The Millennium Semiconductor Survival Guide.

Chapter 240 The Purpose of Going to Lion City
"Mr. Zhou, welcome to the Lion City. When the Lion City branch of CAAS was established last year, we invited you. At that time, you said you didn't have time. This should be your first time in the Lion City." Xiao Li said.

After Zhou Xin landed in the Lion City, Li Xianlong was in charge of the reception. At this time, he was still the No. [-] figure in the Lion City, and there were still two years before he took over the authority of his parents.

Lee Hsien Loong met Zhou Xin when he went to Los Angeles to participate in an event. As a result of that meeting, Xinxin Technology set up a R&D center in Lion City, but the size of this R&D center is not large. Not to mention compared with the R&D center in Silicon Valley, even the R&D center set up in Shenhai is not as large.

However, Zhou Xin's business in the Lion City is not limited to integrated circuits. Xinyun's Southeast Asian node is located in the Lion City, providing cloud services for small and medium-sized enterprises in pan-Southeast Asian countries.Tencent's Southeast Asian branch is also located in the Lion City, providing corporate services to companies in Southeast Asia.

In the past two years, the investment share of Zhou Xin's enterprises in the Lion City has shown a trend of increasing year by year, and the growth rate is astonishing.

Zhou Xin’s visit to the Lion City this time is to consider the future. If he does not get the results he wants, Zhou Xin will put the chip foundry in the Lion City from the perspective of risk management and control.

This is also a strategy. Due to the Wassenaar Agreement, Xinxin Technology in China cannot obtain the most advanced production lines, but Xinxin Technology in Lion City is not restricted by the Wassenaar Agreement, and can completely compete with TSMC in chip foundry.

Of course, if you want to compete with TSMC, relying on Zhou Xin’s capital is too risky. Zhou Xin came to the Lion City to discuss cooperation with the Lion City. The huge amount of funds held by the Lion City government just lacks investment projects, and he can provide the Lion City with the investment project of chip foundry.

The second is to come for NewPay. The Lion City is extremely strict on the issuance of electronic payment licenses. NewPay has successfully entered Northeast Asia. It has successfully obtained electronic payment licenses in Huaguo and Neon, and in Tokyo, the largest city of Neon, NewPay has gradually become a trendy payment method among young people.

It is a bit difficult to enter the Koryo area. Many of Zhou Xin’s companies are in direct competition with Korean companies, and the Korean side is unwilling to let NewPay in for the purpose of protecting domestic companies. Even if NewPay agrees to adopt the method of establishing a Koryo branch, the Koryo branch allows Korean companies to invest in shares, and NewPay is even willing to sell most of the shares to the Korean chaebols.

The Korean side is not willing to accept such loose conditions. The Korean chaebols hope to develop their own electronic payment software. We cannot enter the global market, and local companies cannot let you in either.

Under such a large environment in the Asia-Pacific region, the most important fulcrum of NewPay's Asia-Pacific strategy that has not been won is the Lion City. If the Lion City can be settled, then NewPay's influence can radiate to the entire Southeast Asia, and Alibaba can follow the trend to enter the Southeast Asian market.

Now Zhou Xin's Internet business map has revealed the momentum of Internet giants such as Tencent and Ali sweeping the world in the future.

So this time I came to Lion City, putting pressure is the purpose, but not the main purpose, or even just a convenient purpose. The core strategy is to discuss a package of cooperation plans with Lion City.

After the Hanxin incident, Zhou Xin realized that the Lion City is a good place and another basket where he can put his eggs.

Politicians in Washington will be wary of the rapid development of the integrated circuit industry in China, but they will relax their vigilance about the integrated circuit industry in Lion City.They can allow Wanwan to develop TSMC, and they will also allow another TSMC to appear in Lion City.

Only put the chip foundry in the Lion City, and the chip foundry industry in the Lion City can further feed back the chip foundry industry in Huaguo.

This is a strategic plan that serves multiple purposes.

The information communicated by the two parties through their subordinates in the early stage decided that Xiao Li will receive Zhou Xin this time. Zhou Xin's youth makes Xiao Li feel emotional, and even a touch of jealousy.

"Mr. Li, I haven't seen him for about a year and a half. This is indeed my first time in the Lion City. After I arrived in the Lion City yesterday afternoon, I went shopping in the Lion City at night.

The cleanliness and urban interface design of the Lion City left a deep impression on me. It is worthy of being a garden city. "

After a pleasant meal, he went directly to the topic, Zhou Xin said: "I hope to reach a more in-depth cooperation with the Lion City.

