The Millennium Semiconductor Survival Guide

Goldman Sachs plays a fairly good role in China. It is nothing more than using its connections with gods to do IPO, market making, and fund-raising.

Although Goldman Sachs has grabbed a lot of profits from it, the work always has to be done by an institution, whether it is Goldman Sachs or Morgan, or the Mainland's Three Middle Schools and One China.

Goldman Sachs is very good at playing abroad, especially in the vast Asia, Africa and Latin America. As mentioned earlier, Goldman Sachs spent US$3.9 billion to settle with Malaysia.

Why is it a settlement? In addition to the US$3.9 billion, they also have to pay about US$5 billion to global regulators including England. This much money is quite nerve-wracking for Goldman Sachs.

It is because Goldman Sachs and Low Taek Jho colluded to empty out billions of Malaysian sovereign funds in the name of providing Malaysian sovereign funds to invest in Malaysian infrastructure construction.

At that time, Jho Low approached Tim, a partner at Goldman Sachs, and then colluded with him to use Goldman Sachs's name to gain the trust of the former Prime Minister of Malaysia and launch a Malaysian sovereign fund that claimed to compete with Temasek.

Later, the fund was completely emptied by Goldman Sachs, Jho Low and senior Malaysian officials.

This is a scandal that has been exposed by Goldman Sachs in Asia, Africa and Latin America. There are still many scandals that have not been exposed.

Like when the Mao and Mao disputes broke out, Western financial institutions rushed to lock in Mao's funds, and Goldman Sachs acted as a broker between Moscow's creditors and Amerikan investors.

This is Goldman Sachs' overt operation, but secretly it has set up a so-called recovery fund to buy up 20% of resource-related state-owned enterprises.

Therefore, for Goldman Sachs, at least for now, venture capital is just a dessert, a way to help Goldman Sachs expand its influence, and is not their main source of profit.

The returns from venture capital investment in the Chinese market are even more negligible.

After listening, Zhou Xin said: "Okay, in short, if you encounter problems at work, you can come to ask me, and if you need my help, you can also tell me.

Of course, I may not be able to get Goldman Sachs to take the listing of Huaguo Petroleum. "

Zhou Xin’s influence has scope.

Li Jingyi said: "I understand.

There are still many interesting projects in China, mainly because my current job gives me the opportunity to get in touch with the true face of Chinese society.

The social ecologies of America and China are completely different. This is reflected in the Internet industry. Even though this is the industry with the smallest gap between China and America, there are so many differences.

Before coming to China, the most popular companies in the Internet industry were the so-called Internet financial companies, and electronic payment was only one category of such Internet financial companies.

In China, there are only three companies for electronic payment, let alone offline payment. NewPay's offline payment is only popular in the four first-tier cities of Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen.

Under such a premise, it is impossible for China's Internet finance to develop, and it does not even have a user base.

The most popular game company in China is actually not a good investment target, because in the game industry, you don't invest in companies, you invest in projects to see if the project can be popular.

Because of piracy, only online games can survive. Single-player games are a dead end. Amerikan has a large number of offline software stores to help game companies sell CDs. In China, these similar stores are in computer cities, and they sell games. Ninety-five percent of CDs are pirated CDs.

When investing in stand-alone games, as long as a company has a successful stand-alone game, it can launch a sequel, turn it into a series, or even develop subsequent movies. This is more suitable for venture capital institutions to invest.

If you invest in online games, it not only depends on how good your game is and whether there is an audience in the market, but also on competitors. There are some private investment companies in China that are very good at this business. I looked at the internal data of Goldman Sachs. It shows that they have also voted, but the results are not very good.

In addition to the gaming industry, various content-focused forums are also popular in China. Husu, NetEase, and Tianya all fall into this category. They are more like Silicon Valley five years ago.

Online shopping only stays online, with a certain number of users in a few areas such as the Yangtze River Delta, Pearl River Delta and Yanjing.

In short, China has great potential in the Internet field, and there are many places worth digging for, but it needs to carefully screen investment targets. "Li Jingyi concluded.

Because she was with Zhou Xin, Li Jingyi had no material pursuits from very early on, because all her needs in this area were met. Therefore, she can pursue a long-term cooperative relationship with enterprises from a more objective standpoint when making investments.

Rather than saying that listing is the end point and cashing out is the goal.

