"2002 can be said to be a good year for China's chip industry. Many new production lines were built. These lines have gradually caught up with the world's advanced level in terms of technical level and manufacturing process.
In addition, new production lines are no longer limited to areas with developed chip industries. In the past, areas with underdeveloped chip industries such as the northwest and northeast have also begun to put production lines into operation. The improvement of manufacturing technology level has changed from the introduction of first- and second-generation products to a dynamic and enterprise-independent behavior. my country's chip industry is entering the "acceleration" stage."
Xinxin Technology negotiated with financial institutions in the first quarter. Xinxin Investment will invest 20% of the funds, and other financial institutions will spend the remaining 80% to jointly build a new chip production line in China.
Because Zhou Xin is willing to write the investment rate of return into the contract, it can guarantee an annual return of 7% of their funds, guaranteed by Zhou Xin himself. Although the total investment will be 10 billion U.S. dollars, the money will be invested in batches and does not need to be invested all at once. in place.
With Zhou Xin himself using his Riot Games shares as a guarantee, the risk was reduced to a very low level.
Under this premise, not only Amerikan's financial institutions intervened, but Temasek sovereign fund and Neon's venture capital institutions also joined in.
A total of 14 financial institutions participated in Xinxin Technology’s fundraising. The original investment amount of US$5 billion has doubled.
It would be easier to negotiate the price of US$10 billion back home.
In China, news that Xinxin Technology invested US$10 billion to build a production line instantly caused an uproar.
Not to mention it’s only 2002, even in 2022, US$10 billion is not a small number. Even if it is invested in batches, the first batch is still US$2 billion, not to mention that this is a technology-based enterprise.
Huaguo also knows what kind of companies are good companies to introduce, such as chip manufacturing, which can drive the development of the entire industry, are first-class good companies.
In addition, Zhou Xin stands behind Xinxin Technology. If others say 10 billion US dollars, you may still doubt it. Zhou Xin said that there is a high probability that it will be more than 10 billion US dollars, but the current plan is 10 billion US dollars. If the operation is good, follow-up investment will only A steady stream.
After the $10 billion plan was announced, as Zhou Xin's domestic representative, Zhou Xin's former doctoral supervisor, and CEO of Xinxin Technology, Hu Zhengming was approached by various people, which was even more exaggerated than Director Feng's big names.
Shenhai City knows that Xinxin Technology’s investments are likely to be placed in Shenhai, at least most of them will be landed in Shenhai, but which district is also a problem. They can’t all be placed in Zhangjiang, right?
There is a set of data that can prove how exaggerated the US$10 billion in foreign investment was in 2002. The MH District absorbed a total of US$1.015 billion in 2001, which is still an increase of 2.9 times. Of the US$1.015 billion, it was actually received in 2001. Only $350 million.
This is a district in Shenhai, not a district in a second- or third-tier city.
This is still the case in Minhang, let alone other parts of the country.
Everyone knows that the headquarters of Xinxin Technology's Huaguo District is located in Shenhai, but chip manufacturing is different. There can be many factories distributed across the country.
At this time, it's everyone's turn to show off their talents.
In the end, Hu Zhengming could only ask Shenhai City to help stop these people.
"Welcome everyone, this is the first product launch conference held by Xinxin Technology in Silicon Valley. I hope it can leave a deep impression on everyone."
In mid-2002, on the eve of Matrix's developer conference in Silicon Valley, Hu Zhengming hosted the first Xinxin Technology press conference in Silicon Valley.
The reputations of Hu Zhengming and Zhou Xin were enough to make this press conference huge. This was a press conference for the chip industry, so no consumers were present, and most of the attendees were industry practitioners.
There were reporters from Silicon Valley technology media, executives from other chip companies, executives from Internet companies, and of course executives from consumer electronics companies, as well as a few consumer representatives who came to the scene.
Hu Zhengming was a little uneasy. He had been a professor and started a company, but this was his first time to hold a press conference, because his previous entrepreneurial venture, Sile Semiconductor, was mainly focused on chip design software for enterprises. This kind of enterprise-oriented product has nothing to do with it. Opportunities for press conferences.
"A new generation of Bluetooth technology"
Several big words lit up behind Hu Zhengming, ".Xinxin Technology independently developed it based on Bluetooth 1.0."
Yes, in China, we rely on mobile phone integrated chips to make a difference, while abroad, we rely on Bluetooth chips.
Bluetooth technology developed slowly after being proposed by Ericsson in 1994, but it has a broad market.
By 2006, global Bluetooth chip shipments reached 690 million pieces. Such large shipments caused the price of a single chip to drop below $2 at the time.