In the past, Lion City has been increasing investment in the field of integrated circuits, hoping to replicate the success of Neon, Koryo, and Wanwan. However, compared with the above three areas, Lion City seems to be a bit short. "

Zhou Xin's past brilliant achievements determined that Lee Hsien Loong listened carefully. Since Zhou Xin's rise, Lion City has done a lot of research on this invincible entrepreneur.

When NewPay was first established, Temasek Sovereign Fund wanted to invest very much, but it was rejected by Zhou Xin at that time, and then watched NewPay's valuation soar all the way to the point that they thought it was too expensive.

Lee Hsien Loong nodded: "Although the Lion City is small, it has various disadvantages in natural resources, such as fresh water resources, lack of a large amount of electricity, lack of talents, etc. These disadvantages determine that the Lion City has inherent disadvantages in the field of integrated circuits.

But these disadvantages cannot stop Lion City's determination to develop integrated circuits. Lion City started chip foundry earlier than those places you just mentioned.

Because I was the minister of the Ministry of Trade and Industry of Lion City in 86, I know the integrated circuit industry very well. The first place to do chip foundry was Xiangjiang. Xiangjiang had three small factories dedicated to doing some chip foundry business for IBM at the earliest. The second one started to do chip foundry was Lion City.

In 1968, the first thing after the establishment of National Semiconductor in Lion City was to set foot in the chip foundry industry. We began to accept some chip assembly and testing work from Texas Instruments and IBM. "

On the Huaguo Internet, you can only find out that this company that has been canceled is called Lion City National Semiconductor. In fact, the full name of this company is National Semiconductor Co., Ltd. It was established in January 68, and its earliest office was located in the Marina Bay Financial Center Building.

National Semiconductor in Lion City mainly invests in companies in the integrated circuit field, and its development in history has been far below expectations.

Lee Hsien Loong continued: "After I took over the Ministry of Trade and Industry, I also realized the importance of integrated circuits. In 86, personal computers had begun to emerge, and the global chip trade market was growing at an unimaginable speed.

There are more and more signs that Moore's Law is right. Integrated circuits, as the most eye-catching sunrise industry at that time, Lion City is no exception and hopes to become a country that takes the lead in this chip competition.

I took over the Ministry of Trade and Industry in 86, and established Chartered Semiconductor in 87. Chartered Semiconductor specializes in chip foundry, and its customers include AMD, Infineon, IBM and Samsung.We were once a chip foundry only after TSMC and UMC.

In 2000, more than half of the total manufacturing output of the Lion City came from integrated circuits and industries related to integrated circuits.

However, with the bursting of the Internet bubble, the chip industry in Lion City has been very difficult to manage in recent years. To put it bluntly, some Lion City has no advantage in this field.

Neon has technological advantages, Korea has advantages in supporting industries, and Wanwan has advantages in labor costs and economies of scale.

Lion City has nothing, and after Huaguo joined the WTO last year, Lion City has lost its advantage in tariffs, and Huaguo's advantage in labor costs is too obvious.

Before the Internet bubble burst, even with a series of costs such as labor costs, equipment depreciation, and production line updates, chip foundry was still a good manufacturing industry.

With the bursting of the Internet bubble, the chip foundry in Lion City lost its cost performance.

Since the beginning of this year, because Xinxin Technology has achieved good results in China, we have also noticed that Chartered Semiconductor is already doing research internally, and plans to move the new chip production plant to Zhangjiang.

We are already talking with Belling, intending to jointly build an 8-inch wafer fab with Belling. "

Shen Haibeiling obtained technology transfer and equipment support from Wanwan UMC. Their earliest plan was to build a 6-inch fab and later change it to an 8-inch fab. This led to an increase in investment. The original investor was unwilling, and Chartered Semiconductor in Lion City planned to take over.

Zhou Xin said: "There are too many upstream and downstream industries involved in chips. After the chip manufacturing is completed, there is packaging and testing. If we regard foundry and packaging and testing as a whole, chip foundry can be regarded as the last part of chip manufacturing.

Just after listening to Mr. Li's introduction, I can tell that you have a lot of knowledge in this area, at least from the perspective of industrial investment.

In my opinion, Lion City does not have an advantage in chip foundry. It is determined that your fresh water is subject to neighboring countries. Lion City cannot expand its scale in the field of chip foundry and form a scale effect.

I think the Lion City is only suitable for two aspects. The first is to focus on the most cutting-edge chip foundry and put the low-end production capacity in Huaguo.

