Sony is an out-and-out consumer electronics leader at the moment, and has a strong influence in all fields involved, almost ranking in the top five.

To make decoding chips for Apple, from the number of millions to tens of millions, and for Sony, if it can enter Sony's mainstream production line, it can reach tens of millions at the beginning, and Sony's products will not be sold in the 2000s.

It seems that as long as the product is made, there will be consumers who are willing to pay.

Even after 20 years, Sony's smartphones have no voice in the global market, but they still have a place in other consumer electronics fields.

Therefore, Guan Jianying hopes to reach a long-term cooperative relationship with Sony, and he believes that there is a natural basis for the cooperation between Xinxin Technology and Sony.

Sony and Xinxin Technology have cooperated around Bluetooth chips before, and Sony's own first-party game studios of all sizes have always been partners of Riot Games and Mphone.

Therefore, there is a basis for mutual trust between the two sides.

As the vice president of Xinxin Technology, he did not play much role in business relations and cooperation, and did not make maximum use of his previous 20 years of experience in the chip industry.

Guan Jianying also hopes to take the comprehensive cooperation with Sony Group as an opportunity to bring the influence of Xinxin Technology in the field of mobile chips to a higher level.

And he is confident that if Sony's handheld chooses a new core, Nintendo will also have it at his disposal.

It is always your competitor who knows you best, Sony chose Xinxin Technology, as long as the price of Xinxin is right, Nintendo has no reason to refuse.

Being able to become a partner of Sony and Nintendo at the same time also means that Xinxin has become one of the most important chip suppliers in the field of handheld computers.

Nakamura Suehiro looked embarrassed: "Guan San, you know that I am only the head of the semiconductor division, not to mention the Sony Group, I don't even have the right to decide Sony Games."

It's a bit out of my jurisdiction to talk to me about this. ”

Suehiro Nakamura has a high status in Sony's R&D department, and to be precise, Nakamura has a high status in the entire Sony system. But he will soon be marginalized because Sony's semiconductor division made a serious mistake in the development of PSP chips.

This mistake led to the biggest shortcoming of Sony's PSP handheld on the chip.

Guan Jianying said: "Nakamura, I know what you mean, I also want to remind you this time, you said before that you want to use Toshiba's state-of-the-art 90nm process, which can improve a lot of performance."

However, according to the research results of the Xinxin research department, if the 90nm process is adopted, if the research and development of ultra-low K dielectric materials does not keep up, it will cause serious leakage current problems.

This problem has led to an increase in power consumption rather than a reduction in the use of advanced manufacturing processes. ”

Later, many manufacturers encountered similar problems when entering 90nm from 0.13 microns, and the leakage problem caused by ultra-low K dielectric materials caused so that Intel directly skipped the 90nm node and entered the 0.65nm node.

Nakamura Suehiro was also marginalized because of this mistake, and then it didn't take long for him to be assigned to the Nakamura Research Institute named after him.

It is precisely because of the leakage problem of Sony's PSP chips that the first batch of PSP chips can run up to 333MHz, but due to the leakage problem, they can only run up to 222MHz.

At that time, Sony even issued a special announcement: PSP produced before March 2006, the CPU runs at 222MHz, and after March 2006, the CPU can run at 366MHz, and users can choose by themselves.

Nakamura Suehiro's eyes narrowed: "Guan Sang, Xinxin has profound attainments in the field of mobile chips, and your A1E chip has brought the 130nm process to the limit, and even better than the performance of the chip we designed through the 90nm process."

Our R&D department has been trying to bypass the patents of Xinxin, and I believe in the strength of Xinxin Technology in this field, but the most advanced process used by Xinxin Technology should only be 130nm, right?

At present, there are no chip foundries on the market that have begun to push chips with 90nm process on a large scale, and our chips are only produced in small quantities in the wafer factory jointly built by Sony and Toshiba.

How do you know there's such a problem? ”

Nakamura is very cautious, everyone has a good relationship, and he doesn't want to see Sony infiltrated by Xinxin Technology like a sieve.

"Because our upcoming second-generation Mphone will also use a 90nm process, and it has been two years since the first-generation Mphone, a large part of the reason why Matrix has not released a new generation of Mphone is because the chip performance has not yet achieved a breakthrough," Guan said.

