The Millennium Semiconductor Survival Guide.

Chapter 289 The only seedling of immersion lithography machine technology route
In today's China, there are still some enterprises with a scale of [-] people. Enterprises that can reach this scale are generally concentrated in the fields of railways, tobacco, telecommunications, etc. These fields have a common characteristic, that is, these fields belong to private capital and foreign capital. Forbidden land.

Apart from these fields, there are very few technology-based companies with a scale of 2000 people.As for technology companies, TCL is the largest private technology giant with more than 5 employees in [-].

In the chip industry, Xinxin is unique. In just three years, it has grown into China's unique giant in the chip field. It is far ahead in terms of revenue, profits, employment, etc.

For example, Zhou Xin publicly accused Jiao Da and Chen Jin of committing fraud before, and even held a press conference to make the scandal public without communicating with Shen Hai. This was a series of actions that did not give face to Shen Hai or even the entire Chinese university. The act of slapping the face in public not only failed Received any punishment or pressure from public opinion, and also received better support from Shen Hai than before.

The fundamental reason is that the strength of Xinxin is strong enough, and the speed of development has given Yanjing's big shots and Shenhai local hope for the hope of developing an independent and controllable chip industry.

As far as Zhou Xin is concerned, even if his behavior or remarks are over the line, nothing will happen until he does something that goes over the line.

Xinxin currently provides tens of thousands of jobs, and the quality of jobs far exceeds that of Foxconn in the future. Xinxin will also not be affected.

After chatting with Hu Zhengming about the overall situation of Xinxin and Xiaomi, Zhou Xin said: "Uncle Lin has told me that Xinxin lithography machine will follow the technical route of infiltration method in the future, and I agree with his idea."

Hu Zhengming nodded: "He has told me before that to be honest, this should be regarded as his personal long-cherished wish, and only in Xinxin can he have the opportunity to realize his long-cherished wish."

Zhou Xin didn’t quite understand and asked, “Why do you say it’s a long-cherished wish?”

Hu Zhengming explained: “The technical route of the infiltration method was first proposed by Ben Jian. In the 80s, he believed that the infiltration method might be one of the technical directions for the continued development of photolithography machines.

It’s just that a suitable medium has not been found, and dry lithography machines have developed rapidly before, so the industry has no motivation or willingness to explore a new technical route.Therefore, Ben Jian, who was still working at IBM at the time, did not receive support from the company.

The patent that led to the immersion lithography machine technology has been applied by the neon man Takanashi, and Ben Jian has been brooding about this matter.

It is different now. The lithography machine has reached a bottleneck. 90nm is the bottleneck of the dry lithography machine. However, for giants like Nikon and Canon, they are not willing to change their technical routes casually.

Changing the technical route means that the patents they accumulated in the field of dry lithography machines will be buried. They are back on the same starting line as us and ASML, and they will not be willing to do this.

On the contrary, latecomers like us are more willing to take risks in technology. It is not a risk, but only by adopting a radical technical route can we achieve overtake. There are too many similar examples in Silicon Valley. "

After Hu Zhengming finished speaking, Zhou Xin somewhat understood why Lin Benjian chose Xinxin between TSMC and Xinxin back then, because Xinxin planned to make photolithography machines, while TSMC had no similar plan.

Only by building a lithography machine can you have the opportunity to switch to the technical route of immersion lithography machine.

According to Hu Zhengming, Lin Benjian has wanted to take this technical route for nearly 20 years. What kind of obsession is this.

Zhou Xin said: "I am also optimistic about this technical route. Uncle Lin and I have reached an agreement in this regard. We even have a tacit understanding on which medium to use for the immersion lithography machine."

Hu Zhengming said: "It's good if you support him. To be honest, whether it's Ben Jian or Lao Guan, everyone who comes to Xinxin is more or less because their previous careers were a bit unsatisfactory.

Lao Guan was kicked out by his partner. You should know better that Ben Jian did not communicate with you that much. He is also relatively taciturn. Apart from talking a few words about technology, he rarely talks about his own affairs.

Ben Jian and I have known each other for about 16 years. I still remember that it must have been in the 80s. At that time, there was a seminar. Ben Jian, as a technical expert from IBM, gave an introduction. His topic was the future of chip manufacturing. What bottlenecks will we encounter if we continue to develop?

