"New Core Technology has reached a comprehensive long-term licensing agreement with ARM, which allows New Core Technology to use all current and future IP of ARM during the term of the agreement.
This is an unprecedented agreement, and Xinxin Technology has jumped from a customer of ARM to a strategic partner."
In this era, no one knew the significance of this incident. For Zhou Xin's sake, the Silicon Valley media left a corner of their magazines for this news.
Portals such as Sina, NetEase, and Sohu have reported on this matter far more than Silicon Valley magazines.
The agreement was signed with Xinxin Technology as the main body. Xinxin Semiconductor is a secondary company of Xinxin Technology that focuses on chip design.
Long-term licensing agreement, how long is it? The time was twenty years, which was already the longest period of time within the scope of patent law in England.
Zhou Xin plans to extend this time for another ten years in 2010.
At the beginning of the Internet bubble, Zhou Xin acquired more than 40% of ARM's shares. Later, it became increasingly difficult to acquire ARM's shares.
Fortunately, through Warren Jensen, I acquired 7.6% of ARM's shares from an investment institution at a premium of nearly 100%.
So far, Zhou Xin’s ARM shares total more than 51%.
Holding more than 51% of ARM's shares also allows Zhou Xin to make a decisive decision on the licensing of ARM's technology architecture.
Guan Jianying took this authorization and returned to China with enthusiasm.
The value of the mobile Internet has not been reflected. Palm computers are only a very narrow business direction. If we use the analogy of future business types, they are equivalent to electronic paper books.
There are big manufacturers doing it and there is a fixed audience. New players are constantly entering this field, but the problem is the lack of imagination and development prospects.
Guan Jianying doesn't care much about this, because it is not difficult for Xinxin Semiconductor to survive on the chip design of handheld computers.
At least this area is more than enough to support a chip design company like Xinxin Semiconductor, and the long-term technology license signed with ARM allows them to steadily conduct research and development around the ARM architecture.
The only person who felt uneasy was Zhou Xin. Zhou Xin didn't have that much trust in the agreement on paper. Even though he is ARM's largest shareholder and has a veto power, ARM and Xinxin Technology have signed a technology licensing agreement that lasts for twenty years.
Even with so many safeguards, he still had a hunch that the agreement would be useless when the situation worsened in the future.
Technical agreements can be empty papers, technical authorizations can be terminated at any time, and signed contracts can stop supply on the grounds of safety. Only technical talents, technical data accumulation, manufacturing process reserves, etc. are the reliable foundation.
"How do you evaluate the long-term technology agreement signed by Xinxin Technology and ARM?"
"ARM is the largest technology provider in the field of mobile chips. It is mainly responsible for providing design solutions and helping chip design companies to carry out secondary designs based on ARM's technical solutions. Generally, cooperation agreements between ARM and chip designers are signed based on specific cores protocol.
For example, Samsung has signed a technical cooperation agreement with ARM around the ARM v6 architecture. ARM will specifically provide Samsung with software development tools, technical information and sales license certification for the v6 model.
Focusing on mobile chip architecture licensing, ARM has licensed technology with a large number of semiconductor companies, including Philips Semiconductors, Samsung, Texas Instruments and a series of well-known companies in the semiconductor field. As a new player in the semiconductor field, the only commendable thing about Xinxin Technology is that its founder is Zhou Xin, the richest man in Asia.
In addition to being the richest man in Asia, Zhou Xin is also a PhD candidate in the field of semiconductors. When Zhou Xin founded Xinxin Technology in Zhangjiang, almost everyone was skeptical about this matter.
They believed that Zhou Xin was just playing tricks to please the Chinese officials. Judging from this unprecedented long-term technology agreement with ARM, Zhou Xin’s interest in Xinxin Technology is not just a matter of playing cards.
This technology licensing agreement is somewhat similar to 'supermarket purchasing'. If other semiconductor companies purchase raw materials from ARM, they will perform secondary processing on the raw materials and process them into corresponding dishes.
Then the agreement signed by ARM and Xinxin Technology is a supermarket sale. You can choose whatever raw materials you like. In the future, when Xinxin Technology's chip design capabilities gradually improve, this agreement will bring huge benefits.
China will also have a company that can truly compete with other semiconductor giants in the field of chip design.
