration in the air needs to be reduced to 0 through air filtration equipment. When the line width of the chip is less than 0.5 mm, chemical contamination will be the main factor affecting the yield.

Therefore, for chip foundries, they need to be equipped with special precision instruments to filter substances in the air.

Zhou Xin didn't even think that the entire supply chain could catch up with the international advanced level within ten years, and the upstream semiconductor materials were a bigger difficulty.

In the field of semiconductors, technology is not the biggest difficulty, but the most important thing is that the product can enter the production environment and be continuously updated and iterated.

Therefore, if it were not for America's ban on semiconductor exports, it would be almost impossible for Huaguo's semiconductors to catch up with the most advanced technology, and of course there is not much chance after the ban, but the opportunity is much greater than before.

This kind of industrial software is a bit like industrial software, and if you don't actually run it, you will never be able to make industrial software that can really be used.

After listening to this, Guan Jianying said: "Newman, I roughly understand what you mean, you only want to make lithography machines and analog ICs, these two technology nodes, and at the same time, their upstream and downstream do not rule out cooperation with other companies." ”

Zhou Xin said: "We don't have this condition to do it completely by ourselves now, and we don't have this condition to find all the companies in Huaguo to do it."

My investment company in Huaguo has investigated the development of integrated circuits in Huaguo, which is not ideal, and there are very few companies doing this, and most of them are concentrated in the packaging and testing process with relatively low technical content.

On the basis of ensuring our own survival, we want to take care of Huaguo semiconductor enterprises in the upstream and downstream of the supply chain.

After listening to it, do you feel that my goals are not harsh? ”

Guan Jianying thought about it, he has been working in analog IC for more than 20 years, and he has also been involved in the process of analog IC to chip production, so he has a deep understanding of the entire semiconductor industry chain.

"Newman, your goal isn't too harsh, but it's not that easy to accomplish.

We need to respect the objective facts, China lacks talents in the field of integrated circuits, and there is a lack of engineers who have really worked in advanced integrated circuit enterprises.

In order to get to production as quickly as possible, we need to find engineers with proven experience.

Fortunately in the field of analog IC, there are many bending engineers who have rich experience in analog IC, and they are not reluctant to work in Shenhai.

However, for engineers in the field of lithography machines, we can only find experienced engineers from Nikon, Canon, and ASML, which are limited to lithography machine manufacturers.

They are foreigners, and it is difficult to dig up. ”

Today, Nikon and Canon are still the leaders in the industry, and ASML is a rising star. It is precisely because Nikon is a leader in the field of lithography machines that Nikon's engineers are difficult to dig.

Twenty years later, Nikon's lithography machine talent is not difficult to dig up at all.

Of course, at that time, everything that Nikon's technicians could dig up had already been poached by ASML, and the rest were either mediocre or could not be dug at all.

Zhou Xin also understood what Guan Jianying meant, he said: "You don't have to worry too much about these problems.

The technical director I am looking for is Lin Benjian, he will find some engineers he knows, we will first build up the framework, and then recruit a small number of experienced engineers in Huaguo, Huaguo still has talents who have done lithography machines before, but their lithography machines are laboratory products.

But I'm sure they'll adapt very quickly.

As for the analog IC field, I think there is no need to find too many experienced engineers, only the team leader to find experienced engineers, and the team members are all looking for graduate students and doctors who graduated from related majors from Huaguo.

We give them high treatment, and then select the best of the best, and adopt the model of one old man with multiple newcomers. ”

After listening to this, Guan Jianying immediately objected: "Newman, I have worked in the analog IC field for many years, and this is absolutely impossible.

We need to get an analog IC company up and running as soon as possible, and we need to create a fist product, which will be designed and handed over to TSMC or Zhang Rujing's chip foundry to produce, and then have good sales results and be recognized by the market.

This is the top priority of Xinxin Semiconductor.

Then slowly carry out iterative optimization around this fist product, from the first generation to the second generation, and slowly develop new chip lines.

So that we can survive.

There is only one old man in a group, and all the others are recent graduates, and the fist products can never be manufactured.

Because technology is advancing, products designed this year may not have an advantage next year.

Time is of the essence.

I don't rule out recruiting new people, recruiting Chinese graduates, first of all, the number is limited, and secondly, they have to come in with a learning attitude, and they have to adapt to at least two years before they can really become relatively proficient.

Fresh graduates of college students, if not majoring in microelectronics.

