Super Copy of Great Power Technology

"Oh, the second-generation Ruida mobile phone developed by our company uses self-developed processor chips. Why does it also need to develop a baseband chip? What is this used for?" Du Qingqing majored in accounting and was familiar with mobile phones. The configuration information is unclear, so I have this question.

"The processor and the baseband chip are not the same thing. To put it simply, the mobile phone processor is responsible for computing and outputting images, while the baseband chip is responsible for receiving wireless signals. Our company developed the Reda 1 and Reda 2 Modern mobile phones use baseband chips provided by Qualcomm. Not only are they expensive, but they also have to pay a patent fee for every mobile phone sold. By doing this, Qualcomm can take away at least one-third of a mobile phone. The profits are simply too deceptive. In order to break this situation, it is necessary for us at Reda Technology Company to develop an independent baseband chip."

After Qiao Ruida's explanation, Du Qingqing finally understood the importance of the baseband chip and couldn't help but criticize: "This Qualcomm company is too shady. They charge twice for selling a product. I have never seen this done." A business company. Qualcomm is so domineering, isn’t it afraid of offending customers and causing no one to buy their products?”

"The reason why Qualcomm is so arrogant is because they are really confident. They alone have obtained more than 3% of the patents for 80G communication technology. And currently, only Qualcomm can provide large quantities of mobile phone 3G baseband chips on the market. One company. It can be said that Qualcomm has monopolized the field of mobile phone baseband chips. As long as your company wants to make 3G mobile phones, it cannot do without their products. Since you can sell them no matter what the price is, why not sell them more expensively? Well, this is where the Qualcomm tax comes in." Qiao Ruida further explained to Du Qingqing.

"Accounting for 80% of all communication patents, is Qualcomm so powerful? Then even if our company succeeds in developing baseband chips, don't we still have to pay patent fees to them?" Du Qingqing asked worriedly.

"In the 3G era, this was indeed the case, but in the 4G mobile communication era, the situation is different. Qualcomm still holds a large number of 4G communication technology patents, but the number and proportion are not as high as in the 3G era, at least they can no longer do so. We can cover the sky with one hand. The baseband chip we develop is based on 4G communication technology. If you think of a way, you can always bypass most of Qualcomm's patents. Even if you can't bypass some, you only need to pay a small patent fee."

If Qiao Ruida had not been so confident before the system upgrade, after all, the research and development of baseband chips was too difficult. A company as powerful as Apple has gathered talents from around the world and invested heavily in the research and development of baseband chips for more than ten years. Until the 5G era came, it had not come up with a decent baseband chip product. As a result, Apple's mobile phone products have been using Qualcomm's baseband. chip. Even with the help of Goldfinger, Qiao Ruida doesn't think his ability will be stronger than Apple's. However, after the system upgrade, the situation is completely different. You can browse and copy Internet information ten years later. This is so outrageous. With this support, if Qiao Ruida is willing, she can take out the next or next two generations of Qualcomm's baseband chip products in advance, register the patent, and mass-produce them to compete with Qualcomm's baseband chips of this generation. That is not appropriate. Crush.

Du Qingqing was not very interested in things like chips, and he was too tired from the hard work just now. After chatting with Qiao Ruida for a while, he closed his eyes and snored. Qiao Ruida held Du Qingqing in her arms and closed her eyes in peace.

In the next few days, Qiao Ruida closed her eyes and fell asleep whenever she had time, and her consciousness entered the dimensional space to install equipment and debug the production line. With his unremitting efforts, the installation and debugging of the entire 5nm chip production line was finally completed a week later. After that, Qiao Ruida mobilized hundreds of dimensional puppets and arranged them at various work stations. After the system upgrade, the intelligence level of the dimensional puppet has indeed improved. As long as Qiao Ruida instills all the relevant knowledge he has mastered, these dimensional puppets can adapt to any position on the production line, and can adjust various parameters on the equipment in real time based on the information fed back by the equipment, so that the equipment can work in the optimal state. . If Qiao Ruida opens up her permissions, these dimensional puppets can even complete tasks such as equipment maintenance, data collation, data analysis, and production process optimization, which can save Qiao Ruida a lot of trouble.

The chip production line is installed, and the next step is naturally production testing. Qiao Ruida searched around on the Internet ten years later, and finally found a mask photo of a certain MediaTek 5nm mobile phone chip on the screenshot of a paper she was planning to write. Although the resolution of this photo was not very high, it was It's enough to serve as a template. Qiao Ruida downloaded the photo and used it as a template to copy it. Then he took the copied masks into the dimensional space and installed them on several EUV lithography machines for tape-out testing. During the production process, the 12-inch wafers, photoresists, cleaning machines and other raw materials used were all copied from photos taken ten years later to ensure that the performance and parameters of the raw materials meet the standards.

The 5NM chip production process is much more complex than the current mainstream 28nm chips. This is reflected in the production process, which means more production steps, more and more sophisticated equipment, and longer production times. So much so that the dimensional puppets were busy on the production line for three days and three nights before completing the production process of the first batch of chips. This is also due to the dimensional puppets, who do not eat or drink, have unlimited energy, and do not need to go to the toilet. If it were replaced by human employees to operate the equipment, at least three shifts of highly qualified engineers would be required to work alternately to complete it.

After the first batch of chips came off the assembly line, Qiao Ruida commanded dozens of dimensional puppets and conducted tests. Only 0.5% of the chips passed the test. This is achieved using finished masks, a full set of 1:1 replica equipment, and a higher-standard dust-free environment. If any one of these fails to meet the standards, the pass rate of the produced chips is likely to be 0. What follows is a long running-in time, adjusting equipment parameters, improving production processes, optimizing production steps, and doing everything possible to improve the chip qualification rate until the yield rate reaches the profit and loss point, or even reaches above 90%. If it is a wafer factory in the real world, after a chip production line is installed, it will take at least several months or even years to complete the debugging and optimization process. The capital, manpower and material resources that need to be invested during this period are very large. (End of chapter)