At that time, the chip manufacturing process was still 87 nanometers, oh yes, it was in [-], and then Ben Jian proposed how to break through these bottlenecks, including the infiltration method.There were many methods at that time, but no one noticed his method.

It’s a bit far. I just said that Ben Jian failed at IBM because he was doing deep ultraviolet light when he was at IBM. At that time, the main research direction of IBM’s optical department was Successful.

Otherwise, he would not have applied for IBM's internal retirement entrepreneurship at the age of 50.

Therefore, Ben Jian has always believed that if the chip manufacturing process wants to make breakthroughs, the light source is the key. The current light source is deep ultraviolet light, and if you want to go from deep ultraviolet light to extreme ultraviolet light, the infiltration method is the key. "

It has to be said that Lin Benjian has an extremely keen sense of technology. Extreme ultraviolet light is a key technology for chip manufacturing to reach 10nm. If we continue to use dry lithography machines, the problems caused by extreme ultraviolet light cannot be solved.

When Xinxin, from Zhou Xin to Hu Zhengming to Lin Benjian, everyone in this line reached a consensus on taking the immersion lithography machine route, Xinxin's main opponents in the field of lithography machines were all moving towards 157nm dry lithography. Launch a charge in the field of engraving machines.

The current 90nm process relies on a dry lithography machine with a wavelength of 193nm. The light source limit of this wavelength is 65nm, and it is almost impossible to go further.

The industry has already verified this in the laboratory. If you want to continue, you have to change the light source. The industry and academia have thought of various methods, and these methods all point to one direction. Change the light source. Light sources with shorter wavelengths.

It can be clearly said that without Lin Benjian, ASML will continue to develop in the direction of dry lithography machines, because they acquired SVG in 2000, a company focusing on 157nm wavelength light sources, which is the most advanced in this technology route. A company that is close to commercial mass production.

ASML invested a lot of money in the 157nm dry lithography machine. If Lin Benjian had not convinced TSMC President Jiang Shangyi first, then Lin Benjian attended the 157nm wavelength lithography machine technology seminar held in Brussels and convinced most experts.

Later, relying on TSMC, Lin Benjian completed the feasibility study of an immersion lithography machine. ASML would not take this technical route at all.

This turning point in history has led to the fact that Xinxin Technology is currently the only manufacturer in the world that invests resources in immersion lithography machines.

Based on what he learned about the industry situation, Zhou Xin had a feeling of rapid changes. His influence pushed ASML into a technical route with limited prospects.

Relying on previous technology accumulation, ASML, Nikon, and Canon can catch up at 45nm with dry lithography machines and new light sources. However, after 45nm, there will definitely be problems with the technical route of dry lithography machines. The problem is No matter how the process is optimized, the yield rate still fails to improve.

Of course, it is not ruled out that they will follow the immersion lithography machine route of New Core Technology, but this also means that the patents accumulated by New Core and the patent wall built can charge them high patent fees.

"Hello, Mark, you did a great job on FaceChat." Zhou Xin met with Zuckerberg after returning to San Francisco.In just two months, FaceChat has successfully exceeded 100 million users in the United States, making history as a mobile application and becoming the fastest non-original application to reach one million users.

So much so that Zuckerberg has become the new darling of Silicon Valley, and a large amount of media coverage has focused on this young man.

Face Chat has a unique profit model. Members are charged in tiers. The optimized Face Chat payment is divided into nine levels, with prices ranging from US$1 to US$9, corresponding to different levels.

The highest level is a 100% discount. For example, it took 50 messages to unlock all the other party's information, but now it is 1.And 9 US dollar is a 90% discount, which means that [-] messages can unlock all the information of the other party.

This kind of payment method gives users a variety of choices, and even leads to a lot of additional payments. For example, when the other party stops replying to me after 80 sentences, in order to continue the conversation and find topics, I recharge one that can be unlocked at the moment. Member, then check the other party's specific information and continue chatting.

This kind of payment method was unprecedented. This kind of innovation caught the eyes of users at that time. Not only was it not criticized, but a large number of users thought it was cool and in line with the habits of young people.

