The Millennium Semiconductor Survival Guide.

Chapter 219 Affected History
4004 is considered to be the origin of commercial processors. Before 4004, Intel was only a single memory manufacturer, no different from Toshiba and NEC. After 4004, Intel transformed from a memory manufacturer to a company that jointly ruled the entire PC era with Microsoft. Hardware manufacturers.

The 4004 was advertised as an epoch-making commodity, and it turned out that it did live up to the ad's expectations.

Professors at Berkeley can compare Mphone with 4004 in the classroom. Although Mphone actually opened the prelude to the mobile Internet era seven years in advance, it is not an exaggeration to compare it with Intel 4004, but it is still very difficult to see this now. .

Nokia chose to make semi-smart phones like the iPhone because they coveted the mobile phone market above $500, but it does not mean that they really think that the mobile Internet must be the future direction of mobile phone development.

It was Galvin, the president of Motorola at this time, who was vaguely aware of the importance of smartphones.As the founder of the RAZR project and the blade v3, Galvin's sense of smell in the mobile phone field is undoubted. He smells uneasiness from the rapid growth of Mphone.

For Motorola, the main opponent is still Nokia. Since 1991, Nokia has used 90% of its funds and manpower for the research and development of mobile communication and multimedia technology, and cut off all industries in more than ten other fields. In seven years, it surpassed Motorola and became the mobile phone manufacturer with the largest market share in the world.

By 2002, one out of every three mobile phones in the world was made by Nokia.

From the rapid growth of Mphone, Galvin felt that it was possible that a new "Nokia" was about to be born.

More importantly, Zhou Xin is the trader behind Mphone. No mobile phone manufacturer dares to underestimate Zhou Xin after the past year.

Keyboard manufacturers who underestimated Zhou Xin before and thought that the other party did not understand the hardware industry have experienced extremely painful times.Cherry, which has a long history and a large number of fans, feels the most. Their revenue has dropped by nearly 50.00% in just three years.

Zhou Xin has just entered the mobile phone industry, and veterans in the mobile phone industry will still express their disbelief in the media, thinking that mobile phones are much more sophisticated than keyboards.

After the Mphone price came out, Nokia's executives even stated in the media that no consumer would want to buy such an expensive mobile phone, but it is equipped with some Internet applications.

When Mphone sales exceeded 100 million, these voices disappeared. When sales exceeded 500 million, mobile phone manufacturers had only one idea, and that was to learn.

But with a few apps, you can raise the price of the phone, why not do it?

Although it is necessary to use better chips and larger memory to support more complex applications, the increase in costs is far less than the increase in profits.

When Zhou Xin revealed all the chip models of Intel, Li Jingyi suddenly realized: "I almost forgot that you are still a doctor in the field of integrated circuits.

No wonder it can be associated with Intel and 4004 above. "

Not only does Li Jingyi not remember that Zhou Xin is a Ph.D. in integrated circuits, but the outside world hardly mentions Zhou Xin's identity.

Except that the Berkeley management valued outstanding alumni, and the students would be proud that the school had such famous classmates, no one else cared about Zhou Xin's status.

Even though he was given the title of PhD student when he participated in IEEE every year, others would regard him as a bigwig in the Internet field and an entrepreneur in the integrated circuit field.

In the global chip industry, after the launch of Mphone's A1E chip, Xinxin Technology is still well-known in the industry.Because at the moment, A1E is a chip that can be described as excellent.

Intel, Texas Instruments and even Samsung have all expressed their desire to acquire Xinxin Semiconductor to Guan Jianying through their offices in China.

Among them, Samsung is willing to offer a high price of US$5 million to acquire Xinxin Semiconductor.You must know that Intel's mobile chip line XScale, the entire department packaged and sold only 6 million US dollars.

Intel has invested close to $100 billion in XScale.

These manufacturers hope to acquire Xinxin Semiconductor, purely for the A1E chip.

In addition to those who want to acquire Xinxin Semiconductor, there are many who want to use the A1E chip in their handheld computers.Because of A1E's excellent architecture, excellent performance and relatively low power consumption, handheld computer manufacturers are very excited. Sony, HP, Compaq, etc. have all proposed cooperation.

Not to mention domestic manufacturers like Lenovo. Lenovo launched its first handheld computer, the Dimensity 5000, last year, claiming to be the first self-developed handheld computer in China.

