When the financial crisis came, a large number of semiconductor companies chose to lay off employees and choose strategic contraction, and Nvidia was not the first and would not be the last.

In the past, there was the largest layoff in TSMC's history, which required thousands of layoffs, and then Samsung's large-scale layoff plan was even more amazing.

Texas Instruments, Intel, and AMD are all strategically shrinking, and AMD, which has just acquired ATI, is even facing an extremely tight cash flow situation.

Semiconductor companies are learning from geckos to survive.

Of course, in this stormy day, Samsung chose to expand against the trend, and it is bound to kill the last glory of neon semiconductor manufacturing.

Samsung layoffs are layoffs, and production expansion and price reductions are production expansion and price reductions, and the two are not in conflict.

Samsung announced plans to expand production capacity of up to $1.9 billion at the beginning of this year, and as the financial crisis intensified, Samsung increased its investment again, investing another $2 billion.

By next year, Samsung will continue to expand production capacity.

And why Samsung has the confidence to expand production, first, because their blood is relatively thick, with the popularity of smart phones, the consumer electronics industry has an increasing demand for memory chips; The second is the Mphone3 that has just been launched, and the sales of Mphone3 have made Samsung more confident.

Matrix is a major customer of Samsung's memory chips, and the long-term cooperative relationship with Matrix allows Samsung's production capacity to be digested.

Xinxin did not make memory chips, because this industry is a cyclical industry, and there are already several fixed players on the market.

Xinxin now has more than 10,000 employees in the semiconductor business alone, and if it wants to enter memory chips, it will have to at least double the number of employees, and they are not ready for such expansion.

For a company, blind expansion is required to pay tuition, and the current Xinxin Technology is not ready for this.

On the premise of knowing the historical trend, it is naturally the most cost-effective to wait for the collapse of Elpida to directly buy the assets of Elpida's bankruptcy liquidation, and even because of the financial crisis, these assets only need a very low price.

In addition, the financial crisis is at everyone's own risk, and assets that would not have been sold are not negotiable at this point in time.

Not to mention a product with huge losses like Elpida, even if it is like a Nikon lithography machine, it is not non-negotiable.

"We were still thinking too simply, it was difficult for mobile chips to choose between power consumption and performance, and we overestimated our capabilities in chip design."

Lao Huang has experienced many failures since founding NVIDIA, but the most dangerous one in history must be this one from 2007 to 2008.

After the acquisition of ATI, AMD made a heavy attack in the field of discrete graphics cards, occupying 40.7% of the market share of discrete graphics cards in just one year, and AMD's CEO even claimed to take more than half of the market share by the end of 2008.

Nvidia is facing a severe test, coupled with the sluggish overall market demand, and the market share is constantly eroded, and they have to open up sources and reduce expenditure.

Nvidia has about 5,500 employees worldwide at this time, and this time it is expected to lay off more than 1,000 people at one time, first lay off 500 people, and then continue to lay off if the situation does not improve, which can be said to be the determination of a strong man to break his wrist.

Of course, Nvidia is good, and Motorola is even more exaggerated, and the mobile business segment alone plans to lay off more than 4,000 people at once and close one-third of the world's 94 offices.

Zhou Xin said: "I understand that all enterprises are having a hard time now, the impact of the financial crisis is spreading, it is like a bomb thrown into the water, and the ripples will scatter and affect the entire water surface."

Have you considered transferring the core R&D center to Zhangjiang, Huaguo has become increasingly mature in terms of talent pool with the development of the chip industry in the past decade.

Compared to Silicon Valley, the cost of everything is much lower.

Do you know Motorola, their chip testing and assembly department is located in Xiangjiang, and now they plan to lay off all the Motorola branches in Xiangjiang, in order to reduce costs, Motorola plans to move this business to Tianjin and Kuala Lumpur. ”

Motorola has a team of about 700 to 800 people in Xiangjiang, specializing in chip testing and assembly.

Of course, Motorola's layoffs also involve Huaguo, and the Yanjing office will lay off thousands of people, and some employees of Motorola's Yanjing branch have gone to the company's door to pull banners to protest.

