The Millennium Semiconductor Survival Guide.

Chapter 288 Scale
Keeping the industry secret is out of development needs, and announcing it to the outside world is to gather the joint efforts of upstream and downstream enterprises in the global chip industry supply chain to continue to advance on this technical route.

Xinxin Semiconductor can make samples by itself, but it is unrealistic to keep developing along this technical route.

Only when enough manufacturers participate in a technical route can it have sufficient value. In more straightforward terms, only the technical advantages accumulated by the pioneers are valuable.

Neon’s hydrogen energy patent and Qualcomm’s communications patent are the best examples of both pros and cons.

Lin Benjian said categorically: "This depends on the degree of cooperation from Zeiss. If Zeiss's cooperation is high enough, two years will be enough. If Zeiss just treats it as a perfunctory task, it will be difficult to grasp the progress.

In the field of lenses, Zeiss is an out-and-out giant, and we can only do it if we cooperate with Zeiss. "

After the merger of East and West Germany, Zeiss became an out-and-out giant in both the civilian and corporate optics fields.

Zhou Xin actually wants to acquire giants in the upstream and downstream segments of the chip industry. From a cash perspective, he can acquire Zeiss.

Even like Applied Materials, he can still afford to make acquisitions.

The problem is that some unspoken rules made Zhou Xin give up this idea. Zhou Xin tried to acquire Cymer in 2001.

It monopolized advanced light sources upstream and downstream of the chip industry chain. Later, only Cymer could produce extreme ultraviolet light sources. After ASML became successful, it fully acquired Cymer.

At that time, the Nasdaq bubble burst, and Cymer had other competitors in the light source field, such as IBM, so Cymer's market value dropped to a very cost-effective point.

Zhou Xin had already raised his hand in the secondary market. In order to complete the acquisition, he and Bush even communicated about the transaction. The New York Stock Exchange had already approved the transaction. Finally, before the transaction was completed, it was urgently requested by Amerikan’s commercial department. Stop.

The official statement from American’s commercial department is that Cymer’s business scope involves American’s military and cannot be sold to foreign actual controllers.

Thinking that the actual controller of ASML in later generations was also a foreigner, but ASML could acquire Cymer, Zhou Xin could not. From then on, Zhou Xin realized a reality. When it comes to core technology, there is nothing you can do if you have money.

Therefore, he did not even try to talk to Zeiss. At most, it was purely a commercial merger and acquisition such as acquiring some Zeiss shares in the secondary market.

Lin Benjian sighed: "To be honest, Zeiss doesn't pay much attention to small companies like ours. They started providing lenses for photolithography machines many years ago. At that time, this thing was called circuit board exposure equipment.

When ASML was first established, Zeiss was used as the lens for the PAS 5500 lithography machine they launched. This product was an excellent lithography machine at that time, and because of this, it had very high requirements for lenses. High, Zeiss can only deliver single-digit lenses to ASML every year.

This has led to ASML's products being very leading, but due to production capacity, it can only helplessly watch Nikon occupy the majority of the market share.

It is the same problem for us. Even our current size is smaller than ASML back then, and it is difficult for Zeiss to fully support us. "

From an overall perspective, Xinxin is very strong. It can squeeze into the first echelon in the world in terms of production capacity, technology and revenue. Relying on the large-scale shipments of Bluetooth chips and A series chips, Xinxin is even in high-end production capacity. The core is slowly climbing.

But if the perspective is narrowed to the lithography machine and the benefits it can bring to Zeiss, then the new core can provide very little to Zeiss.In addition, as a traditional optical giant, it is difficult for Zhou Xin to provide substantial benefits to Zeiss.

Zhou Xin said: "I know what you mean, I will find a way to communicate with the shareholders behind Zeiss, put pressure from the top, and let Zeiss cooperate with us in depth. If necessary, I will even sell part of Xinxin Semiconductor's shares to Zeiss."

Leave this matter to me, and I will talk to Zeiss later. "

The main supplier of lenses in the field of lithography machines has gone through several rounds of changes. At first, GCA, the giant in the field of lithography machines, turned to Bausch and Lomb. Later, GCA found that Bausch and Lomb were not good enough and switched to Nikon. Later, it also disliked Nikon's lenses. The accuracy was not enough, so I replaced it with Zeiss.