They didn't even use Cadence Virtuoso, and taught them how to use Cadence Virtuoso, but they could operate it, and they knew what analog circuit design was, how to do layout viewing and circuit simulation, and they had to teach it for at least three months to six months.

Even for a Ph.D. in microelectronics, R&D in industry and R&D in the laboratory are completely different concepts.

They need to be corrected for their understanding of the basic concepts in analog IC design. Many novices tend to ignore some basic concepts in circuit design, such as noise, distortion, linearity, bandwidth, etc.

Due to their lack of practical experience, they will ignore the impact of layout and layout design on circuit performance, the treatment of power supply and ground plane, and focus too much on the performance advantages of one aspect and ignore other important performance indicators.

They focus too much on the speed of the circuit, which can lead to performance degradation in terms of power consumption, noise, etc.

These questions are common to newcomers, twenty years ago, when we were still using SPICE developed by Dr. Lawrence Nagel.

Lawrence Nagel is also your alumnus, a Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley.

I remember using SPICE in the early days, then Calma GDS, and then more recently Cadence Virtuoso.

When I was still using SPICE, I made a lot of similar mistakes. Everyone is slowly growing from a newcomer to a mature engineer

But at that time, I was in a mature analog IC company, they had mature products, mature teams, the formation of talent echelon training, and a complete training mechanism.

In other words, they have the capital to tolerate faults.

But we don't, I know you have a lot of money, a very lot of money, an amount that I can't imagine.

But a company can't just rely on your single blood transfusion, such an enterprise is matured, and it is difficult for it to have vitality and future.

Therefore, we need to find mature engineers in the early stage to create a fist product, and then recruit new people to do reserve force training.

Instead of doing reserve strength training at the beginning. ”

Guan Jianying mentioned SPICE, Calma GDS, and Cadence Virtuoso are all EDA tools for designing analog circuits. There is a chronological order between them.

Cadence Virtuoso is still a mainstream EDA tool to this day, but Cadence has packaged a gadget called the Cadence Design System, which covers this and implements richer features.

Zhou Xin said: "Okay, I understand what you mean, I know Uncle Guan, you have worked in the analog IC field for many years, from a front-line employee to a chief engineer to a vice president, and you have your own philosophy on the operation of analog IC companies."

We haven't hired people so fast yet, let's build the company and the framework first, would you like to help me? ”

Compared with Lin Benjian, Guan Jianying has just been kicked out of the company he participated in founding, and to put it simply, when he was frustrated, he agreed very quickly:

"It's no problem for me to help you, but my personality is more direct, as the boss, you have your own ideas, but I will also have my ideas and my persistence.

If we don't see eye to eye, we need to communicate with each other to reach some kind of agreement. ”

Kwan continued: "I never thought that my ideas and experiences would always be right.

I entered the integrated circuit industry more than 20 years ago, starting with analog ICs, and the industry still adopted the IDM model, that is, vertically integrated manufacturing.

Intel, Samsung, Texas Instruments, Infineon and other companies are all responsible for chip design, chip manufacturing, packaging and testing, and product sales.

Only upstream materials, equipment, EDA, and IP cores are used from other companies.

In my opinion at the time, this model was a perfect model, from product design to manufacturing, and the iteration cycle of the product was shorter.

At the same time, it is also beneficial for R&D, and the response time for back-end R&D results to be verified is very fast.

At that time, no one ever thought of outsourcing chip foundry to other companies.

Until Zhang Zhongmou appeared with TSMC, he told the manufacturer, saying that you design chips, and we will help you do chip manufacturing.

We'll take that risk for you, you just have to tell us what you need.

Just give me the chip design, I will never make my own chip brand.

You know that the risk of the IDM model lies in heavy assets, a 12-inch production line, a production line is 2 billion US dollars.

This requires that the chips you make must be able to be sold.

This places high demands on design, manufacturing, management, and operations.

Because the production line is depreciated, with the advancement of technology, the original advanced production line will be slowly eliminated, and the production line built by 2 billion US dollars, under the effect of Moore's law, may be scrapped in five years.

The IDM model has extremely high requirements for your utilization rate, yield rate and product profit.

That's why TSMC's model can be successful, and they help manufacturers take a large part of the risk.

In this way, the risk is lower and the profit is lower. ”

Today's first chapter, asking for a monthly pass, isn't there too much semiconductor content lately.

But the next plot is about to begin

(End of chapter)