The chip uses Intel's SA1110 with a frequency of only 206MHz. The operating system is Microsoft's operating system specially designed for handheld computers. As for the self-developed part, it should be the Lenovo backup, multimedia, contacts and other applications on the desktop.

(I can tell you what has been used)

When talking with Xinxin Technology, the representative of Lenovo said that we are all Huaguo enterprises, and we can definitely create a Huaguo handheld computer of Huaguo. With this as a selling point, it will definitely attract a large audience.

Because Matrix and Xinxin Technology signed an exclusive licensing agreement around the A1E chip, Zhou Xin did not want to give up the advantages so quickly. The benefits of not opening up the A1E are far greater than opening up to the outside world, so the A1E chip is not authorized to other manufacturers.

Zhou Xin said: "I know Intel not because my major is integrated circuits, but because I think Intel is a direct competitor of Xinxin Technology. We are all trying in the field of mobile chips."

In fact, Zhou Xin is not worried about Nokia and Motorola, or even Apple, because the smartphone market is too huge, and this market is so big that it can support five to six players in the end.

With memories from later generations, whether it is touch screen, full screen, notch screen, under-screen fingerprint, he knows almost every form of smartphone that will be welcomed by users, and he can get an admission ticket no matter what.

The only thing Zhou Xin worries about is Intel and Microsoft. He has already started the era of mobile Internet ahead of time. If Intel and Microsoft do not go wrong by joining forces, the pressure to face the competition between the two will be extraordinary.

Zhou Xin didn't stay in Yanjing for too long before going to San Francisco, because Xinxin Technology's main executive team was enjoying the Christmas holiday with their families in the Bay Area.

"Professor, long time no see, I saw your concept of integrated chips, and also your idea of ​​Xinxin Technology's involvement in the field of chip manufacturing.

I think there is no problem. This time I went back to Huaguo and talked with Huaguo's senior management. It is expected that the cooperation between Xinxin Technology and Huahong Semiconductor will be completed in the first quarter of this year. "

Hu Zhengming said: "Yes, I plan to recruit Liang Mengsong, but Liang Mengsong is now very valued in TSMC and belongs to the core technology backbone.

Moreover, the current situation of Xinxin Technology is far behind that of TSMC, so it is difficult to persuade him to come.

Liang Mengsong must be the best candidate. If he can't come, I will activate the candidates on the backup list. "

Zhou Xin and Liang Mengsong are very familiar. The establishment of Yuanshikong Xinxin Technology would have been difficult to attract investment without Liang Mengsong.And during the establishment and operation of the company, Liang Mengsong gave him a lot of help.

Zhou Xin naturally hopes that Liang Mengsong will help him, not only because he trusts the other party's character and ability, but also because of the consideration of weakening TSMC.

But he knows Liang Mengsong very well. Now Liang Mengsong is very valued in TSMC, not because the relationship between the two parties broke down later.

It is difficult to poach Liang Mengsong not because of the treatment, but because Xinxin Technology is naturally limited, unable to obtain the most advanced equipment and cannot manufacture the most advanced chips.

Liang Mengsong is an engineer. What he hopes is to pursue the ultimate manufacturing process. If the restrictions of the Wassenaar Agreement are not lifted, Huaguo will not be able to pursue the most advanced manufacturing process for a long time.

This is contrary to Liang Mengsong's ideal.

Zhou Xin said: "When we participated in IEEE in San Francisco in 1999, you, the professor, took me to meet Brother Liang once. He is very experienced in the field of chip manufacturing, and he is almost familiar with the cutting-edge technology of the industry.

I believe in your vision, professor, you can just try, we can increase the incentives for dividends. "

Xinxin Technology is currently adopting Huawei's model, but it has been transformed on the Huawei model.

The basic salary has been increased, and only the current employees can enjoy the equity dividend in terms of dividends.

In the initial stage of Huawei's profit distribution model, there is no problem when the market continues to grow rapidly and revenue and profits continue to grow.But when it hits a bottleneck, the pressure on the entire financial situation will be very high.

This is why Huawei will be so difficult after the mobile phone business suffered a major blow.

Moreover, Huawei's mechanism is not conducive to new employees. The previous people have eaten up the bonuses, and they can continue to eat even after leaving the company.

In order to avoid this problem, Xinxin Technology borrowed as much as possible from the salary system of TSMC, Texas Instruments and Intel.