After returning to China, Zhou Xin felt that time flew by so fast. A year passed almost in the blink of an eye. During this year, semiconductor development was slow. The chip industry that was supposed to enter the 55nm process was stuck at 65nm and could no longer progress. .

Except for Xinxin, other lithography machine companies use dry lithography machines, such as Nikon, ASML and Canon.

The limit of the dry lithography machine at the 193nm wavelength is 65nm, unless light with a shorter wavelength is found.

Xinxin Lithography Machine Since 2000, Lin Benjian officially joined Xinxin Lithography Machine. As the CEO of Xinxin Lithography Machine, he began to do theoretical research on immersion lithography machines and a few demonstration experiments.

After a long talk with Lin Benjian on the eve of Zhou Xin's return to China in 2003, Zhou Xin's support allowed Xinxin Lithography Machine to officially start the research on immersion lithography machines. Zhou Xin used his personal connections to find the international capital group behind Zeiss, and through A series of exchanges of interests allowed Zeiss to fully cooperate with the research and development of new core lithography machines.

After entering 2006, Xinxin Lithography Machine's lithography machine based on the immersion method has developed samples. When the world's most advanced process was 65nm, the wavelength was shortened from 193nm to 134nm through the immersion method, and the maximum chip was successfully reduced. The advanced process has advanced from 65nm to 40nm.

Inside Xinxin, Guan Jianying, Hu Zhengming, Lin Benjian, Zhou Xin and Liang Mengsong held a small celebration dinner to celebrate Xinxin Technology's advancement of the extreme range from 65nm to 40nm.

For Xinxin, this is a golden mountain, and the technological advantages can make Mphone one generation ahead of other mobile phones on the market.

Matrix hasn't released a new phone in three years, and other mobile phone giants have successively conquered multi-touch touch screen technology.

At first, various mobile phone manufacturers had other ideas and wanted to make some innovations in the field of smartphones. When these innovations failed one after another, even the N97, which Nokia had high hopes for, performed mediocrely in the market. After Microsoft acquired Plam, it followed the Mphone2 After the great success of Plam 1 launched.

The smartphones launched by major mobile phone manufacturers last year were all based on the appearance of Mphone2, as close as possible to 1:1 reproduction. This also caused Mphone2 to lose its original advantages. It is difficult to attract users to switch to new colors every year.

This does not mean that Mphone2 has not sold well in the past year. As the absolute king of the smartphone industry, even if Mphone has not been updated, the sales volume still ranks first. It just means that because Matrix has not launched Mphone3 for a long time, old users lack the opportunity to replace it with new phones. power.

The photolithography machine process has broken through to 40nm, and the under-screen fingerprint technology has matured. Zhou Xin knows that the time has come for Matrix to shock the world again.

"Uncle Lin, you have worked hard these past two years. The success of Xinxin lithography machine can make the industry recognize Xinxin again.

It is also time for new core lithography machines to change the existing pattern. "The four of them don't drink. They couldn't sleep during the tea party at night, so everyone's cups were full of water. Zhou Xin didn't even lift the cup, he was just chatting.

Lin Benjian said with emotion: “Although I knew that this technical route would definitely work, I never doubted myself.

But at the moment when I actually made it, I still felt very emotional, as if my forty years of persistence in life had finally paid off. "

After Lin Benjian left IBM, he was withdrawn from IBM because the technical route he adhered to was not favored by the person in charge of IBM's light source research direction, which meant he was kicked out.

Among the four people present, only Hu Zhengming was okay. Berkeley had always treated him well. The other three were more or less losers in office political struggles.

After successfully developing an immersion lithography machine, Lin Benjian's career has reached a certain degree of completion.

Zhou Xin said: “I have always believed this, Xinxin is born with the foundation for success.

Compared with ASML, we have the manufacturing link of chip production. This advantage gives us an advantage when testing immersion. "

As a newcomer who only joined Xinxin last year, Liang Mengsong had great trust in him because of his amazing record at TSMC and his status as a student of Hu Zhengming. He was appointed as the new employee almost immediately after joining Xinxin. The person in charge of the core chip manufacturing process.

At the same time, because Liang Mengsong had a non-compete agreement, Xinxin paid him a huge liquidated damages of up to 20 million US dollars.

After Liang Mengsong joined, he did not live up to expectations. In just half a year, Xinxin once again achieved technological breakthroughs and improved yield rates in the 90nm process.