But it has already lured the wolf into the house. Nikon directly killed GCA after entering this field.

Zeiss has become the out-and-out monopoly of lithography machine lenses, while Nikon has personally sent GCA to the grave. Knowing this history, Zhou Xin is thinking about the joint capital injection of Xinxin Semiconductor and Zeiss to establish a new company. The new company focuses on researching the possibilities of immersion lithography machines.

As the world's number one richest man, Zhou Xin owns many coveted assets, such as Matrix Apple, NewPay, Riot Games, etc. Even if it is just an emerging investment, his performance in the past three years is enough to prove the strength of emerging investments.

Xinxing Investment has raised three rounds of external funds, with the amount of funds raised each time being around one billion U.S. dollars. As an investment institution, the annualized income in three years has exceeded 20.00%, making Xinxing Investment a new force on Wall Street. Among the investment cases are Lots of highlight items.

Therefore, many financial institutions want to subscribe to the share of funds raised by emerging investments, and the allocation of this share is entirely in Zhou Xin's hands.

Therefore, he has a lot of chips that he can use to cooperate with the financial institutions behind Zeiss, put pressure on Zeiss from the shareholders, and even promote Zeiss and Xinxin Semiconductor to jointly establish a new company or a new research institution.

Through such in-depth interest bundling, the purpose of improving Zeiss' initiative is achieved.Of course, there will be problems, that is, in the case of a joint venture, the key patents belong to the joint venture and cannot serve as a clamp.

In this case, the current problem can be solved, but the long-term goal cannot be solved, so Zhou Xin is in a dilemma.

The current road is a brand new road, and there is no future experience for Zhou Xin to learn from. Every decision will create new history, and Zhou Xin knows this very well.

If it is just a pure business behavior, then it is undoubtedly the best choice to deeply bundle with Zeiss through inducements. ASML can be deeply bundled with TSMC. If Xinxin lithography machine wants to have more initiative in this field, it must find a company that meets the current situation. Partners are perfectly normal.

As a key part of Xinxin Technology, Xinxin Semiconductor does not lack application scenarios, production capacity, and various resources. What it lacks is key upstream technologies, especially when trying to overtake through corners through immersion.

Seeing Zhou Xin's silence, Lin Benjian said: "I have many acquaintances at Zeiss. They have been working at Zeiss for more than 20 years. I can talk to them at Zeiss.

Newman, I need to trouble you to talk to the shareholders behind Zeiss. If we work together, I believe it will be effective. "

Zhou Xin returned to China in a hurry this time. He and Lin Benjian reached an agreement on taking the immersion lithography machine technology route. In the future, the resources of Xinxin Semiconductor will be fully focused on this field. This is different from all other manufacturers currently. road.

Lin Benjian did not expect it to go so smoothly. He originally thought it would take a lot of effort to convince Zhou Xin. When he and other colleagues at Xinxin Semiconductor were doing pre-research work, they had already written five papers on demonstrating the feasibility of the technical route and planned to publish it. , and after it was published, he took the paper to convince Zhou Xin.Now that the bosses have agreed to this technical route, let’s get started. Lin Benjian is full of motivation.Because to put it bluntly, in the past, we were copying other people's technology, which was not very interesting to the R&D personnel. Now we are doing something that has never been done before, which is very challenging.

"Professor, long time no see. It seems that you are very accustomed to life in Shenhai." Zhou Xin will only stay in Shenhai for three days when he returns to China this time and will not travel around.

Therefore, he stays in Xinxin's campus almost all the time.

Hu Zhengming said: "I have been coming to Shenhai for three years. Three years is enough to change a lot of habits."

Zhou Xin was a little embarrassed. He had completely changed Hu Zhengming's original destiny. He didn't know whether this was a good thing or a bad thing for him: "Professor, do you think the change here is better than teaching at Berkeley?" What?"

Hu Zhengming asked: "Are you talking about life or work?"

Zhou Xin: "You can tell me. To be honest, I visit my wife every time I go back to Berkeley. I always feel a little sorry for having you come to Shenhai to live apart from my wife."

Hu Zhengming smiled and said: "I didn't see that you were sorry when you called me to help you.