Because of the excessively high land rent, most of the manufacturing industry in Xiangjiang cannot stay in Xiangjiang at all, even if it is a manufacturing industry with a high rate of return such as semiconductors.

Ground rent is more exaggerated than in the Lion City.

"I thought about it, and we had about 400 employees in China in three departments: R&D, marketing and sales," Huang said.

Of course, the R&D aspect is mainly some non-core functional design, which involves a lot of difficulties, and it is impossible for us to move the entire R&D department to China at once, or use local engineers in China.

The second is whether this kind of cross-border cooperation is suitable if we try to set up an R&D team in China.

Therefore, we have not made up our minds to adjust our R&D to China.

You mentioned that we can try it further. ”

Zhou Xin thought that Nvidia would move more R&D departments to Huaguo, and then use Nvidia's branch in Huaguo as a training center, find some employees to work for a period of time, and then come out to work on domestic graphics cards.

Now Nvidia is far less strong than later generations, in the entire graphics card field, the strongest is Intel, accounting for 62% of the market share, including the set of graphics, Intel is the best in the set of graphics, the second is AMD, accounting for 22.6%, the third is Nvidia, the market share has fallen by 5 points since the beginning of this year.

There are rumors on Wall Street that Nvidia is Newman's only eye-catching business, and Zhou Xin has probably lost more than two billion in this transaction so far, including interest costs.

Lao Huang admires Zhou Xin very much, he can achieve success as quickly in the chip field as in the Internet field, everyone is engaged in technology, and he knows very well that success is not so easy.

Since he founded NVIDIA in 1993, it has been 15 years now, so many years, NVIDIA is still a catch-up in the field of independent graphics cards or integrated graphics cards, and Zhou Xinneng can become the first in the fields of mobile chips, Bluetooth chips, lithography machines, etc., in as little as two or three years, or as long as five or six years, which is too difficult.

It's hard for him to think about.

Mobile chips and Bluetooth chips are okay, there are no direct competitors, they belong to the needs created by Zhou Xin, but the lithography machine is not, the lithography machine has a history of 50 years since the 60s, and Xinxin Semiconductor can actually catch up, Lao Huang thinks this is a rare miracle.

As long as Zhou Xin knows that NVIDIA will put some core R&D business in Huaguo in the future, this will achieve his goal.

"Before the show begins, let's mourn the people who died in the shooting not long ago." Bill Maher said.

Bill Maher, the host of HBO, this talk show called "Real-time Interaction with Bill Maher" is nicknamed Puma Show by Chinese audiences.

He hosted the show with gray hair, a suit and leather shoes, and a bow tie instead of a tie, in the style of a CNN news presenter.

Before hosting the Puma show, Mach also hosted a show called "Politics is Incorrect", and you will know from the name that politics is the core topic.

Similar to "Politically Incorrect", the Puma show also featured professors, journalists and politicians, mainly discussing politics and current affairs.

Zhou Xin is also in a suit and leather shoes, with a sad look on his face, he has no sad emotions in his heart, not because he is indifferent or thinks that the Amerikens deserve it, but because he is an emotionally indifferent person.

And Zhou Xin didn't think there was anything to be happy about, he felt sorry for the people who died in this shooting, losing their lives in this way.

"Okay, the mourning is over, let's welcome Newman with a round of applause, this makes us love and hate damn guys!" Mach is smiling, but the smile gives the audience a sense of contempt and arrogance.

Zhou Xin nodded: "Hello." ”

Maher said: "This is the first time since the inception of our show that such a big name has been featured in our show, so much so that my heart fluttered when the director told me.

When I watched the Charlie Rose show before, I thought it was incredible to see that guy actually had the opportunity to interview Newman, his interview level was obviously not as good as mine, and the topics he asked were too non-aggressive.

In my case, I was able to find more exciting topics, and now I finally got my wish, and I had the opportunity to interview Newman.

Why are you wearing such a formal dress today? It's not the same style as all your previous shows.

It's the first time I've seen you in a suit. ”

Zhou Xin said: "To be honest, I came to this show as the founder of Matrix to do crisis public relations.

