What Pony Ma, who returned to the apartment with great ambition, didn't know was that the Matrix prototype he saw in Zhou Xin's office was one of the few prototypes.
Moreover, the chip built into Matrix is not the final product. The final chip does not even have a sample. The chip of the Matrix prototype is a handheld computer chip.
The chip was still on the drawing board. In order to design the Matrix chip as soon as possible, Guan Jianying never stopped from the end of New Year's Day to the beginning of Shenhai.
Because Zhou Xin is in San Francisco, Guan Jianying sometimes has to answer emails at night due to the time difference.
Compared with Silicon Valley, China’s lack of talent in the chip field is what makes Guan Jianying feel most helpless.
If he is short of money, he can apply to Zhou Xin. Shenhai can meet his requirements for electricity, network, land, and water resources. Only in terms of talent, whether it is chip design or lithography machine, it is too difficult to find the right people.
Unlike chip foundry SMIC, SMIC can poach a large number of people from around the world.
At this point in time, Wanwan is not good at chip design and lithography machines. The lithography machines are slightly better, so he can recruit people from Neon. In addition, Shenhai Microelectronics has a few engineers who have worked on lithography machines. Let’s absorb the cutting-edge Technology can be put to work.
Chip design is really bad. IC design engineers are concentrated in America and Korea. In Korea, Samsung mainly has a certain say in the field of chip design.
These people can't dig it out at all.
Relying on his more than 20 years of experience in chip design in Silicon Valley, Guan Jianying reluctantly recruited a dozen chip design engineers from Silicon Valley, with work experience ranging from three to fifteen years.
But this manpower was far from enough, after he knew Zhou Xin's development goals for Xinxin Semiconductor.
Zhou Xin and Guan Jianying had a conversation. In the short term, Xinxin Semiconductor will design chips similar to handheld computers. After this business is completed, it will slowly expand to other fields.
The market for handheld computers is smaller than that of ordinary computers, which also results in very few players in chip design in this field.
Only a few companies, including Intel, Texas Instruments, and Samsung, IBM, Apple, and AMD have tried to design handheld computer chips, but none have gained market recognition in the end.
Because the manufacturers that still insist on making handheld computer chips are all large companies. It is difficult to recruit people from large companies, and they still need to be recruited to work in China.
As for why not set up an R&D center in Silicon Valley and have an office in Silicon Valley, it would be much more convenient to recruit people.
If you want to recruit people from major companies such as Intel, Texas Instruments, and Samsung, or from Silicon Valley to Zhangjiang, the difficulty factor is about 100. If the office is located in Silicon Valley, the difficulty factor will drop to 80.
Guan Jianying has mentioned that there will be a two-step process. First, establish a R&D center in Silicon Valley, adopt a dual-center model in two places, and gradually move the R&D focus to Zhangjiang in the future.
In the first three to five years, R&D centers in Silicon Valley will definitely be the main focus.
This plan was rejected by Zhou Xin. In Zhou Xin's view, Samsung's chip design plan was enough to last until around 2010.
Ten years is enough time to cultivate a capable chip design team. HiSilicon Kirin, owned by Huawei, also took less than ten years to evolve K3V2 into 980.
Not to mention that matrix can also take advantage of the first-mover advantage in mobile phone chips.
If the R&D center is located in Silicon Valley, what is the difference between Xinxin Semiconductor and other multinational giants?
Microsoft and Intel also have R&D centers in China. The R&D centers of these multinational giants in China are still marginalized after 20 years.
Zhou Xin knew that as long as he gave Guan Jianying an opening to set up a R&D center in Silicon Valley, he would definitely not be interested in Zhang Jiang's team. This was a human necessity.
Just like in later generations, when Tencent firmly grasped most of the traffic entrances in China and counted money on its credit book, even the top product manager team in the past no longer cared about user experience.
KPIs replace user experience.
This is human nature. When the short-term benefits of doing simple things are greater than the short-term benefits of doing difficult things, no one will do difficult things.
Except for this matter, Zhou Xin almost satisfied Guan Jianying unconditionally in other matters.
Keying can be called a living fossil in the field of chip design, and he knows all kinds of technical information well.
After knowing that Zhou Xin's goal was a handheld computer, he decided to place the R&D team in Zhangjiang and claimed that there would be no revenue and profit requirements within three years.
Guan Jianying changed his request:
"Newman, handheld computers have completely different demands from desktop computers. Handheld computers are limited by battery capacity, and handheld computers have always been positioned as office tools.
Handheld computers do not need to consider entertainment, so unlike the core appeal of chips, which is performance, mobile phone chips need to consider more battery life and power consumption.
I recommend considering Apple's Newton handheld computer. Although Apple has discontinued the Newton handheld computer, this product is definitely a successful product.