Regarding Zhou Xin's establishment of Xinxin Technology in China, I even saw someone on Suspicion saying that Zhou Xin was trying to defraud financial support. I just want to say that it's not the case? Not to mention Zhou Xin's net worth of hundreds of billions of dollars, even if he only had a net worth of one billion dollars, he would not go back to China to defraud financial subsidies.
In addition, I think Zhou Xin has high hopes for Xinxin Technology. Because I found that among his companies, Zhou Xin would only name the companies he valued enough after himself. "
There is a question on Suspicion about Xinxin Technology's obtaining ARM authorization. There are very few answers to this question.
Mainly because it is too professional. At present, most Chinese people do not know what ARM is, let alone what IP licensing is.
It’s okay if the outside world doesn’t understand. There are always people in the Chinese government who understand.
Husuo didn't know that Zhou Xin controlled ARM, but Huaguo officials received the news.
From Hua's perspective, Zhou Xin has initially proved his ability and willingness.
They are just waiting for the mobile phone Zhou Xin mentioned to come out. If the matrix mobile phone can bring the entire industry chain together and form a snowball effect, then China will do everything possible to help Zhou Xin clear up internal resistance.
From Shen Hai's perspective, the current progress is enough to satisfy them.
Under the supervision of superiors, Hua Hong Semiconductor regarded the prototype testing of new core lithography machines as the top priority during this period.
The technology of Xinxin lithography machine comes from Nikon, and almost all accessories come from abroad. Currently, it is only a technology integrator and lacks original technology.
Even so, it is already a rare breakthrough for China in the chip field.
One is because other Chinese companies will not invest money in this field. They will lose money if they don't make money, and there is no hope.
The only thing that is possible is the official organization to tackle the problem. The official plan determines that technology will not be purchased from abroad. Pure self-research will take too long. By the time you build the prototype of the lithography machine, you will already be several generations behind foreign countries. .
After the prototype is made, it still needs to be tested. The photolithography machine enters the production process of the chip manufacturer, which has extremely high requirements on the yield rate.
Because chip foundry is an industry that requires very high precision control. Military chips are not cost-sensitive. Self-development costs are high and the yield rate is low. It doesn’t matter.
This is not the case with consumer chips. The yield rate is related to the lifeline of chip foundry companies. A low yield rate means your costs are high. The cost of building a factory is already high enough. If the cost is still high in the chip production process, how can you make a profit?
Relying entirely on self-research - backward technology - manufacturers with backward technology are unwilling to use it - unable to enter the production environment - low yield rate, it can be said to be a vicious cycle.
After groping for a long time, China realized that the semiconductor field must rely on the power of marketization, and relying on academic research and development is inconsistent with objective laws.
If ASML hadn't sold the most advanced process lithography machines to China in the future, China's lithography machines would most likely have continued to lag behind.
“We mainly purchased Nikon NSR-S201A photolithography machine technology.
This is the world's first excimer laser stepper model exceeding 250 nanometers. The 193nm process ArF system targets the 130nm region.
We have optimized it and adopted a lens-based scanning stepper to meet the dual needs of reducing feature size and expanding exposure area of semiconductor chips.
During the testing process, the manufacturing process of the new core lithography machine was close to the limit of the technology, but there is still a lot of room for improvement in the chip yield. Lin Benjian said when reporting to Shen Hai.
The Nikon technology purchased by Xinxin Lithography Machine is a second-generation technology that was launched on the market in 1995 and then optimized.
It is also a photolithography machine, which does not mean that the technology is sold to you and you build it according to it. Even if you build it, it will be difficult to achieve the other party's effect.
A very simple example, with the same textbooks, the same tutoring materials, and the same teachers, some students can get 100 points, while some students can't even get 60 points.
Nikon's NSR-S201A sold more than 200 units worldwide in the first year of its launch. It has undergone long-term production verification and continuous optimization by Nikon engineers and chip manufacturers.
If Silicon Valley and Wall Street hadn't jointly chosen ASML, Nikon's lithography machines might not have fallen to a market share of less than 1%.
Xinxin's lithography machine can copy a sample in half a year, which far exceeds Zhou Xin's expectations.
After Zhou Xin got the news, he thought to himself, "I don't have a system, but Lin Benjian doesn't have a system, right?"
The leaders of Shenhai did not ask such low-level questions as why they did not buy the most advanced technology.
“When will we catch up to Nikon’s yield rate?”
