If you cheat, money will follow

After discussion, which may not actually be a discussion, Mr. Ren said:

"Our company is a communications technology company, not a human trafficking company..."

"Yu Chengdong is really annoying because of his thick skin, but he is brave, hard-working and determined. He is an independent person and has the right to decide his own development direction. None of us here have the right to force him."

"So, Lao Xu, you are the chairman now. Call Yu Chengdong back from Europe, have a good talk with him, do some ideological work on him, and let him go voluntarily."

Lao Xu: "..."

Mr. Ren continued: "You have to tell him, isn't it better to go to Leda Automobile to be the top leader than to stay here and be the head of a department?"

"If I scold him every day, he will definitely be unhappy. After he goes to Leda Automobile, he can scold others every day."

"Leda's investment bank has a lot of money. It is very easy to enter the automobile manufacturing industry. It is also a major shareholder of well-known companies such as Porsche, Schaeffler, and Continental."

"You can also tell him that Juchang will always be his home, and he is welcome to come back for visits, inspections and exchanges..."

Lao Xu said: "Mr. Ren, I will not be the chairman next month."

Mr. Ren said: "Just in time, this is the last thing you have to do during your term. Get this thing done. Your term is perfect. You can't leave it to the next one. Do you think this is true? Chairman , the most important thing is to be responsible.”

Lao Xu: "..."

"Hehe..." Laughter rang out in the conference room.

Mr. Ren continued: "Today, Mr. Chang told me another thing, which shocked me."

"He said that he firmly believes that our company's terminal business can climb from low-end to high-end, lead the industry, and become popular around the world. This is also the reason for his investment..."

"However, by that time, our company may face a situation of being locked..."

"What is a lock-down? It means being technically blocked, being restricted in the supply of equipment and materials, being prohibited and halted in terms of cooperation, and even using the power of a country... These are his exact words."

Dissent immediately echoed in the conference room.

"Mr. Ren, isn't this a bit too alarmist?"

"I think so too. Now is the era of globalization, and openness and cooperation are the mainstream. This statement is a bit exaggerated, and it is possible to create obstacles."

"I don't really believe it either. Semiconductors are the industry that needs globalization the most. No country can cover all industries. Doing this will do great harm to itself."

Mr. Ren said: "Without strategic thinking, there will be no tactical victory. I think, if we really develop to that point, what is the probability of this situation and situation happening? I think it is very likely to happen to us. , Nortel’s experience is vivid and serves as a lesson for others.”

"So we must broaden our thinking, do things thoroughly, prepare for rainy days, be prepared for danger in times of peace, always put struggle first, maintain a fighting spirit, a fighting state, and be ready for battle..."

"I think Mr. Chang has a very strategic mind. He compared us to a sharp knife in the national science and technology strategy, which penetrates deeply into the strategic hinterland of North America and makes it sleepless... By that time, North America's reactions and actions are bound to be very intense... …”

"For thousands of years, countless examples have proven that there is no warmth and no rules between countries. Whoever has the biggest fist has the final say. Fairness and justice only appear within the protection of strength."

"We have considered this aspect before, but we have not considered it enough. The backup plan is not comprehensive enough. We still need to think bigger and comprehensively."

"We have captured a few hills so far, but there are still hundreds of thousands of mountains behind us, and there are countless hills that we need to attack. So we must prepare for war and prepare for famine, and prepare a third front."

"The fighting style of this front is different from the other two fronts. It takes a long time, costs a lot, and requires a lot of effort. We have to come up with a feasible method."

"..."

In the previous life, the calamity that befell the Chrysanthemum Factory caused many Chinese people to be filled with indignation and lash out, but it only scratched the surface and there was nothing they could do about it.

Even though North America's behavior is reversing the course of history and going against the trend of the times.

Many people simply believe that this kind of disaster is just a result of advanced lithography machines being controlled by others. It seems that as long as the lithography machines are conquered, the development path of the semiconductor industry will be open and smooth.

