The world's leader in semiconductor equipment is a little-known company called Applied Materials Co., Ltd., headquartered in Santa Clara, California's Silicon Valley.
In 1992, AMAT reached the top and became the world's largest semiconductor equipment company, a glorious honor it has retained to this day.
The company is the largest provider of equipment, services and software to the semiconductor and related industries, providing manufacturing equipment, services and software to the semiconductor, display and related industries. Although its market value is only a mere US$60 billion and its sales revenue in 2017 was only US$14.5 billion, it has more than 18,400 employees and more than 11,900 patented technologies, which means it applies for an average of more than four patents every day. New patents, 90 branches in 17 countries and regions.
Moreover, AMAT is also the world's top nano-manufacturing technology company. Its products and services cover atomic layer deposition, physical vapor deposition, chemical vapor deposition, etching, rapid heat treatment, ion implantation, measurement and detection, cleaning and other production steps.
Although its own reputation is not great in the worldview of netizens in countries such as Daxia, its customers are well-known.
Korean Star Electronics, TSMC, UMC, Intel, Xiaxin Technology and other manufacturers are purchasing and using AMAT's equipment, materials and services in large quantities. As the focus of the semiconductor industry shifts to Asia, AMAT has become the largest supplier to TSMC, the world's largest wafer foundry, for many years.
Advanced semiconductor manufacturing equipment, nano-manufacturing technology solutions and subsequent software upgrades, its products are mainly used in new energy batteries, LED displays, integrated circuits, solar panels, and tailor-made production improvement technology, software systems and after-sales services suitable for customers .
Moreover, AMAT and Daxia have quite a connection.
It is the first foreign-funded semiconductor equipment supplier and leading company in materials engineering solutions to enter Daxia. It has not only donated money to universities and institutions, but also "provided valuable high-end jobs."
The semiconductor industry chain is divided into upstream chip design, such as the chip design solutions of Xia Wei's HiSilicon Kirin, Qualcomm Snapdragon chips, and Intel Core. Then there are the main businesses of companies such as Xiaxin and TSMC, which are midstream chip manufacturing and downstream chip packaging.
Investment in midstream chip manufacturing equipment accounts for about 70-80% of the investment in semiconductor production lines. It is the basis for completing the wafer manufacturing and packaging testing links, and serves as a link between the past and the future.
As mentioned earlier, the semiconductor industry is characterized by a high degree of monopoly, and this is even more true for the detailed classification of semiconductor equipment.
The technical threshold is high and the customer stickiness is strong. According to SEMI statistics, the sales of the top 10 global semiconductor equipment companies account for nearly 80%. Some core equipment such as photolithography machines and etching equipment account for more than 90% of the market share of the top 3 companies. They are used by AMAT, ASML, etc. Corporate monopoly.
The art industry, the entertainment service industry, and the food industry are all flourishing and a hundred schools of thought are contending, and the elimination rate is very high. Sometimes, if the wind changes, the industry leader one day will be forced to go bankrupt the next day. Therefore, their monopoly is the purpose, not the ability.
But the monopoly in the semiconductor industry is a reflection of technical strength. I can do 5nm, but you can't. Then all high-end orders must be given to manufacturers that have mastered 5nm foundry technology.
Take a 10 billion yuan wafer factory invested by Xiaxin Technology three years ago as an example. 70% of the investment in the wafer factory was spent on purchasing equipment. Among wafer manufacturing equipment, photolithography machines , etching machines and thin film deposition equipment are core equipment, accounting for approximately 30%, 25% and 25% of the wafer manufacturing process respectively.
But even such a powerful company has been scratching its head in the past two years: "Xiaxin is expanding rapidly, but why don't the orders we place increase? Although we cannot give you the latest technology due to certain conditions, but you I used to beg my grandpa to tell my grandma to buy second- and third-tier products, but now why don’t I buy any second- and third-tier products?”
Fortunately, Xia Xin is a listed company, so some orders can be hidden for a while, but not forever.
After the first and second quarter financial reports came out this year, AMAT's management became acutely aware that Xia Xin had placed a lot of orders with a company called Jiuzhou Technology.
Deposition equipment, etching, cleaning, planarization equipment, ion implantation equipment, process control equipment and other equipment are among them.
They made more progress, and through more secretive means, they found a place that made them feel even stranger.
The equipment provided by Jiuzhou Technology is purchased from their AMAT second- and third-tier products through some foreign companies, and then sold to Xiaxin Technology.
This is really weird and doesn't even make sense.
Because the equipment obtained by Jiuzhou Technology is not restricted equipment, Xiaxin Technology can place the order directly by itself, saving time, effort and money.
Even the chief engineer of AMAT said at the meeting: "Even if we rely on these second-tier equipment, even if we adjust the most powerful performance of these equipment, Xiaxin Technology can only have process foundry capabilities above 10nm."
So this is strange.
Where did Xia Xin Technology’s 7nm foundry process technology and equipment come from?
The lithography machine is provided by Pudong Microelectronics, and foreign companies like them do not know the specific situation. But in Xia Xin’s 7nm process, where did this level of high-precision equipment, such as planarization equipment, ion implantation equipment, and process control equipment, come from?
Xia Xin Technology's new factory building, researchers sent by Jiuzhou Technology are explaining the technology and related equipment.
"You also know that deposition equipment uses physical and chemical processes that occur in the gas phase to form functional or decorative metal, non-metal or compound coatings on the surface of workpieces. Ten years ago, only one layer of atoms could be deposited at a time. It took three years The former AMAT company used new technology and could only deposit three layers. However, after our modification, the number of layers that this equipment can now deposit has exceeded the originally designed number of layers.
There is also an ion implanter. We also use the VIISTA series of products produced by AMAT, but the process used is more high-precision and low-energy. High-concentration dopants are quickly injected into the entire wafer surface, and the product injection system is The technology is deployed on the universal VIISTA platform. This versatility helps shorten the time to first silicon crystal and improves application production efficiency.
In terms of operation, except for the technical difficulties we explained before, everything else can be corrected at any time by the intelligent assistance system. Of course, I recommend you to wear SR1 glasses for work, its reality augmentation technology and our company's production equipment and The process flows are all matched, allowing users to more intuitively see which process or data setting is most likely to have errors after system derivation. "
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