Reboot 2003

Chapter 320 101: Anti-Moore’s Law (-in-)

Ah Yue was a little confused: "If you can't keep up, will you fall behind?"

Chen Qin said: "Yes, generally speaking, if the number of transistors does not double after 18 months, the company's valuation will be halved."

A Yue nodded thoughtfully, and Chen Qin asked again: "Then do you think if the number of transistors barely keeps up with this rate in 18 months, how will the company's situation change?"

A Yue was curious: "It means that the company's valuation has not been halved, maybe it will be doubled?"

"No." Chen Qin said, "The company should be what it is. Regardless of the impact of market conditions, how much money it made 18 months ago will still be the same after 18 months; and the R&D investment for the next generation cannot be reduced. Otherwise, the company’s market value will still be halved in 18 months.”

“Will it definitely be halved?”

"Basically, it will be halved." Chen Qin said, "This is called 'anti-Moore's Law'."

"Okay..." Ah Yue understood, "Then what's so special about the company you're looking at? Doesn't it require R&D?"

"of course not."

Chen Qin opened the composition book and began to draw signs for her.

"Now that we know that the greatest competitiveness of the chip industry comes from R&D, and it is continuous R&D, then the division of labor in the industry has become natural. For example, you are responsible for design, I am responsible for packaging and testing, he is responsible for foundry, and everyone is responsible for it. Responsible for their own research and development, and finally form a production chain together..."

As he spoke, he drew a vertical line to represent an industrial chain.

"Although research and development is normally divided into different groups, the overall cost may not be reduced much."

"But a new model that has emerged in recent years is called the 'foundry model'. That is, OEMs can develop advanced processes and use their own technology that can keep up with Moore's Law to make chips for other manufacturers."

As he spoke, Chen Qin divided the vertical line into several parts, which seemed to represent different nodes in the industrial chain.

"In this way, if you want to take care of all aspects yourself, including designing chips and developing processes, then you have to bear all the R&D costs of both technologies; but if there is an OEM factory, it can do OEM work for four or five companies. If the manufacturing process is completed, its R&D costs can be spread over several production chains.”

At this time, several other vertical lines appeared on the example diagram. Their 'design company' section was independent, but the 'OEM' section was connected. These industrial chains actually do not directly intersect, but because the R&D costs themselves can be replicated, its emergence obviously helps everyone in the industrial chain share the costs.

"This is the hottest foundry model nowadays. The emergence of the SOC chip market for our mobile phones is equivalent to the emergence of a new high-end chip category on the market that is independent of the X86 system. If we can concentrate all the production capacity in this chain on this Among foundry factories, I think it is not impossible for it to catch up with or even surpass TSMC..."

Chen Qin finally concluded that although he was talking about semiconductors, Chen Qin was basically talking about the business model. Just like what Ji Xianglin said yesterday, it seems to be a technical issue, but it is actually a business issue.

Of course, this is not a matter of course. Although the high-end process chip itself is an industry with a strong Silicon Valley atmosphere, it is a science in line with materialism. There is no only one model that can be developed and other models cannot be touched. The problem.

In fact, if Chen Qin was an industry leader before he was reborn, or knew some details of future chip technology; he might even have a little bit of unexplainable personality charm, toast the leader with a glass of wine, go to the factory and talk a few words, let him It is not unimaginable that the engineers under my command can inject chicken blood, and then the soldiers will use their lives and work together... catching up with the Premier League and the United States.

And just like the "anti-Moore's Law" said just now, companies actually don't have any reliable and stable channels. The situation in the industry is not that everyone is following Moore's Law to make money, but is being whipped by Moore's Law. Smoking and running forward.

So as long as the technology is not mature enough, or the returns are not timely enough, a company will easily lose its competitiveness due to capital factors. The result is that the boss eats meat, the second brother drinks soup, and the third child drinks northwest wind. This kind of chip industry A common pattern - in other words, it has become an industry with insufficient competition, and 'overtaking in corners' itself is very likely to happen.

So in this case, as a middle school student, he has to 'overtake in a corner' without having any domestic foundation...

There still has to be a place where you can be better than others.

What is this advantage?

If you have to rely on spending money, the big funds in the future have already tried it. Although Yangtze River Storage was burned, it can be said that it was the bosses of Qinshan Prison’s apartments who were not very successful in the end. But the big fund is one trillion. , It’s true that I still can’t get enough of this small amount of money.

Relying on people seems to be a more intuitive approach. After all, the chip industry itself has no resource requirements. Basically, the most expensive investment is based on people. Based on my previous bragging and chatting with friends in the industry, East Asians are less interested in chips because of cultural factors. The industry actually has a bit of racial talent in it.