The failure of Apple's other business lines prevented them from continuing to invest in handheld computers, and they had no choice but to cut off this product line.
Purely from the perspective of chip design and product design, I think Newton is very good.
We can buy the XScale chip patent from Intel. This set of chips based on the ARM architecture is the chip used by Apple.
There is no need for a full set of patents, nor can I afford them. Intel will definitely ask for it, so I have a certain degree of confidence in buying a patent license.
XScale was not taken seriously within Intel. Their best partner, Newton, ceased production, and other brands of handheld computers gradually turned to handheld computer chips from Texas Instruments and Samsung.
Intel's top management has always been divided on mobile chips, and there are often voices internally that the mobile chip business should be packaged and sold. Therefore, if we just buy a license, the price will not be very high, and the probability that they will agree is very high.
Just the XScale series of chip patent licenses can play a role in training the team. I think the money is well spent. "
Zhou Xin agreed without any hesitation.
Guan Jianying continued: "Because in our entire engineering team, there are only 15 engineers who are willing to return to Zhangjiang with me to start a business. Including my initial engineering team of 16 people, only 5 people have mobile chip design experience.
Among these five people, only one and a half are focused on mobile chip design, and I am that half.
Why should we buy Intel's XScale chip patent license? Because almost all handheld computers now use the ARM architecture. This architecture is quite different from the architecture used by our engineering team before.
Compared with x86 architecture, Arm architecture has lower power consumption and cost. Even if it is difficult to compare with X86 architecture in terms of performance, handheld computers still choose ARM architecture. Subsequently, ARM architecture chips perform very well in the personal computer market. generally.
The architecture of the XScale chip is StrongARM, which is a RISC processor that supports the WinCE3.0-PocketPC system. This means that it can be a good bridge for switching from other chips to ARM architecture chips and can train the team. "
In the end, Xinxin Semiconductor obtained the XScale patent license for US$20 million.
Intel once held a leading position in handheld computer chips. Later, the mobile phone chips developed along the XScale technology route became the second largest smartphone chip in the industry after Texas Instruments mobile phone chips.
In the end, Intel sold the entire technology package to Marvell at a low price of US$600 million.
This is also human nature. I make so much money on personal computers that I don’t care about the benefits brought by mobile chips. It is better to sell them and realize them to make the company’s financial report look better.
Guan Jianying returned to China with XScale technical data, patent authorization and 15 engineers, feeling anxious and excited.
In the days of Shen Hai, Lin Benjian made faster progress than Guan Jianying, not only because of his talent, but also because he bought a complete set of photolithography machine technology from Nikon.
The lithography machine based on the current most advanced 150nm process is two generations behind the 220nm process lithography machine.
Xinxin Semiconductor's first prototype has been built, and the prototype is undergoing joint testing at Huahong Semiconductor.
For the current China, the Ministry of Science and Technology of China has organized the addition of the research and development of 193nm process lithography machines in this five-year 863 plan.
That is, it is one generation behind the most advanced 150nm process.
Huaguo did not put all its treasures on the new core lithography machine, even though Zhou Xin showed great goodwill.
Experts also need to have projects to work on, and not all experts can be poached by Xinxin lithography machines.
It's just that China's official 193nm lithography machine is still in the planning stage, and prototype production will not be completed until 2005, while samples of the 220nm process lithography machine of Xinxin Lithography Machine have already been released.
Mass production is planned to begin in the first half of next year.
While mass-producing, technology research and development will catch up with advanced processes.
The Ministry of Science and Technology and Shenhai City are two separate lines. The Ministry of Science and Technology has its own considerations, and Shenhai City also has its own considerations.
SMIC landed in Shenhai, and the new core lithography machine produced its first prototype in Shenhai. The advanced process is 150nm, and 220nm chips still have a broad market.
Not to mention that this is a domestic lithography machine, not to mention that the technology was purchased from abroad, and the engineers are mainly neon engineers. The problem is that this is a Chinese company, with a Chinese boss behind it, and it is still produced in China.
Shenhai attaches great importance to the new core lithography machine, whether it is tax incentives or honors at the municipal level, it can provide almost everything.
"Get ready. Go to Cambridge. I have already said hello to ARM. Xinxin Semiconductor will sign an in-depth cooperation agreement with ARM."
Guan Jianying saw the news that Zhou Xin had become ARM's major shareholder, accounting for nearly 50% of the shares.
He admired Zhou Xin for always doing these things lightly. Things worth showing off to others seemed not worth mentioning to him.
ARM does not yet have a status in future generations. It is only slightly famous in the field of handheld computers. It is different from occupying more than 95% of the smartphone chip market in the future, but it is still a well-known chip company.
And ARM is the only one with this kind of business form.
Zhou Xin made things vague, and Guan Jianying kept thinking about what kind of in-depth cooperation it would be.
(End of chapter)