"This depends on the progress of our cooperation with Hua Hong Semiconductor, and it can't just be laboratory manufacturing, we need to actually enter the production process." Lin Benjian said.
In Lin Benjian’s view, even if the new core lithography machine is sold to Hua Hong Semiconductor for free, the yield rate must be increased.
The full name of HP CD is half-pitch CD, which is a technical indicator specifically used to describe the lithography resolution in the field of lithography machines.
For example, for the 193i lithography machine, the HP CD limit is equal to 38 nm. The EUV NXE 3400B light source can reach the limit of 13nm.
node CD is completely different from HP CD. It is a concept of semiconductor devices. The technology node mentioned by online media is node CD.
Generally speaking node CD is approximately equal to 1/2 HP CD.
In actual manufacturing, it is impossible to use the HP CD limit value to manufacture, and it will be relaxed a lot.
What I mean by this is that even with the same photolithography machine, the light source will affect the process.
"Hua Hong Semiconductor will fully cooperate with the work of the new core lithography machine, and we will do everything possible to cooperate."
“In fact, Shenhai is conducting research on how to develop high-tech industries, including myself, who has done a lot of research on this topic.
The trends of thought are different at different stages. In 1980, I was sent abroad by an organization to study business management.
The trend at that time was that large enterprises must have sufficient internal scale and economies of scope. Only with such a framework can innovation be achieved and technological breakthroughs and development be achieved.
This was the view of Joseph Schumpeter, including Alfred's later work "Scale and Scope" which gave further credence to this notion.
In other words, industrial competitiveness almost entirely relies on internal training capabilities. At that time, foreign semiconductor companies also adopted a vertical manufacturing method.
From chip design to chip manufacturing to packaging and testing, everything is handled by one company.
The reason why there are projects like 907, 908, and 909 are all based on this kind of thinking.
Huahong Semiconductor is a product of the 909 Project. After Comrade Mao Zedong investigated Samsung at the end of 1995, he believed that we also need to have our own large enterprise. Later, he even said that China's semiconductor industry should be promoted by selling iron.
Many of our leaders are very concerned about the development of China's semiconductor industry, and Project 909 is also being planned at the national level.
Because we saw Samsung’s success, we wanted to build Huahong into a Samsung model.
But today, Silicon Valley's decentralized model seems to be not bad at all, and even shows greater vitality than large companies.
When I went to Yenching to take classes not long ago, the economics professor at Yenching University who was in charge of the lecture put forward a different point of view, that is, it is unhealthy to overemphasize internal creation and management of economic capabilities.
It ignores the subtleties and historical nature of industrial evolution. Schumpeter's view is a naive solution to the atomized competition model of neoclassical theory and policy. The vertically integrated manufacturing model will instead cause new losses and risk oversimplifying the problem itself.
The relative merits of a company depend on whether the innovation is systematic or autonomous. When innovation is systemic, an enterprise-like structure will be more conducive to rapid technological progress. This is because systemic innovation requires simultaneous changes in many different stages of production, and common ownership of complementary stages reduces the transaction costs of persuasion and coordination.
In contrast, there is reason to believe that networks including typically extreme “markets” will be more advantageous when innovation is autonomous.
When technological changes in one production stage can proceed without the need for corresponding changes in other parts of the system. In this case, the firm's advantages in persuasion and coordination are offset by the ability to innovate the specialized economies and networks of a constellation of small businesses.
The systematic or autonomous nature of innovation is neither entirely exogenous nor entirely driven by technology.
The structure of an organization helps shape the pattern of innovation, which in turn influences subsequent organizational structure. In short, organizational structure theory is also part of the theory of social system evolution.
Whether the model of large enterprises is better or the model of small and medium-sized enterprise groups is better, we don’t know which one is better.
What we pay attention to is to test the truth through practice, so Huaguo chose to explore the model of small and medium-sized enterprise groups in Zhangjiang.
Place your hopes on Huahong and Xinxin Technology, and hope that you can play a good role in synergy and drive a group of small and medium-sized enterprises in the semiconductor field to grow together. "
This chapter wants to explain why China chose to launch a major project at that time, and why scientific research-oriented lithography machines were not feasible.
The emergence of Zhou Xin gave China a new route to choose in technological innovation.
The number of words in this chapter is only 4k, but the information density is very high. It is more tiring than writing 6k words for me.
(End of chapter)