In the timeline changed by Zhou Xin, the era of smartphones has arrived early, and the global demand for Bluetooth chips will only become stronger.
With the help of technological leadership and technical advantages, we can control the standards of the Bluetooth Alliance and first-class companies set the standards. The Bluetooth chip developed by Xinxin Technology is at least about seven years ahead of the current Bluetooth standard in terms of technical standards alone.
Firmly grasping the standards means enjoying technological dividends in advance. If too many Bluetooth chips are shipped, the price of a single chip will be less than 2 US dollars. Now that it is launched, the technology is monopolized by Xinxin Technology, and the price is at least 20 US dollars.
Moreover, the chip technology required for Bluetooth chips is not high-end, but it is not low-end either.
Last year, Ericsson launched its first mobile phone with built-in Bluetooth function, T39mc. However, many problems of early Bluetooth technology have not been solved, such as incompatibility between products, weak anti-interference ability, limited transmission speed, long connection time, etc.
The biggest problem is high power consumption. It was not until the Bluetooth 4.0 standard launched in 2010 that low-power Bluetooth was realized.
The new generation of Bluetooth technology to be launched by Xinxin Technology is specially built for smartphones, and its main focus is low power consumption.
The battery life is already short. If we continue to follow the existing Bluetooth standards, the battery life will only be even shorter.
After Hu Zhengming introduced Bluetooth 4.0, the IBM representatives in the audience looked at each other and smiled bitterly: "It seems that we are giving up on the Bluetooth field."
Why they say this is because the earliest Bluetooth Standard Alliance was jointly founded by Sony Ericsson, IBM, Intel, Nokia and Toshiba.
"If you give up, just give up. Haven't we given up on too few areas since the rise of personal computers? The Bluetooth market is nothing compared to personal computers."
When Hu Zhengming announced the parameters of the chip named TWT2002N, colleagues present in the Bluetooth business felt lucky.
Because this Bluetooth chip uses a 0.18 micron process, the higher the process, the lower the power consumption, which means that TWT's advantage in power consumption will be more obvious.
The most intuitive improvement in power consumption due to process advancement comes from the improvement in dynamic power of capacitor charging and discharging.
But such a high-end manufacturing process determines that its price will not be that cheap.
This means they still have room to survive.
In fact, Xinxin Technology can design chips with lower process, such as 130nm process.
But why the 180nm process was chosen is because currently China's chip manufacturing industry can only produce 180nm chips.
In the first half of the year, while taking over Huahong's 8-inch production line, Xinxin Technology also acquired a chip manufacturing plant from Motorola in Jinmen, China.
There are three production lines in total, and currently they can only achieve the 180nm process.
Hu Zhengming continued: “In order to allow global consumers to enjoy the advantages brought by the advancement of Bluetooth technology as soon as possible, we have joined forces with Sony Ericsson and Apple to launch products equipped with TWT2002N.
Next, Mr. Katsumi Ihara, President of Sony Ericsson, will introduce it to everyone. "
The executives of the Bluetooth Alliance member companies in the audience were thinking, didn't we all agree to develop the Bluetooth Alliance together? Why did Sony Ericsson become the first traitor and didn't notify us?
Because companies like the Bluetooth Alliance basically have consumer electronics businesses, Sony Ericsson can cooperate with Xinxin Technology, but can't Toshiba and Nokia do the same?
And because of the Bluetooth technology launched by New Core Technology, it is clear at a glance that their alliance has only two options, either to bring New Core Technology in and give them actual power to let New Core Technology license their technology to other companies, or Just watching New Core Technology start a new business.
"Sony Ericsson and Xinxin Technology have joined forces to create an Internet mobile phone T610 that focuses on music."
Sony Ericsson is a joint venture established by Sony and Ericsson after merging their mobile phone businesses. At the beginning of the merger, sales were not ideal, and were even lower than the sales of Sony and Ericsson's phone businesses respectively.
It is precisely based on this background that Sony Ericsson is willing to cooperate with Xinxin.
As for the complaints of other companies in the Bluetooth Alliance, Sony Ericsson will not care about it. If it were you, you would keep it confidential.
Not to mention that Sony Ericsson wants to make a comeback with this new Bluetooth technology.
“In addition to being equipped with the above-mentioned applications, T610 is also pre-loaded with playnow, which supports the use of playnow to directly download songs from Sony Music artists.
The Sony Bluetooth headphones launched together with the T610 have a battery life of up to 6 hours and can enjoy lossless sound quality. "
Katsumi Ihara boasted again about how good the sound quality of their phone is. It is currently the best phone with the best sound quality among Bluetooth-enabled phones.
