Video Game Empire

The biggest winner of the 1982 Golden Horse Awards was undoubtedly a Hong Kong film. √∟ Small, among the four most important awards, Best Director and Best Film were won by "Double Ten of 1911" co-produced by Hong Kong and Taiwan. The "Border Man" that won the best actor and the "Wu Song" that won the best actress are also from Hong Kong's Art City Company and Shaw Brothers respectively.

After participating in the Golden Horse Award, Li Xuan rushed to Hsinchu City, north of Taipei City, the next day, to complete the last task of the trip to Taiwan, and cut the ribbon for the start of construction of the Hsinchu wafer fab of Oriental Semiconductor Corporation.

The technology of this fab is not advanced, using 3-inch wafers and a 2.5-micron process. The new factory built by Orient Semiconductor in the United States during the same period has adopted 4-inch wafers and a 1.5-micron process. The fab that Texas Instruments started construction not long ago is said to be likely to use 5-inch wafers.

However, the positioning of each factory is different. It does not mean that the more advanced the technology, the better, because the new technology means high investment, and the yield rate is far inferior to the mature mainstream technology. Oriental Semiconductor's Hsinchu fab is mainly used to produce 6502 processors and small and medium-capacity ra chips.

The technical content of these products is not high, relying on small profits but quick turnover. If you use a new process with a yield rate that needs to be improved, you may lose all your pants. Of course, as far as Taiwan is concerned, Dongfang Semiconductor's Hsinchu fab is enough to be called the most technologically advanced factory.

Taiwan's own newly established first semiconductor production company, UMC, although it also has a 3-inch fab. But its main products are chips for electronic watches, toys and remote controls, and the technical content is much lower than that of Dongfang Semiconductor's Hsinchu factory. This is also the reason why Taiwan favors Dongfang Semiconductor Corporation for investment, hoping that the new technology it brings will further promote the development of Taiwan's semiconductor industry.

And where does this promotion come from? The Hsinchu factory has three production lines. The monthly production capacity of wafers reaches 30,000 pieces. Dongfang Electronics' internal orders cannot meet its needs, so it needs to undertake external orders to increase the operating rate. from last year. New semiconductor design companies are emerging in Hong Kong and Taiwan.

These companies are all attracted by Dongfang Semiconductor, and they cannot afford the construction costs of fabs that can easily cost tens of millions of dollars. And the emergence of Oriental Semiconductor Corporation. Just happened to solve their production problems.

The Hsinchu factory is also the real beginning of Dongfang Semiconductor's practice of the foundry model. The 3-inch, 2.5-micron process has been the mainstream process that has been successfully developed for three or four years. Therefore, with the technical team recruited by Dongfang Semiconductor in the United States, it is not difficult to achieve a high yield rate. This provides a guarantee for the company to accept commercial orders.

"At the last meeting, there were a lot of voices within the group who were worried that your steps would be too big, for fear that the operating rate of the new factory would be too low!" Li Xuan smiled at Zhang Zhongmou beside him.

He had a gentleman's agreement with Zhang Zhongmou before, and the affairs of Dongfang Semiconductor Company would be handed over to the other party. And Li Xuan has always kept his promise and never intervened in the company's affairs. Earlier, Dongfang Semiconductor announced that the Hsinchu wafer fab will be accompanied by a large-scale chip packaging and testing plant. The total investment is as high as 40 million US dollars.

In fact, the two production lines of the Hsinchu factory are from the old equipment of another wafer fab acquired by the company in the United States. While upgrading the technology costs some money, it's still a lot cheaper than buying new equipment. So the actual construction cost is only about 30 million US dollars. However, the internal cash flow of Dongfang Company is relatively abundant, and the funds reserved by Li Xuan are indeed 40 million.

So Zhang Zhongmou simply revised the plan, further expanded the scale of the original Hsinchu factory, and added a new production line, so that the monthly production capacity of the factory reached 30,000 wafers. Depending on the area required for various chip designs, a wafer can be divided into as few as a hundred or as many as hundreds of chips. If the Hsinchu fab is fully operational. At least 80 million chips are produced every year, which is not a small number.

"Orders within the group will keep us from starving to death at least, and the development of external customers is also progressing steadily! Yesterday, the sales department just received a good news, ss company decided to cooperate with us. We will be responsible for the OEM production, including the 555 time-based chip in A variety of chips inside!" Zhang Zhongmou said with a smile.

Time base chip is a kind of digital integrated circuit, which is widely used in various timers, pulse generators and oscillators. And ss company is the invention company of this kind of circuit.

"Oh? It seems that their management. They were scared by the injury case a few years ago. No wonder they haven't invested in building a new fab in the past two years!" Li Xuan said.

two years ago. ss company is located in a wafer fab in California, USA, on-site workers are repeatedly exposed to chemical gases in the factory. cause physical discomfort. This is the first-ever occupational injury case for an employee in the U.S. semiconductor industry.

Although the ss company strongly denied this matter, it finally came to an end. But the incident still dealt a serious blow to its reputation, and the constant entanglement of the US National Occupational Safety and Health Agency~www.readwn.com~ also caused ss's new factory plans to be seriously disrupted. It seems that the senior management of ss company decided to find another way, and let Dongfang Semiconductor Co., Ltd. manufacture this part of their new production capacity.

This is indeed a good news for Dongfang Semiconductor, one of the semiconductor companies in Silicon Valley. If it does not plan to build a new fab by itself, but hand over some of the chip production tasks to Dongfang Semiconductor, this order can eat up at least 30% of the Hsinchu factory's production capacity.

Coupled with the large number of orders within the Oriental Group, the Hsinchu factory has been able to achieve break-even. This means that the first step of Dongfang Semiconductor's foundry model has been very smooth. Although Li Xuan knows that the OEM model is the general trend in the future, if the Hsinchu factory loses money for a long time, both he and Zhang Zhongmou will be under increasing pressure within the group.

The hardest part of building a new fab is often in the early stages, because the market doesn't yet recognize your technology. After the factory of Seiko Epson in Japan was built, it fell into the quagmire of insufficient operating rate. It is the large number of orders in the early stage of the development of Dongfang Electronics Company that allowed it to survive the most difficult stage. Now Seiko Epson's wafer business is very rewarding, and it has begun to build a second fab not long ago.

With this good news, Li Xuan returned to Hong Kong in a happy mood. (To be continued..)