However, the advantage of engineers does not mean that the company has advantages. China can recruit assembly line workers with a monthly salary of 2000 yuan, but it does not mean that it can recruit chip architects with a monthly salary of 20000 yuan. In fact, most industries are both representative industries of Silicon Valley. R&D has the management problem that Chen Qin told A Yue at the beginning - for a layman boss, how can he know whether the engineer responsible for the mental work is fooling around with his work?

So the only solution that can be thought of now is the ‘business model’.

Only by being highly commercialized and using business indicators to drive the company forward can we ensure that the company always has real R&D efficiency, instead of just getting an open source or something else to do perfunctory tasks.

And by obtaining the "golden finger" through the business model, it can obtain more sufficient R&D investment than other companies. This is currently the biggest confidence that it has as a pursuer to "overtake in corners"; historically, TSMC has used this set of codes. The industrial model and highly market-oriented business model have achieved "overtaking in corners" and obtained the real barrier technology in the chip industry.

Now that I have bought a money-losing product from AMD, I can only go this route - of course GlobalFoundries is not as good as TSMC after all. Not only has it always been a soy sauce player in history, but it also burned a lot of money from the oil guy boss who took over the deal. Losing money every year, and choosing the wrong technology tree - the mainstream transistor technology for high-end semiconductors since the millennium has been FinFET, while GlobalFoundries is betting on FD-SOI. Although this process has a high yield and is cheap, Anyway it just doesn't work.

Considering that the assets that can be bought by bargain hunting are certainly not good things, there is of course nothing to pick and choose now. Now with its own Kaitian OS and Risc-V, we can probably win over some manufacturers who want to enter the field of mobile chips. As a customer, even if you can't succeed after leaving, if you can achieve the level of GlobalFoundries in history, it shouldn't be too bad anyway. And what if it succeeds?

"Then isn't this good?" Ah Yue seemed to think so after hearing this, "But you said it so poorly, what can only be done as salted fish..."

"Because the foundry model is very difficult. Although it can be seen and touched, and it can have a lot of power after having the technology, it is still working for people in essence." Chen Qindao, "Working is working, and we must pursue discourse. If it’s true, this model still doesn’t work well.”

Ah Yue didn't understand, and started drawing next to Chen Qin's example picture just now: "But according to what you just said, as long as technology can develop with the advantage of scale, if others cannot keep up in the future, the market value will continue to be halved. Cut it in half, wouldn’t you have the right to speak in this case?”

Chen Qin said helplessly: "That's what you say, but why do you think others want to find you for OEM? For an industrial chain, Party A definitely wants to get your technology, so that he doesn't have to spend so much money; at the same time, Party A wants to get your technology. Fang is also afraid that you will get his technology. If you process a batch of chips for him, and two days later you start selling the same chips yourself, what will they think?"

Ah Yue has really never thought about this problem. Look at the 'Original Factory Group' that spans the industrial chain. It has money and technology. If it can use this model to continue to develop upstream and downstream, of course it will be a problem for those design companies. A huge threat. In fact, even if it strictly abides by the confidentiality agreement, when he uses the money brought by his scale advantage to participate in the competition in the design industry in the future, it will be equivalent to raising a competitor. In any case, it is a bit inappropriate. .

A Yue thought deeply: "What should we do? Sign some contracts or something?"

"If signing a contract can prevent it, then they will go directly to Intel, which has mature technology... But how dare they? Intel is probably their competitor, and no semiconductor company will hand over the drawings to its opponent." Chen Qin said.

A Yue continued to guess: "Is that to guarantee in advance that our foundry will not become a design company?"

"Yes, as a foundry, the most basic requirement is not to get involved in the design industry. Although we can also do IDM ourselves, if we do the IDM model, then as long as there are pure foundries with the same conditions, design companies will give them priority. .” ˆ ˆ Ah Yue also understood now: “In other words, using this model, we can give foundries the opportunity to become world-class, but we must give up the possibility of getting involved in other industrial chains...”

"Yes, how do you feel now, salty or salty?"

"It's a bit...but I think this is good. It sounds like the platform you mentioned!"

"Yes, it's a platform. Under the global trade system, if you want to become big, you have to build a platform first. It's boring, but that's all it can do now..."

At this point, A-Yue also understood what the foundry model was about. The self-study class was about to end, and the discussion should have ended here.

But Chen Qin remembered another thing. He said that he had been a little busy in the past few days and almost forgot about it...

"What are you looking at? Are you going to the studio today?"

"By the way." Chen Qin said, "It just so happens that you take the time to ask your company what qualifications and procedures are required to invest in foreign assets."

"Are you asking for a quick look?"