When we cooperated with chip manufacturers such as IBM, Texas Instruments, and Samsung, Xinxin's A2 series chips generally found that ultra-low K dielectric materials would have leakage current problems when tape-out.

So as soon as you told us that Sony's new handheld will adopt the most advanced chip technology, I guessed that you would also face this problem. ”

Nakamura thought to himself, did I leak it? I just said such a vague sentence, Guan Sang speculated so many things?

He couldn't help but admire it in his heart, and then hurriedly asked: "Xinxin Technology has encountered the same problem, it seems that Guan Sang has thought of a solution?" ”

Suehiro Nakamura is obviously very concerned, if there is a problem with the PSP's chip, he will be the first to die.

Guan Jianying nodded: "Xinxin Technology began to work on the application of ultra-low K dielectric materials two years ago, and has launched a new generation of silicon oxide technology to solve this problem.

We call it Black Diamond film, which has an effective dielectric constant of less than 3.0 and can reduce the capacitance by 25% to 35% after adopting the unique double mounting process of Xinxin Technology. ”

To be precise, Zhou Xin set up a R&D center in Silicon Valley after successfully selling Quora, with a software R&D center and a semiconductor R&D center.

Among them, ultra-low K dielectric materials are one of the important R&D topics of the semiconductor R&D center in the past two years, because Zhou Xintian knows that ultra-low K dielectric materials will become more and more important in semiconductor materials in the future, and he also roughly knows how Ameriken Applied Materials solves this problem.

In VLSI with the improvement of device integration and the further reduction of delay time, it is needed as an insulating material to ensure the high-speed performance of the device and control the energy consumption. As the size of the chip shrinks, the requirements for low-K media are getting higher and higher.

This is called the low-K precursor material in the semiconductor precursor material of the semiconductor precursor material in the future big A's semiconductor market research report.

Guided by the leading ideas, the R&D center of Xinxin Technology in Silicon Valley has made rapid progress, and the black diamond technology based on the 90nm process has been developed, which is to put it bluntly, it is doped with carbon in silicon oxide, and at the same time, the double inlay process can perfectly solve the interface bonding problems between low-dielectric films and between low-dielectric films and metal wires, so that the adhesion coefficient between low-dielectric films is greatly improved.

Nakamura praised again and again: "It's really amazing Xinxin Technology, which has been monopolized by Applied Materials in this field before, but I didn't expect Xinxin Technology to be able to achieve a technological breakthrough in such a short period of time." ”

Applied Materials is the most important raw material and equipment company in the semiconductor field, the largest supplier of many upstream materials, and the first chip equipment company to enter China.

Nakamura Suehiro does not have to doubt the authenticity of Guan Jianying's words, because if the material field is good, it will work, and if it is not good, it will not work.

Since Guan Jianying will bring it up, it means that they hope to cooperate with Sony, and the ultra-low K dielectric material of Xinxin Technology will also be used for Sony to try.

Guan Jianying said: "Our R&D center in Silicon Valley has a large number of experienced engineers and R&D personnel, and Xinxin Technology not only has sufficient experience in the field of mobile chip design, but also has rich experience in semiconductor materials and chip foundry.

Well, maybe the experience of chip foundry is limited, and we really can't produce 90nm chips at present, but Xinxin Technology definitely has the ability to design 90nm chips. ”

Guan Jianying also didn't want to help Sony produce chips, whether it was Xinxin itself or local chip manufacturers in China, they don't have 90nm chip production capacity now.

Not to mention Huaguo's chip manufacturers, TSMC is currently stuck and has no progress.

So Guan Jianying just wants to help Sony design 90nm chips, and at the same time sell the ultra-low K dielectric materials they developed to Sony, and sell chips with 130nm or even lower processes to Nintendo.

For Guan Jianying, this visit to Neon also belongs to marketing.

"I need time to verify that the chips we make really have such a problem, and if so, then I don't think Sony's fab will mind buying ultra-low K dielectric materials from Xinxin," Nakamura said.