It just so happens that Hu Zhengming has many acquaintances in these three companies, and he can directly refer to their salary system design.

Zhou Xin said: "The other is the mobile phone integrated chip solution, which I think is very good.

This is a road that is in line with China's current situation, can fully stimulate China's economic situation, and is also in line with our current situation.

But one thing is that the development of such an integrated chip is not difficult. According to your schedule, it is expected to be developed by the middle of this year.

Then I predict that Xinxin Technology will have a bonus period of at least two or three years with the help of such mobile phone integrated chips.

During the bonus period of two to three years, it is too easy to make money, and we cannot relax our sense of urgency, nor can we relax investment in research and development. "

Later, why did MediaTek pull its hips in the mobile Internet era and make a joke about the difficulty of one core and nine cores?To a large extent, it is because MediaTek's so-called "turnkey" model comes in too fast, and they greatly relax their sense of urgency in the field of research and development.

Zhou Xin said: "After the Mphone was launched, I sent one to each of you, and everyone has a deep experience with the Mphone.

If you compare the Mphone with other mobile phones, you will find that the Mphone is the way of the future.

Therefore, after we launch mobile phone integrated chips, we need to start the research and development of cost-effective mobile phone chips.

After the bonus period of mobile phone integrated chips has passed, we will launch Internet mobile phone chips that focus on cost-effectiveness.

Such a period of five years is enough to mature each sector of the entire Xinxin Technology, and at the same time to cultivate a number of supporting enterprises in Zhangjiang. "

"I think we must always have a sense of urgency, we cannot obtain advanced manufacturing processes, so we need to use existing conditions to reach the limits of existing production lines as much as possible.

In addition, a breakthrough in the chip manufacturing process needs to be achieved. "

Hu Zhengming said: "Mobile phone chips are one thing, computer chips will be another.

I have been in touch with Intel. We hope that Intel will design a chip for Huaguo, and then hand over the foundry of this chip to us.

Because so far, the cooperation between Xinxin and Huahong has not been finalized, and we cannot even produce a single chip, so I am only in the initial stage of contacting about the cooperation with Intel.

After I went around in Huaguo, I thought we could cooperate with Huaguo's vast number of small and medium Internet cafes, understand their most commonly used applications, and then design a chip for them according to their needs. "

Hu Zhengming's research in Huaguo is still effective, and he has even mastered the secret of the so-called Internet cafes in Huaguo Internet between 2000 and 2010.

Zhou Xin said: "I think it's okay, I invested in Shanda, and they have a good relationship with Internet cafes in various places. Professor, you can ask the business development team to chat with them after you go back.

In addition, Tencent also has a certain influence in the domestic Internet cafe industry, so you can also chat with them.

I think our strategic concept of Xinxin Technology is very clear, and what we need to do now is to implement it one by one, and then continue to invest in the field of research and development. "

After Zhou Xin finished speaking, Lin Benjian mentioned: "I think we can properly cooperate with TSMC.

Xinxin lithography machine shipped ten lithography machines last year, and the purchasers were TSMC, Huahong and Toshiba.

Our price is 20.00% lower than that of Nikon lithography machines of the same model. According to the news that our engineers went to help TSMC to debug and install the machine, as well as test the information obtained from TSMC’s bent tube mouth, TSMC is facing great pressure. . "

TSMC's life is not easy at this time. The chip technology dominated by Intel and IBM has achieved a breakthrough.They achieved a breakthrough in the 180nm to 130nm process by switching from "aluminum dielectric" to "copper dielectric".

IBM is trying to use the 130nm process of copper dielectric as a bargaining chip to dominate the chip manufacturing process.Of the two foundry giants TSMC and UMC in the Wanwan area, only UMC has agreed to cooperate and has achieved mass production of the 130nm process.

As for TSMC, it chose to refuse. With the arrival of Hu Zhengming, TSMC successfully selected the low-dielectric insulation technology, directly skipped 150nm, entered the 130nm process, and realized the independent and mass production of the 130nm process.

But now that Hu Zhengming came to Xinxin Technology and did not go to TSMC, TSMC was stuck at 180nm without breakthroughs, and many orders for advanced manufacturing processes were cut off.

Including A1E, Zhou Xin actually thought about finding TSMC to do it, but their current technology does not meet the requirements.

(End of this chapter)