In fact, this is not the case. The reality is more cruel than imagined.

Chrysanthemum factories or domestic terminal manufacturers are facing not only equipment, but also tools and materials.

Let’s look at the equipment first.

The photolithography machine is the representative of equipment, but it is not only the photolithography machine, but also a series of equipment such as etching, ion implantation, chemical polishing, front-end monitoring, and coating measurement.

Inside a state-of-the-art EUV lithography machine, there are more than 10 parts, 4 screws, more than 3000 lines, and 2 kilometers of hoses... It weighs 180 tons and requires 40 containers and 20 vehicles for delivery. Trucks and 3 cargo planes for transportation.

Once the equipment is obtained, it is not like a TV, refrigerator, etc. that can be plugged and played.

It also requires staff sent by the equipment manufacturer to spend more than a year debugging and assembling.

After debugging and assembly are completed, the equipment manufacturer's employees are required to perform maintenance and debugging every time it runs for a period of time.

A customer of ASML once sent its best employees to ASML to learn how to replace parts. ASML did not hide any secrets and taught them carefully.

Two months later, the employee learned the skill of replacing one part, and there were 2 parts in the lithography machine...

Therefore, equipment installation, maintenance, debugging, repair, and replacement are completely the skills of equipment manufacturers, and they are not afraid of you learning.

Without basic theoretical support and full participation from beginning to end, you cannot learn, and you will never finish learning.

Therefore, equipment manufacturers firmly control the foundry through equipment installation, maintenance, debugging, repair, and replacement, and have a strong voice. Without their technical support, the foundry cannot produce a single chip.

Among equipment manufacturers, the first, second, and third largest manufacturers in the world are Applied Materials AMAT, Lam LAM, and Kelei KLA. These three are all North American companies;

The fourth place is Tokyo Electronics TE, and the fifth place is the well-known ASML. These two companies are supported by North American technology.

After Kikuchang was restricted, Tokyo Electronics made a statement: We will not do business with customers who are prohibited from doing business with Applied Materials and Fanlin.

The strong control and consistent pace are evident.

Let’s look at the tools again. Tools refer to EDA, chip design software, covering the entire process of chip design, simulation, verification and other technologies.

It is equivalent to photoshop for picture design and CAD for architectural design, but its importance cannot be compared.

Because without EDA software, the contemporary semiconductor industry and even the electronics industry will face a situation where nothing can be done.

This is specifically reflected in three aspects.

First, EDA software changes chip design from a simple physical labor of drawing to a mental labor of sitting at the computer and typing code.

Through EDA software, chip designers can draw a giant city—billions of transistors—in a chip the size of a fingernail.

Second, the EDA software itself has thousands of mature IP design solutions that are system-matched and can be directly called. This eliminates the need for designers to re-design, which greatly saves time, cost and energy.

Third, there is a more important function in EDA software, which is simulation.

After the chip design is completed, simulations are used to check for leaks and fill them, instead of using hundreds of millions of dollars of equipment and spending millions of dollars for tape-out, which saves costs.

The cost of a tapeout is millions of dollars, which few companies can afford.

A university professor once made a statistical estimate that the cost of designing a system chip using EDA software is US$7000 million, while the cost of designing a system chip without EDA software is US$77 billion, a 200-fold difference.

This is why EDA software is widely called the "mother of chips".

Interestingly, the EDA software market is only tens of billions of dollars in size, but it is enough to determine and influence the semiconductor market of hundreds of billions of dollars and the electronics industry of trillions of dollars.

Unfortunately, in such an important field, domestic companies have almost no sense of presence.

The most powerful domestic EDA software is currently not established, and its market size will only be about 1% ten years after its establishment.

The three IP companies in North America, synopsys, Cadence, and mentor Graphics, occupy more than 80% of the global market share.

If North America gives the order, we may face not only an equipment crisis, but also a tool crisis.