Huaguo has the ability and willingness to undertake the medium and low-end production capacity.Compared with the Lion City, Huaguo is subject to too many restrictions and cannot obtain the most advanced equipment, but the Lion City can, and the Lion City can focus on the most advanced chip foundry.

In this way, the two parties can form cooperation and complement each other.It is impossible for Gao Li and Wan Wan to cooperate with Lion City. They both have the ability and willingness to swallow the whole cake.

Only Huaguo can cooperate with Lion City because of American's fear.

For example, Lion City is now building the most advanced 90nm process fab. When the process progresses to 65nm, 45nm, and 28nm, the previous fabs will gradually fall behind. After the depreciation of equipment is completed, they can move to Huaguo as a whole. "

Many semiconductor companies in the Wanwan area have relocated their outdated equipment back to the mainland as a whole, such as UMC, Powerchip, ProMOS, etc. have done this.

When the depreciation of the equipment is completed, the cost of relocation is trivial.

Hanxin's counterfeiting incident not only caused a stir within China, but also attracted attention overseas because of Zhou Xin's involvement.

Overseas attention is focused on whether the honeymoon period between Zhou Xin and Hua Guo is coming to an end, and whether the cooperation between the two parties will continue.

Li Xianlong is also very aware of Hanxin and Zhou Xin's attitude towards Hanxin. He did not expect that Hanxin would not affect Zhou Xin's strategic positioning of Huaguo and support for Huaguo's chip industry.

This made Lee Hsien Loong pay more attention to Zhou Xin. At such a young age, he can switch between multiple masks freely. The anger and dissatisfaction in public seems to be just a show.

Lee Hsien Loong said: "I understand what you mean, Mr. Zhou. We have thought about it. We define the most advanced chip foundry as high-end. The biggest problem is that we may not be able to get enough orders to make the equipment run at full capacity.

The higher the high-end chip foundry industry, the stricter the control of costs and profits.Because the more high-end equipment is more expensive, the amount of equipment depreciation is exaggerated. At the same time, the salary of front-line engineers for high-end equipment is not a small amount. Once the production line cannot operate at full capacity, the losses on the books will become more and more serious.

This will form a vicious circle. Without full capacity operation, the yield rate will not increase, the profit margin will not increase, and it will not be able to gain an advantage in competition with other chip foundry companies. In the end, advanced technology will gradually no longer be advanced.

Especially in the current sluggish environment of the overall chip industry, it is even more difficult to ensure the full-load operation of advanced manufacturing processes. "

Why can TSMC rise?Because of the support of Intel.Why Samsung's chip foundry can rise, because Samsung is a behemoth, and its other business segments can continuously produce blood supply, even if Samsung's chip foundry loses money, it will not affect anything.

Lion City can't, their strategic definition determines that they can't lose money like Samsung, at least not now.

After listening, Zhou Xin said: "Mr. Li, do you know about Mphone and smart phones? In my opinion, smart phones will be the most important development direction in the next 20 years.

The chip demand of the smartphone business alone is enough to support the high-end chip foundry industry in the Lion City. "

At this year's Mphone Developer Conference, Zhou Xin gave a clear definition of Mphone and the form of mobile phone represented by Mphone, which is called smart phone.

The outside world did not realize how important this definition is, but the Mphone Developer Conference itself attracted more attention from the outside world, a large number of new games designed for the Mphone platform, and several well-known producers in the game industry announced the game CG exclusively designed for the upcoming Mphone2.

These have sparked heated discussions, and smartphones have been mentioned at most.

Zhou Xin continued: "Smartphones will continue to maintain demand for high-end chips, as the chip manufacturing process can be made as small as possible, the demand for smartphones can be as small as possible.

This is determined by the technical principle. The more advanced the chip manufacturing process, the lower the energy consumption, and the better the battery life of the mobile phone.Smartphone chips will be a trillion-level market. "

After Zhou Xin finished speaking, Lee Hsien Loong asked, "Is the unit in US dollars or RMB?"

"Haha just kidding, I trust your judgment in this regard, the question is how can Lion City get a piece of the smartphone business.

In other words, how does Lion City cooperate with Xinxin Technology to achieve this goal. "

　It says Crow, remembering that the protagonist of the previous book stayed in Singapore for a long time, and finally bought Singapore. Only then did Crow realize that time flies too fast, and a year has passed.

　　The last book was really so suffocating that the crow died

　　
　
(End of this chapter)