Not only Sony, but also Toshiba, NEC, Panasonic, etc., neon chip manufacturers will not refuse to cooperate with Xinxin Technology in semiconductor materials.

As for the mobile chip design of Sony's future handheld, we can also consider cooperating with Xinxin. ”

In the company, everyone talked about more formal topics, and in the evening in the izakaya, Nakamura Suehiro and Guan Jianying sat side by side, and Nakamura was much more relaxed.

Guan Jianying has always been very relaxed.

"Guan Sang, compared with Sony, the development of Xinxin Technology in recent years has a dizzying feeling, your development speed is too fast, just like the neon semiconductor companies in the eighties of the last century.

There are still some differences from the neon companies at that time, when a large number of excellent companies emerged in the field of neon semiconductors, and at present, only Xinxin seems to have a strong sense of presence in Huaguo, and there is an obvious gap between other Huaguo semiconductor companies and Xinxin. ”

Nakamura lamented that he is older than Guan Jianying, and after he joined Sony, he experienced the golden age of neon companies in the 80s, and Nakamura served as the minister of semiconductors, core technology and networks, displays, and TV businesses.

These are all core business units within Sony, and Nakamura is developing the VEGA brand and leading VEGA to become the No. 1 TV brand in the neon market.

From the 80s to the millennium, Nakamura has almost witnessed the decline of neon semiconductor companies, and witnessed the gradual backwater of neon from vigorous to now.

Guan Jianying said: "The development of Xinxin Technology is similar to the development of Neon Semiconductor Enterprises in the past, and we are all built on the foundation of Silicon Valley.

It's just that unlike Neon companies that accept a large number of technology transfers from Silicon Valley, Xinxin Technology is more inclined to recruit a large number of experienced R&D personnel, and then conduct independent research and development on this basis, and our autonomy is stronger than that of Neon in the 80s. ”

After clinking glasses, Nakamura and Guan Jianying said: "We accepted a large amount of technology transferred by Silicon Valley and inherited the production capacity transferred from Silicon Valley, and secondly, because we had no money at that time.

At that time, Sony was not like Xinxin Technology, backed by a strong major shareholder, Newman almost had unlimited bullets to support Xinxin Technology, Sony was different, Sony needed to achieve profitability as soon as possible.

The pressures we faced were very different, and it wasn't until we got a foothold in the TV business that Sony had the energy to devote resources to R&D.

As long as it is a physical manufacturing enterprise, it can be more or less aware of the importance of R&D, but sometimes it is true that there are no such resources.

When Guan Sang's business failed a few years ago, I actually wanted to poach you to come to Sony, but before I could personally go to Silicon Valley to talk to you face-to-face, I received an email from you to China. ”

Nakamura and Guan Jianying are a little bit forgetful, Guan Jianying said: "Joining Xinxin Technology was an accident, Newman's personal charm and influence at that time were too strong, he and I briefly talked about what Xinxin was going to do, I couldn't help but feel that this was an opportunity, I had to seize it."

At that time, Newman had just sold Quora to Time Warner for an unimaginable sky-high price, and in Silicon Valley at that time, Newman almost had a natural aura, and everyone wanted to cooperate with Newman.

Under this premise, Newman said to you, come on, do my work, it's hard to refuse, and you don't even need to think about it.

Even in the case of integrated circuits, Newman has not proven himself in the field before. ”

Nakamura smiled after hearing this: "Newman is indeed a very charismatic man, Neon's "" magazine holds a "favorite male" poll every year, Newman is the first place of the most ideal lover all year round, and the second place is Takuya Kimura.

Newman is truly an envy of the world, with unimaginable success in all areas, including semiconductors and consumer electronics. It's hard for me to imagine that a person can have such exuberant energy and such strong management skills.

When Xinxin Technology was established before, you went to be an executive, I thought that Xinxin Technology would focus on the field of chip design, starting with some low-difficulty chip design, Newman also studied semiconductors, and he will also participate.

Newman Technology is equivalent to having some play ticket nature, but I didn't expect Newman's ambition to be so big, and Newman's business scope spans chip design, chip manufacturing, chip raw materials and chip equipment. ”

June is going to pass again, and the crows degenerate back to 4k crows in June, alas~

(End of chapter)