The main reason is that your wife is not used to the climate here in Shenhai, so she only comes to stay for two weeks and then goes back. In fact, life is not much different from that in Berkeley, because you know that I am very boring. , In addition to work in daily life, there is still work.

But on the contrary, at work, I feel that the challenges are unmatched by those at Berkeley before.

At Berkeley, I only need to attend classes, research, and publish papers step by step. I am very familiar with these. Here, I am facing a company with more than 5000 people that I need to manage. This is a completely different concept.

You must know that even Sly Semiconductor has no more than 100 employees. Now this number has been multiplied fifty times.

If we include the employees of Xiaomi and Xinxin chip manufacturers, the number will exceed 1. What is this concept?
Before coming to Xinxin, I never thought that I had the ability to manage 1 people. This was an unimaginable number for me before the millennium. "

This number is quite large in Internet companies, and it is actually not bad in the chip field. For example, TSMC hired 2000 people in one year in 9000.

The number of employees of Xinxin Technology has exceeded 1 in just three years. Firstly, it is because of Xiaomi, and the sales system established by Xiaomi requires a large number of employees; secondly, because Xinxin has entered the chip foundry field and has cooperated with many companies. Huaguo Enterprise established a joint venture, and Huaguo Enterprise became a shareholder through the production line.

In these joint ventures, the equity is in the hands of Huaguo Enterprises, but the control is in the hands of Xinxin, which also has a large number of employees.

Xinxin also has a chip manufacturing plant in the Lion City. For a new company, this speed is rocket speed.

After listening to this, Zhou Xin said: "This is because, professor, your abilities were not fully explored before. Now it seems that I have dug you into the new core and activated your management abilities."

Hu Zhengming said helplessly: "I'm tired. I'm old and I have to manage so many people.

In particular, it is necessary to fight wits and bravery with the government, or even intrigue, which also consumes energy.

Zhou Xin, you have also done scientific research. Scientific research in the field of integrated circuits is about studying phenomena. Although it is very difficult to summarize, these difficulties are of a single nature. They are nothing more than encountering phenomena that I cannot understand, or new phenomena. I need to update the existing theoretical system and have a new framework that can include this type of phenomenon.

Things in business are completely different. It is a complex problem with no unified solution. One decision will affect countless things.

For example, we set very high wages for Xinxin employees. When setting wages, we believe that only high wages can attract talents and allow employees to build a stable enough relationship with the company.

Of course, the formulation of this salary system is also within the scope of the enterprise's tolerance.

But for employees, they may not enjoy the benefits of high wages.

Sometimes I chat with front-line employees while eating in the canteen. Their general dissatisfaction with the current situation is centered on housing prices.

Xinxin's high wages have led to the fact that houses centered on Xinxin Park are more expensive the closer they are to Xinxin Park. As a result, housing prices in Zhangjiang area are more than twice as expensive as those in other areas of Pudong New Area.

Xinxin’s employees have high wages, but it’s still difficult to buy a house that satisfies you.

I was wondering if Xinxin’s salary system was not so high, wouldn’t the surrounding houses be so expensive?Of course, from an economic point of view, prices are determined by supply and demand. Xinxin provides so many jobs here, so housing prices in the surrounding area cannot be low, but they should not be so expensive. "

Zhou Xin secretly thought, "It's only doubled now. If we look back ten years later, the housing prices around Xinxin Park will be three times more expensive."

In later generations, even moderately successful entrepreneurs like him could not buy a suitable house in Shenhai, so Zhou Xin now has the ability to buy whatever he wants in Shenhai, but he has never bought a house, but lives in In the house rented by the company for him.

Zhou Xin said: “Because the world is a complex system, it has a large number of variables and a large number of results. Unlike scientific research, the complex real world is separated from the abstract world for analysis.

I never thought that Xinxin could have [-] employees so quickly. Thinking of this number, I feel a lot of pressure.

We have to pay salaries to [-] employees every month. Once the business is not doing well, we will lay off employees.

Professor, don't you tell me, I just read the annual report, and I don't have any feeling about this number. I just think it is a light number, 1 people, oh, it is not that much compared to other chip manufacturers.

When you come to the newly built campus of Xinxin and see so many people working in this campus, and then think about the fact that we have to be responsible for so many employees, you can immediately feel the pressure on you. "

(End of this chapter)