In addition, FaceChat deliberately creates an atmosphere in the community that means you are not cool enough if you are not a member. Girls have completely different attitudes towards members and non-members.In addition, those who can afford a Mphone basically have a certain financial foundation. Based on all factors, the payment rate of FaceChat is not generally high.

The combination of millions of users, high payment rates, and rapid growth made Face Chat the hottest unicorn company in 2003.

Zuckerberg grinned happily: "Newman, you are my idol. When I was in high school, I spent a very interesting time with your Quora."

The fact that Zhou Xin is his idol is not flattery, but a fact, but it is also true that he wants to surpass Zhou Xin, achieve greater achievements, and replace Zhou Xin as the King of the Internet. This is not contradictory.

Zhou Xin said: "You are very similar to me, I also made Quora when I was your age.

I think we all have great insights. "

There have always been various rumors about Zuckerberg, such as robots and lizard men, and there are such outrageous rumors that he has become another technology tycoon after Gates who has been subject to various conspiracy theories.But there are indeed many well-founded rumors. What Zhou Xin understands is that FB often plagiarizes other companies' ideas and technologies.

Perhaps it is because of this that people have doubts about the moral standards of FB and Zuckerberg, which further gave rise to so many conspiracy theories.

After the news broke that Musk and Zuckerberg would fight in the octagonal cage, many American netizens expressed their hope to see Zuckerberg beaten back to his original form and reveal his true identity as a lizard man or robot.

After a brief exchange of greetings, Zuckerberg went directly to the topic: "Newman, I feel that face chat has reached a bottleneck.

I don't quite know how to continue to give it more functionality that would be interesting to users without destroying the original structure. "

Xinxing Investment provided an interest-free loan of US$2000 million to FaceChat. In return, Xinxing Investment will receive 50.00% of the next round of financing from FaceChat.

After finishing speaking, Zuckerberg took out his Mphone 2 and briefly demonstrated the current functions of Face Chat in front of Zhou Xin.

After reading it, Zhou Xin thought to himself, isn't this a revised version of Soul in later generations, and can it still be fun to play?Zhou Xin knew Soul. This software is somewhat similar to the literary version of Momo. To put it bluntly, it also provides users with a place to meet members of the opposite sex.

Face Chat is an anonymous version of Soul. Soul is also anonymous, but Face Chat contains more real information about users.

Because Face Chat is competing with WeChat for users of instant messaging software, Zhou Xin doesn't want to say too much substantive content with the other party.

Zhou Xin said: “You can try to add a call function.

For example, under certain conditions, two people can talk.

The phone call will be filled with a hazy feeling, and it will be more attractive and contagious than words. "

Zhou Xin made this suggestion with bad intentions. For start-up companies, supporting call functions means upgrading the network and increasing broadband, which is a considerable cost for the enterprise.

This also means that FaceChat must speed up the pace of financing, and Xinxing can obtain FaceChat’s shares faster and then monetize them.

In Zhou Xin's understanding, the upper limit of FaceChat, a software that relies on membership fees, is far lower than that of advertising.

Whether in China or America, Internet advertising revenue linked to traffic will always be much greater than membership revenue. Even if it is a TV application that allows you to become a member with all kinds of bells and whistles, you still have to find ways to insert ads.

Zuckerberg's eyes lit up after hearing this. They had always thought about digging into user needs towards anonymity and community building, and had never thought about voice.

He continued what Zhou Xin said: “After the users of Face Chat achieve a certain achievement, the two of them can have a voice chat.

This further brings the relationship closer and gives Face Chat users a reason to continue to stay in Face Chat after knowing the other party’s true information. "

This is the dilemma of face chat, that is, after users complete the establishment of a stable intimate relationship through face chat, they will uninstall face chat and transfer to WeChat, which means that both customers are lost, and membership fees can no longer be received.

　I was originally going to write this morning. The crow was disturbed by the cat at home and fell asleep at two o'clock last night. He really couldn't get up this morning.

　　I asked for a vote at the beginning of the month, but I didn’t dare to set the flag to ask for more updates in September. Alas, I have been lazy for too long.

　　
　
(End of this chapter)