The Millennium Semiconductor Survival Guide

In the future, more than a quarter of the revenue of the chip industry will come from mobile phones, which is why the success or failure of Mphone is related to the success of the entire strategy.

The American Semiconductor Industry Association wrote in the April 2021 report "Strengthening the Global Semiconductor Supply Chain in Uncertain Times": In dollar terms, mobile phones accounted for 26% of semiconductor sales.

In the era of mobile Internet, mobile phones need so many chips, more than ten semiconductor chips are needed to manage battery, bluetooth, wifi, cellular network, audio, camera and so on.

Mphone is successful and has occupied a large enough market share in the mobile phone field. Matrix can completely lead the redistribution of a part of the semiconductor industry chain.

The madness of iphone impressed Zhou Xin deeply when he was studying in California. Starting from iphone4, the release of each generation of iphone can become a carnival for young people. Regardless of whether they are interested in technology or the Internet, they will pay attention to the release of iphone without exception.

The sales of the first-generation Mphone can satisfy Zhou Xin, after all, this is a castrated version of the smartphone. You must know that when the iPhone 6 was released, the sales volume exceeded 10 million in the first week.

So Zhou Xin knew that he had opened the prelude to the mobile Internet with his own hands, and the war was far from the final conclusion. Even after the sluggishness of the global mobile phone market in later generations, the entire smartphone market has been competing for ten years.

In a field that has competed for more than ten years, apart from Apple sitting firmly on the Diaoyutai, even Samsung dare not say that it will not be eliminated in the field of smartphones.

Therefore, Zhou Xin never thought that Mphone was a sure thing to win, and he still remained extremely vigilant.

After listening to Zhou Xin's words, Cao Yongluo said: "As expected of you, you still have the level, maybe I have been on the front line, so I feel that there is no hope. The Ministry of Information Industry has decided to introduce policies to encourage chip design companies and chip manufacturers. up.

In the past, the chip policy has always been mixed with the software industry, which only occupied a small part of the space. Now I plan to list the chip separately and introduce incentive policies.

I also plan to start from a small field. In the first half of the year, I established a chip design company called Yongluo Technology.

I want to start with battery management chips first. This field is relatively small, but there is a broad market. You can recruit a group of people first and start from this field. Moreover, Texas Instruments' technology on battery management chips is almost fully disclosed.

From the design guide to the schematic diagram to the assembly diagram, and even the PCB layout, all we need to do is to make some changes on the basis of them, reduce the cost, make the cost of this solution, and then sell it to other mobile phone manufacturers . "

The battery management system has a long history, and there was a battery management system on very early mobile phones. In the earliest days, Motorola used disposable circuits to protect mobile phone batteries.

These disposable circuits protect the battery from burning out by setting a threshold. Think of this disposable circuit as the earliest battery management system. After the 1990s, the battery management system consisted of a single chip that integrated protectors and measurement devices.

It is integrated in the PCB assembly, can protect the battery, and is responsible for the conversion, distribution, detection and other power management of electric energy. In other words, monitoring battery power and charging are only the most basic functions of power management chips.

In daily use, the power management chip is responsible for distributing power to the different components of the phone. Once the battery is detected to be too low, the system will remind the user to charge. Prompting the user to charge is the result of the early warning of the power management chip.

At the same time, during the charging process, if it detects that the battery is fully charged, the power management chip will cut off the power supply. Even if the mobile phone charger is connected to the mobile phone, it will no longer charge the battery, but will supply power to the mobile phone. Therefore, charging the mobile phone overnight will not damage the mobile phone, and the battery life will not be shortened.

After listening, Zhou Xin said: "It seems that you and Lao Guan want to go together, and Xinxin Semiconductor also wants to start with battery management chips, Bluetooth chips, and multimedia chips, and use these to train engineers.

Haha everyone is staring at the battery management chip. However, it is difficult for battery management chips to compete with Texas Instruments or Infineon. Xinxin Semiconductor can rely on Mphone, and Yongluo Technology has to find the market for its power management chips. "

Texas Instruments is a well-deserved giant in the field of chips. As long as it is related to chips, you can always find that Texas Instruments occupies the C position and attracts the attention of companies entering this field.