"Yes, you go and ask." Chen Qin said.

Ah Yue didn't notice anything unusual at this time and rushed to the student union after school to make a phone call.

Then I got the answer after meeting in the studio that afternoon:

"I asked Meili Jian's financial aunt, whom my grandfather knew, and she said this..."

"If you want to acquire overseas IT companies, there are generally three thresholds."

"If you are listed abroad or in Hong Kong, China, you need to engage in related IT business at the business level and have a certain reputation internationally."

"Although there are only these three conditions, they are the most basic conditions. Without them, acquisitions generally cannot succeed."

Of course Chen Qin didn't ask her this: "What if we want to directly purchase some of the assets they don't want?"

Ah Yue didn't understand the difference, so she took the phone and asked everywhere again, asking very seriously, which wasted a lot of time.

However, Chen Qin didn't say anything. He just went home in the evening, went to YY Voice, and hinted to Xu Lingling: "I've been very busy lately!"

Xu Lingling said: "Thank you for your hard work! If you need anything, just tell me."

"Well." Chen Qin said, "What have you been doing lately?"

"I'm doing okay recently. I mainly continue to learn from the teacher. The software is almost done. In fact, it was originally going to be integrated into the mobile phone. I was so anxious to record during the holidays this year," Xu Lingling rambled. Chatting, "But I seem to be giving up recently, so I'm fine here... By the way, I still have to write songs for us. Of course, I'm not very anxious about this, so if you have anything, just tell me Bar!"

She probably really didn't know... Chen Qin was thinking about the incident where he accidentally 'crossed the stage' not long ago, and of course he wanted to try it again this time.

As expected, the task assigned to A Yue did not go to Xu Lingling, so was it just a coincidence last time?

Thinking of this, Chen Qin stopped worrying and just asked: "By the way, what kind of software is that software you often talk about?"

"It seems to be a software for synthesizing singing voices. In fact, I have been researching it recently." Xu Lingling said, "It is said that it can collect some sounds, and then other people can write songs on the Internet and directly use the software to generate them."

"Funny, this isn't that..." Chen Qin thought carefully, "Hatsune Miku?"

"No, Hatsune Miku has been out for a while," Xu Lingling said. "It's actually a sequence of sound libraries. We seem to be using it for people in the foreign language department. Since it is not Yamaha's main business direction, can we finally I don’t know if it will be successful. Some time ago, they were very interested in integrating this into the music mall, but recently they found that it was not working and their interest has decreased a lot. I don’t know when it will be ready..."

"Alright."

Chen Qin was thoughtful, but he didn't expect that some combination of circumstances would give her this opportunity. He looked back at the poster of Yayin Gongyu on the wall, and vaguely remembered some long-standing memories.

But I’m still very busy now and don’t have time to pay attention to this.

So after chatting for a few words, Chen Qin quickly went back to check the due diligence provided by the acquisition partner. The days continued like this, and October passed by little by little——

Melician's safety drills are still going on. Thanks to the timely response, negative public opinions have not continued to ferment.

Of course, the reason is not important now - maybe it was nothing, or maybe the opponent really didn't want to deal with him.

But in short, because of a series of timely responses, he also began to move closer to the Ao cabinet.

Of course, campaign donations must be paid, but politicians are not businessmen after all. Since they cannot be expected to be wholeheartedly devoted to the ordinary people who are directly responsible for them, they certainly cannot be expected to waste their lives for a few small coins. After all, Comrade Guan Hai said, the proportion of ordinary people among the sources of funds is ridiculously high. Now that the general election is approaching, the general trend has been determined. Naturally, it is impossible to squeeze into the center of power by running over to show your courtesy.

However, Chen Qin had been in contact with them quite early. Although there was a period of time when there was no contact with them, and now he is back to get close to them, it may be a bit suspicious of being a follower of others, but in any case, it is a result of following the dragon.

Even when Chen Qin pretended to start acting, after quoting a press release on Weibo that a Japanese consortium wanted to buy the bottom of Wall Street, he pretended to be on a whim and said: "I also plan to buy the bottom. Do you have any companies you recommend?" ?”

Some time ago, the old man who was criticized by the media for being "soliciting votes on a Texas Hold'em poker website" came to reply: "Wise choice!"

He also helped @a financial lawyer he knew, and pretended to ask him to give Chen Aotian an idea. Meili Jian's Dishui Party was a lawyer party, and such connections were their strengths. Although everyone was actually acting tacitly, but because of the two-year friendship, this conversation did seem to have a bit of American positive energy. In any case, this 'buying the bottom' seems to be proceeding logically, at least For the time being, there won’t be any other extraneous issues.

(End of this chapter)