There was a lot of bad public opinion about Matrix because of the shooting, and I wanted to explain it a little, and I think it was a very formal occasion and I needed to dress formally to show that I was serious. ”

Sincerity is nirvana.

Puma shows are generally recorded and broadcasted, but because of Zhou Xin's requirements, this show was deliberately changed to a live broadcast.

If Wallace weren't too old, he would have been ninety years old, and he would have even wanted to be on Wallace's "60 Minutes" show.

Wallace announced last year that he would no longer participate in the show due to health reasons.

Ma He thought that he was really a difficult guy to deal with, but in fact, he received a hint from HBO to try his best to make Zhou Xinnan step down.

As a result, Zhou Xin directly said that he was here to do crisis public relations, and suddenly disrupted the offensive routine he prepared.

"Yes, I've seen a lot of talk about Matrix on the internet and in the media, and they think Matrix caused this financial crisis."

Zhou Xin shook his head: "Matrix is not a financial institution, it does not have such great power. ”

Maher said: "The logic of the media is that Matrix has brought about the era of mobile Internet, and the mobile Internet has made Internet finance accessible to more people, and Internet finance has further increased leverage, and the financial crisis broke out after the bubble was blown up." ”

Zhou Xin asked rhetorically: "Wouldn't there be no mobile Internet without Matrix?"

It is the product of the development of technology to a certain stage, and there will be Aphone without Mphone, and there will be Bphone.

It's like the Nasdaq bubble burst in 2000, can the scientists who invented computers during World War II be blamed?

I think this is a crime that the media has imposed on Matrix. ”

Maher felt that he had fallen behind: "Newman, we all know that you are the best product manager of all time and the richest person in the world, did you expect to be used by someone like Madoff when you were doing NewPay? ”

Zhou Xin said: "No, when I was doing NewPay, I just used it as a tool, people can move books, shopping, music playing, etc. online, so why can't I move payments online?" ”

"Then did you expect it when you made Yue Bao?" Maher realized that his previous question could not penetrate Zhou's defense.

It would be too hypocritical to answer no at this time, because you have said before that you strictly control the risk, but you are afraid that the risk of the financial product will not be recognized by the user.

"Yes." Zhou Xin said, and then hurriedly made up for it: "So NewPay has strictly adopted the financial product access policy.

We will conduct a strict risk review for each financial product sold through NewPay, and will clearly indicate what the underlying assets of the product are composed of in the product introduction, and update the underlying assets and the risk review report made by NewPay's internal employees every quarter, so as to make the information as open and transparent as possible. ”

It's their business that other electronic payment software messes around, and NewPay has always been strict about the bottom line.

At this time, the audience watching the live broadcast in front of the TV has been convinced that NewPay is still reliable.

Ma He thought to himself that the other party was really difficult: "Then why don't other electronic payment software take the same strict risk control measures?" ”

Zhou Xin said: "I am aware of the risks, other electronic payment software may not be aware of the risks, or even if they are aware of the risks, they deliberately ignore them in order to attract users with high returns." ”

It's Baidu.

"But this is the business strategy of other companies, I can't interfere with the business strategy of other companies, I can't say, the risk is too great, you can't do this."

Maher asked, "Newman, what you said is very good, you are about to convince me, but aren't you a major shareholder of Baidu?"

I remember when Baidu went public, you were the biggest shareholder of Baidu, and you became the biggest beneficiary of Baidu's listing. ”

After this was revealed, the audience in front of the TV had bad associations.

Zhou Xin is confident: "You can check Baidu's public financial report, I have withdrawn from the ranks of Baidu's major shareholders since the first quarter of 2006, and my shareholding has dropped to less than 5%.

Before the Madoff incident broke out this year, the shareholding was less than 0.5%, and I am no longer Baidu's largest shareholder.

I have been back to China since 2003, and I have not been to America since I returned to China, my time is precious, I am a person who wants to retire before I am 30 years old, and I don't know that Baidu Pay has engaged in this kind of operation. ”

Zhou Xin's strategy is nine points true and one point false, the public information you can find must be true, if you can't find it, then I will play freely.

"But as far as I know, you and Robin are brothers, and your personal relationship is very good."

(End of chapter)