Zhou Xin knows that power management chips are extremely promising. Smart battery management chips alone are already a huge market for mobile phones, and the market for electric vehicles is no less than that of smartphones.

If power management is the icing on the cake for smartphones, it is the life and death of electric vehicles. Tesla's battery management system is built by itself, but their battery management chip is a purchased Texas Instruments bq series battery management chip.

Tesla only relies on a Texas Instruments battery monitoring and protection chip to manage all 18650 batteries. Why did Tesla choose Texas Instruments? Because Texas Instruments has fully disclosed its battery management chip design files.

Tesla can design its own battery management system based on these files.

By 2021, the global market share of battery management systems will be as high as US$7.8 billion, and will grow rapidly at a compound growth rate of 19.5% per year, while the market share of battery management chips will be US$4.3 billion.

Early battery management chips were not taken seriously, because the effect it achieved was very simple, just battery protection and power measurement, which was far less important than in the future. The main players are only Texas Instruments and Infineon, and Texas Instruments makes the technology almost fully open.

After the market is large enough, many new players have appeared in battery management chips, such as STMicroelectronics, Analog Devices, Microchip Technology, etc., are all latecomers.

The battery management chip also has more missions. It needs to combine measurement performance and application robustness to monitor and balance each battery cell, extend battery life and track the charging process.

Cao Yongluo said: "I also wanted to give it a try, but I didn't think that I would definitely be able to enter the Mphone supply chain, and ultimately it depends on the quality of the product.

The main reason is that there is a shortage of people. Domestic talents in chip design are too scarce. Almost all the people I find have to learn from scratch.

Compared with me, in terms of presidential funding, not to mention you recently hired Professor Hu back, you are much better than me in terms of talent. What do you think about Berkeley? You come to school, and you poach the professor away. "

Zhou Xin said: "So now the dean of the Department of Electrical Engineering took me personally. I met the principal when I was eating in the cafeteria in Berkeley. He told me that he didn't believe that I could poach Oldham away.

Because I have recruited many professors from Berkeley to my company during the three years I have been in Berkeley, so the principal did not dare to let Chinese people become professors for me. "

Zhou Xin thought, I really can't poach William Oldham, but I can poach Jin Zhijie.

(Jin Zhijie, a female of Chinese descent, has served as the dean of the Department of Electrical Engineering at Berkeley since 2012 and as the vice president of Berkeley since 2016.)

Zhou Xin wanted to lure Jin Zhijie to Xinxin Semiconductor. When the principal was talking to him, what Zhou Xin thought was: Look at me poaching the future dean of the Department of Electrical Engineering at Berkeley ahead of time.

Cao Yongluo laughed after hearing this: "Silicon Valley does have a lot more talents."

When Zhou Xin chatted with Cao Yongluo in San Francisco, it was eleven o'clock in the morning in Huaguo, thousands of miles away.

Huaguo has ushered in the first working day of a new week. Everyone knows that Huaguo's entry into the WTO is very important to them, but they can't say why.

At this time, Hu Zhengming has been working in Xinxin Technology for almost two months, and he has also clarified the future strategic direction after frequent communication with Zhou Xin.

At this time, he is fully promoting the cooperation between Xinxin Technology and Hua Hong Semiconductor. Hu Zhengming believes that after all, he still needs to control a chip manufacturing company.

"Mr. Jiang, what do Huahong think about the cooperation plan we mentioned earlier?" Hu Zhengming asked.

Mr. Jiang here refers to Jiang Shoulei, the vice chairman of Huahong Group, who is also the vice chairman of the Huaguo Semiconductor Industry Association. It can be said that he is a full-time participant in the Huaguo chip industry. 742 factory jobs.

Jiang Shoulei said: "Professor Hu, we have also dealt with each other for many years. In 1995, I was still the vice president of Huayue Electronics. At that time, you came to Yanda to give lectures. I went to listen to them, and then asked for advice in private. gave you some questions.

We should be regarded as old friends. I am very happy to see top talents like Professor Hu devote themselves to the chip business in Huaguo.

At the same time, we have no doubts about the financial strength of Xinxin Technology, and we also have no doubts about the technical strength. With the financial strength of Xinxin Technology, it is possible to recruit engineers from places such as Silicon Valley, Hsinchu, Tokyo, and Seoul.

