Riding the wind of rebirth

"After analysis, we found that the reason why domestic wafers cannot meet your needs is due to the manufacturing preparation stage, that is, after the design team completes the physical design, it transfers the masks and other related documents required for production to the manufacturing factory. The factory then develops the process stages of the tape-out step based on the mask and related documents.”

"Then we asked the second reason why, according to your mask and related documents, production can be smooth on your wafers, but the completion rate is lower on our domestic wafers?"

"In the end, we found that the reason was actually very simple. It was because your design was strictly based on the parameters of your own wafers and lacked compatibility and redundancy considerations, which led to the incompatibility with our domestic wafers. Not convinced'."

"Then the last thing comes, how to solve the incompatibility problem between you and me?"

"So has the plan come out?" Quan Wuxuan asked.

"It's out." Zhou Zhi looked at Quan Wuxuan and nodded seriously: "That is to make adaptive fine-tuning of your masks and related documents suitable for our domestic wafer tape-out."

"Hahahaha..." Quan Wuxuan and Shen Zongjun couldn't help laughing. Quan Wuxuan did not speak to Zhou Zhi directly, but turned to Cui Zhicheng and smiled: "President, Mr. Zhou wants to introduce our world-leading DRAM Do you think it’s possible to adjust the mask plan?”

Unexpectedly, Cui Zhicheng still had a cold face, still like a stone Buddha amidst the low laughter from the Korean side, and even turned to look at his team, letting the laughter quickly disappear in the conference room: "This is a serious issue , I don’t think there is anything ridiculous about the valuable ideas put forward by Mr. Zhou. We cannot think that there is no room for improvement just because our DRAM design is already world-leading.”

"The group's integrated IDM model indeed makes us rarely consider compatibility. Mr. Zhou has now brought it up to us, I think..." At this point, Cui Zhicheng nodded slightly towards Zhou Zhi: "We The first thing to say is thank you.”

As soon as Cui Zhicheng spoke, the laughter in the conference room stopped abruptly.

At this time, Zhou Zhi only had one thought in his mind, that is, successful people must be successful.

Cui Zhicheng turned back, looked at Zhou Zhi and said seriously: "Mr. Zhou, there are still problems with this. For Samsung, the fixed mask solution is the optimal solution we obtained after thousands of experiments, and it is also the guarantee of our production quality. The key point is that to modify it, we have to pay too much, and the benefits may not be able to offset our efforts.”

"Because compatibility is originally a matter of consideration for the group, the IDM model itself is the key to our quality control. Even if your ideas are appreciated, it will be difficult to convince our board of directors."

"So we have not considered letting Samsung take on this matter independently." Zhou Zhi put forward his own suggestion: "As long as President Cui can convince the board of directors to authorize Samsung's EDA and ASIC software to us, we will do this compatibility transformation work. Clover can do it.”

As soon as these words came out, there was a lot of discussion in the conference room.

Zhou Zhi continued: "As far as I know, President Quan led the team to conquer the 64KDRM manufacturing process, and it only took six months from design to finished product. I believe that with the help and guidance of our Samsung colleagues, we can fully develop a Familiarize yourself with the software within one month, and come up with a transformation plan suitable for domestic wafers in three months at most!”

"We don't need Samsung to invest money, nor do we need Samsung to invest too much manpower. It's up to us to do it. Samsung's contribution to this matter is only the license to use two tool software, and what it gains is 64M storage A huge reduction in chip costs.”

"If this transformation can be successful, the storage components of Hong'an Digital's expanded WinClover production capacity can completely use products from Samsung's Jinhai factory. Based on these conditions, we can also increase WinClover's current storage capacity. Expanding from 64M to 128M, or even 256M in the future, without increasing the appearance size, will bring a better user experience to our users." Although WinClover's storage is now 64M, the chip particles on the Toshiba memory stick But it's not one pill, but two 36M pills.

If Samsung's latest products are used, this capacity can be doubled. If the cost of the chip is not considered, it can even be increased four times.

Because the chip itself is very thin, there is enough design redundancy space in the player to accommodate it. The current bottleneck is stuck in the chip cost. If DRAM can be fully domestically produced, even if it is achieved in a joint venture factory, the completion rate will still be reduced a lot. However, with domestic low labor and huge production capacity, it will still be The cost of DRAM chips can be reduced to a terrifying level.

Just like the situation in later generations, any so-called industrial pearl captured by China can be immediately sold at a bargain price.

In fact, agricultural pearls are similar. As long as any "fruit aristocrat" starts to be promoted in China, within a few years it will become a popular commodity selling for ten yuan or three kilograms.

There is no doubt that if only short-term benefits are considered, this is a win-win solution.

It’s not that Samsung itself didn’t know what the problem was before. They just hoped that the Chinese would not discover this and be forced to use high-priced South Korean wafers, thus increasing its dependence on South Korea in the entire DRAM industry.

If it hadn't been for the sudden emergence of WinClover, it's hard to say that this policy wouldn't have been successful.

But now the situation has changed. WinClover has caused explosive growth in the demand for high-end DRAM in China, but Clover does not use Samsung's memory, which makes Samsung very sad.

But even if it is sad, Samsung does not intend to make too many concessions to Chinese companies. This itself is also related to their pride in their products and designs.

Until now, they didn't know that there was a company in China that could analyze these little ones and get rid of them.

This is actually a demonstration of its strength, indicating that Clover's team has a complete insight into the tricks of the entire manufacturing process. In other words, Clover has the ability to analyze and crack Samsung's mask scheme and processing technology!

In other words, regardless of whether Samsung provides its own EDA and ASIC software for Clover to use, it will not affect Clover's technical capabilities.

If it is not provided, it will definitely be much more difficult for Clover to complete the entire process on its own, and the time to be able to produce its own DRAM chips will definitely be delayed by a few years.

But everything has its pros and cons. If Clover introduces EDA and ASIC software from other channels, then they can organize their own R&D team with independent intellectual property rights to produce DRAM with their own IP core.

By that time, Clover will definitely become a formidable opponent for memory chip manufacturers around the world.