Consumers have no perception, and people in the industry don't know it. Apart from you, how many mobile phones are equipped with Bluetooth function?
Mobile phone support for Bluetooth did not begin to explode on a large scale until the Bluetooth 1.2 standard was released in 2003.
Because the Bluetooth standard has been stuck at version 1.0 before, the maximum transmission rate is only 700kb, which is generally 100kb per second.
This transmission rate seems laborious to support real-time calls.
After Bluetooth 1.2, the maximum transmission rate reaches 1mb per second. The Bluetooth chip launched by Xinxin Technology this time also supports Xinxin Technology’s standard Bluetooth transmission, with a rate of 24mb per second.
This is the transmission speed of the Bluetooth 3.0 standard. It is no exaggeration to describe it as exchanging a shotgun for a cannon.
"Our price is $599, and Sony's Bluetooth headset is $199."
The mobile phone launched by Sony Ericsson this time is quite satisfactory, but fortunately it looks good and has all the functions it should have.
From Zhou Xin's perspective, there will be a large number of female users who are willing to pay for Sony Ericsson's design language. As for value for money, it's really low.
The Bluetooth chip is sold to Sony. The price of Sony headphones and Sony mobile phones combined is more than 30 US dollars.
Compared with the cost, it is a huge profit. If you do not count equipment depreciation, patent licensing, external equipment service fees, etc., and only count labor costs and resource costs, the manufacturing cost of a single chip is less than 2 US dollars.
Even counting everything, the cost won't be more than $10.
Fortunately, the patent is in the hands of Xinxin Semiconductor. Xinxin Manufacturing, a subsidiary of Xinxin Technology that focuses on chip manufacturing, has a much more complicated stake.
Xinxin Manufacturing has many subsidiaries. As a third-level subsidiary of Xinxin Technology, the one jointly established with Huahong is called Xinxin (Huahong) Manufacturing, and the one that acquired Motorola is called Xinxin (Tinmen) Manufacturing.
The main source of funds for Xinxin (Tinmen) is Amerikan’s financial institutions, including Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan Chase.
These companies are only responsible for producing Bluetooth chips. They sell the chips to Xinxin Technology, which then sells them to Apple and Sony Ericsson.
However, the rate of return promised to overseas investment institutions is only 7%. According to the profits of Bluetooth chips, it only needs to leak a little profit to Xinxin Manufacturing.
Therefore, Zhou Xin never worried that the task could not be completed. He even felt that domestic investment institutions should also invest in it.
It is a pity that China's financial institutions have been slow to act in this regard.
If Sony Ericsson's products are aimed at female users, they are exquisite, small and cute, and have pink Bluetooth headsets. They focus on the segment of female users who are not short of money.
So the products launched by Apple focus on a sense of technology and the future.
It still continues the design language of Apple's iPod, but compared with the previous generation of iPod, this generation of iPod is a little longer.
After the new generation of iPod was rotated and displayed on the screen behind Jobs, Jobs said: "Yes, as you can see, the entire iPod Zero has no interface, only buttons."
The consumer representatives in the audience were exclaiming that before, Sony Ericsson's mobile phones only made them feel pretty good, so Apple's iPod Zero can be said to make them feel amazing.
Not only were they surprised, but also other well-informed executives in the electronics industry.
Jobs said: “iPod Zero supports Xinxin Technology’s Bluetooth standard, supports Bluetooth transmission, and supports the latest wireless charging technology.
There is no interface, so how do we download songs? You still use Bluetooth connection to download. After you purchase iPod Zero, we will give away Bluetooth headsets and external accessories.
After you plug the external accessories into the USB interface of your computer, you can use the computer to pair with iPod Zero. The average transfer speed of 10mb is not much worse than USB2.0 in actual experience.
Much faster than USB1.0 and USB1.1. "
In the early days, the transmission speed of USB1.0 was only 0.18mb/s, and 1.0 was only 1.5mb/s. The transmission speed of USB2.0 released in 2000 was increased to 60mb/s.
The idea of iPod Zero was jointly conceived by Zhou Xin and Steve Jobs. At first, after Steve Jobs learned about the Bluetooth technology proposed by Xinxin Technology, he said that the new generation of iPod should remove the headphone jack, so that users can only connect to Bluetooth. Isn’t it good? ?
Then Zhou Xin said: "Wouldn't it be better to just remove all the interfaces and use wireless charging and Bluetooth transmission to download files?"
(End of chapter)