Therefore, both public and private, I agree with the cooperation between Huahong Group and Xinxin Technology.

I only have one question, which is that Xinxin Technology relies on technology and capital to invest in shares. You do not occupy the controlling stake, but you need to adopt the method of different rights for the same share, and you need to have the control of the newly established joint venture.

This is very difficult to be agreed upon when we make internal decisions. Take Neon’s NEC and Huahong’s joint venture, Huahong NEC, as an example. The conditions offered by NEC are very ordinary at present, but when DRAM prices are high, they are very good.

They are willing to contract all sales of chips produced by Hua Hong NEC, we only need to do a good job in chip manufacturing.

Even so, we have not handed over the control of Huahong NEC to NEC. "

Hu Zhengming interrupted: "President Jiang, let's be more straightforward, I visited Huahong NEC, and I also talked with Shimakura Kaiichi.

In Hua Hong NEC, almost all the middle managers were airborne from Tokyo. Although the chairman was appointed by Hua Hong, it only served as a seal and signature to put it bluntly.

Keiichi Shimakura is the actual manager of Hua Hong NEC, including the future business direction of Hua Hong NEC: strengthening cooperation with Chinese LSI design companies, producing LSIs for the Chinese market, users are not limited to China's semiconductor foundry business, accepting NEC production entrustment and so on.

Hua Hong actually did not interfere with this.

The purpose of Xinxin Technology is similar to that of NEC, and compared with NEC, Xinxin Technology has stronger strength both in terms of capital and in the market. "

The main reason is that Hu Zhengming is getting impatient. To put it bluntly, the conditions offered by Xinxin Technology are very favorable. Huahong lost 700 million yuan in the first eight months of this year. They only made more than 1 billion yuan a year during the subversive period. After removing the depreciation of 800 million yuan, the profit is 350 million yuan.

The condition given by Xinxin Technology is to invest 200 million US dollars in shares. Huahong will inject its own 8-inch production line as assets into the new company. Xinxin Technology is willing to promise that the annual sales revenue of the chip foundry after the joint venture will be more than 2 billion yuan. .

Jiang Shoulei shook his head: "No, no, Professor Hu, you misunderstood me, I know that Xinxin's conditions are very good.

What I want to say is that the control of Huahong NEC is in the hands of the Neon people. This is because we rely on them, but even so, the control of Huahong NEC is not written into any contract.

We maintain a tacit understanding with NEC, and we can also maintain this tacit understanding with Xinxin Technology.

The newly established Hua Hong-Xinxin, Xinxin will manage this enterprise and manage chip production, we cannot write it into the contract. "

An 8-inch production line costs between US$700 million and US$800 million, and Hua Hong currently has only one 8-inch production line.

Chip manufacturing is so expensive that even Zhou Xin can't afford such a huge asset investment.

Therefore, he discussed with Hu Zhengming whether he could adopt a new method to cooperate with state-owned enterprises.

There are many places in Huaguo that want to engage in semiconductors and want to replicate the success of Silicon Valley. Yanjing plans to invest USD 30 billion in the northern microelectronics industry base, where Shougang is the main contractor. Shougang invested USD 1.35 billion at the beginning of this year to build an 8-inch chip factory, including two 8-inch chips. That is, the 0.25 micron production line.

Of course, Shougang put the plan on hold later, and then turned the money to the real estate field, and real estate became Shougang's main business.

Not only later, Hua Hong’s huge losses in the first 8 months still scare other places that want to engage in semiconductors.

All places in the country that want to engage in semiconductors want to wait and see.

But it does not prevent Hu Zhengming from using it as a bargaining chip: "Mr. Jiang, not only Hua Hong has an 8-inch production line, but also other companies, such as Shougang's 8-inch production line is about to go online. We are not the only one that can cooperate with Hua Hong." Object.

Including Shenhai and private companies like SMIC.

We chose Hua Hong because we had a good foundation for cooperation before, and Hua Hong has sufficient experience in the field of chip manufacturing.

But it doesn't mean that Hua Hong is the only target.

I know your concerns, Xinxin Technology also has its own persistence. "