At the same time, after joining, he single-handedly led the construction of Xinxin's 65nm production line in Lion City, which is about to be put into production.

Lin Benjian said: “The main thing is that this route is indeed feasible and feasible. As long as you invest time and sufficient resources, you will see results sooner or later.

We are relatively lucky to be able to successfully complete the development of immersion lithography machines before Nikon and Canon develop 157nm light sources. "

Xinxin chose the technical route of later generations of ASML, which is an immersion lithography machine. At present, Nikon, Canon, and ASML all choose to research light sources with shorter wavelengths.

Soon after ASML launched an immersion lithography machine and successfully advanced the chip manufacturing process to 40nm, Nikon successfully developed a dry lithography machine based on 157nm light source.

Unfortunately, it was too late. At that time, ASML had already occupied the mainstream market of 40nm lithography machines. Nikon was slow and slow, losing the entire lithography machine market.

Now is the best time. The light source has not yet achieved a breakthrough. Xinxin has taken the lead in achieving a breakthrough, directly bypassing the 65nm and entering the 40nm process.

Hu Zhengming said: “We need to be fast and push it to the market as quickly as possible.

At the same time, we need to sell Xinxin’s lithography machines. Although Xinxin made lithography machines before, we did not have our name in the global market.

Only chip manufacturers in China will choose our products. Chip manufacturers in places like Neon, Korea, and America will buy one to see the effect out of experimentation.

Once they buy one, they won’t consider a second one.

Because compared with Nikon, which is already easy to use, the new core has no unique advantages.

Compared with ASML, which is backed by shareholders such as Intel and TSMC, Xinxin's lithography machines can only rely on Xinxin itself. "

This is a fact. Why ASML can expand rapidly? After the launch of 40nm lithography machine, Intel no longer even looks at Nikon, it is not because Intel has a large share of ASML.

Zhou Xin nodded in agreement: “We need to seize this time difference.

This rare time difference. "

Lin Benjian mentioned: "What I want to do is to take it in two steps. On the one hand, Xinxin can start process verification, and on the other hand, I want to participate in the semiconductor exhibition that Neon will hold soon."

Neon holds the Semiconductor Exhibition in December every year, which is also the largest exhibition in the entire Asia-Pacific region. The specific location is at the Ariake Convention and Exhibition Center in Neon Tokyo.

It is also the world's most influential semiconductor industry equipment exhibition.

Everyone here agreed: "I think so."

"Xinxin Semiconductor has been developing for so many years. Before we attended the Neon Semiconductor Exhibition, we never had a product that we could produce.

This time I can give the neon people some neon shock. "

As for secrecy? There is no need to keep this secret at all. Xinxin has been cooperating with Zeiss on this process, and the news that they have successfully developed it will be known to other manufacturers almost immediately.

Everyone will also be aware of the relevant patents registered by Xinxin around the world.

In modern society, in industries like photolithography machines that require cooperation with hundreds of upstream and downstream suppliers, it is almost impossible for private enterprises to keep secrets.

As Huawei has conquered the 7nm process, secrecy has almost reached its limit. You can also see various revelations from anonymous masters on Zhihu.

Therefore, everyone at Xinxin does not want to consider keeping secrets at all, and all they want is to expand market share as quickly as possible.

After everyone reached an agreement, Guan Jianying said: "I have another question, that is, should we take advantage of the trend and accept Intel's investment?

After we demonstrated our 40nm process at the Neon Semiconductor Show, Intel will definitely make a request to invest in Xinxin Semiconductor. "

Intel is the absolute king in the chip field in the PC era. In the early days, they took over chip design, chip manufacturing and chip production.

This has also led Intel's investment department to invest heavily in upstream and downstream semiconductor companies around the world. Among them, TSMC and ASML have Intel's name on the list of shareholders behind them.

Many chip manufacturing companies, including Xinxin, also have Intel as a shareholder. Among them, Intel, the chip manufacturer of Xiaomi Computer, accounts for as much as 49% of the shares.

For the "greedy" Intel, they will definitely be tempted when they see the new core lithography machine breaking Nikon's monopoly and doing what ASML has not been able to do.

There was a moment of silence.

From a perceptual point of view, it is obvious that Intel does not want to take a stake.

Happy Mid-Autumn Festival to everyone!

It’s so nice to have a holiday. Crow went to bed at 11 o’clock last night and got up at 8 o’clock in the morning. Then he slept for five hours during the day today.