The Millennium Semiconductor Survival Guide.

Chapter 60 A Sense of Urgency After ISSCC Ends

ASM shipped a total of 1999 units in 217, and 217 of these 22 units were refurbished machines.

In comparison, 1998 were shipped in 162, seven of which were refurbished.

This reflects the gradual improvement of the overall semiconductor market.

In 1999, the net sales amounted to 11.97 billion euros, while the net income was only 8100 million euros, and the gross profit margin was 33.4%.

The net research and development cost in 1999 reached 1.38 million euros, including a large amount of human costs. By the end of 1999, the entire ASML had nearly 3000 employees.

Zhou Xin wants to buy ASML before 2004. The first problem is to convince Philips Semiconductors and ASM International, and the second problem is to bypass regulatory restrictions.

American would most likely intervene in this matter.

If you can't buy ASML, you can consider buying other second-tier lithography machine factories, and use the cognitive advantages of key nodes to achieve corner overtaking.

Of course, the localization of the semiconductor industry chain is far from simple, and ASML cannot produce a lithography machine by itself.

They also need [-] suppliers from all over the world to supply him.

Therefore, even if Zhou Xin has the opportunity to buy ASML, he must cultivate related enterprises in the upstream and downstream of Huaguo's industrial chain.

"How do you feel about this ISSCC conference?"

On the way back to Berkeley from San Francisco, Hu Zhengming asked.

For Hu Zhengming, this kind of conference is firstly to absorb the most cutting-edge knowledge and understand the industry dynamics, and secondly, to communicate.

There are many friends and many paths. If you are not sure, you will jump from academia to the industry.

"I don't feel much, everyone is doing very well, and I still have a lot of shortcomings.

At the same time, I deeply feel that Huaguo still has a long way to go in the overall integrated circuit field. "

In the whole year of 1999, the sales of semiconductors in mainland China was only a little over 4000 million US dollars, accounting for 0.04% of the global proportion, not even a fraction of the annual net sales of a company called ASML.

Zhou Xin's only regret in participating in ISSCC this time is that he did not meet Zhang Rujing.

In 2000, before Huaguo joined the WTO, it was decided to return to Huaguo to build a factory. This is a very courageous thing.

SMIC will be incorporated in the Cayman Islands in April next year.

Zhang is an unavoidable figure in the development of Huaguo Semiconductor.

At this time, Shida Semiconductor, founded by Zhang Rujing, has achieved mass production and profitability.

And Zhang Rujing plans to build the first and second factories of Shida in Wanwan, and all the third to tenth factories will be located in the mainland.

Just when Zhang Rujing was about to make a big move, without Zhang Rujing's knowledge, the major shareholder of the World University secretly negotiated with TSMC and will sell the company to TSMC for a price of 50 billion US dollars next year.

It was also after the world was sold that Zhang Rujing returned to China to establish SMIC.

However, even if Zhou Xin met Zhang Rujing, he had no angle to remind him, and the price offered by TSMC was a price that the major shareholders of Shida Semiconductor could not refuse.

Not everyone has patriotism and long-term vision.

"At the ISSCC meeting, I didn't see scholars from Huaguo, which made me feel a little frustrated." Zhou Xin continued.

(I have a little doubt here, that is, the information I found on the Internet said that in 2005, IDT-NEWAVE, a foreign-funded company in the mainland, published the first paper on simulation on ISSCC on behalf of the mainland. published papers on.

IDT-NEWAVE is IDT in front of this company, and NEWAVE is Xintao Technology in the back. IDT established a joint venture company after acquiring Xintao Technology. Among them, Yang Chonghe, one of the founders of Xintao Technology, later founded the company that is now listed on the Science and Technology Innovation Board. Montage Technology listed on the market.

Then I found on the homepage of Gai Weixin, Dean of the School of Integrated Circuits, Peking University, that he had published a paper on ISSCC in 1999, titled:

A 2B Parallel 1.25 Gb/s Interconnect I/O Interface with Self-Configurable Link and Plesiochronous Clocking,” 1999 IEEE International Solid-State Circuits Conference (ISSCC), San Francisco, CA, USA, pp.180-181.
But this paper was not found in the column of his personal homepage on IEEE's official website. Before I got the answer, I first wrote Huaguo's first ISSCC conference paper in 2005. )
Seeing that Zhou Xin was not in a very high mood, Hu Zhengming knew that he was worried about the development of Huaguo Semiconductor, so he said: "The transfer of the semiconductor industry is a process.

As long as Huaguo can successfully join the WTO, it will be able to undertake the transfer of the European and American semiconductor industries.

Huaguo scholars will always be seen in the future.

It will take time, and that's how Wan Wan and Gao Li came here.

This requires process. "

After visiting ISSCC for a while, the sense of urgency that was relieved by the era of wealth freedom and integration is full again.

Zhou Xin fell into a state of workaholic again. Originally, he wanted to hook up with Aimo and enjoy the exotic atmosphere. After filling up the rhythm of work and scientific research again, he had no time to see her at all.

In other words, Zhou Xin is also a cold-blooded animal who only looks at his face and has no emotions.

"The last version of the test is going to be done, and we expect to release it this Friday. Together with electronic payment, we still support the earliest transfer payment method, but we will give him a certain discount when using electronic payment."

After returning to Silicon Valley, Zhou Xin’s game production company is now renamed Flamingo Game Development Company, and the company’s logo is an angry red flamingo.

They plan to make the flamingo into the game when the Angry Birds [-]th anniversary comes.

Now it's just the company's logo.

Design started at the beginning of the year, and a team of 50 people worked for more than half a year before completing the development of the new game, "Plants vs. Zombies".

This is also a market-proven and enduring game, and it also conforms to their usual style.

Therefore, the design of the game has been unanimously approved by everyone since it was released.

When the first demo was made, Stephen and Ashley realized that this would be another popular game.

This made Ben, who was dissatisfied with Zhou Xin's monopoly of fist games shares, and the valuation of fist games exceeded 30 billion, regained their psychological balance.

They are inferior to each other in terms of vision and ability. Zhou Xin is their core competitiveness. Ashley and Stephen realized this again. After adjusting their mentality, they began to devote all their energy to the production of new games.

Zhou Xin has high hopes for "Plants vs. Zombies".

This high hope is not to achieve economic success, but to use this game to open up the living space for NewPay, which will be officially launched soon.

Complete the accumulation of original customers.

For the launch of "Plants vs. Zombies" and the launch of NewPay, Zhou Xin started preparations very early.

Riot Games announced about a month ago that they will soon launch their own electronic payment software, and everyone can enjoy a [-]% discount for the first order when paying with the electronic payment software.

Every subsequent order can enjoy a discount ranging from [-]% to [-]%.

As for Plants vs. Zombies, through the game layout and the release of a small number of real machine demo screens to attract players.

(End of this chapter)