1991 Starting from the core

Huajing Chairman Wan Keliang and Huajing Semiconductor Research Institute Director Zhou Boguang followed the leaders and followed suit. Quite like the squad leader and study committee member who followed the class teacher during the spring outing.

As for the other students, they are naturally Deyuan and Zhongxin from the Yuanxin Department, as well as the CEOs of many semiconductor companies such as China Microelectronics, Panda Electronics, Acercore, Shougang NEC, Belling, and Guowei.

A group of people entered the Semiconductor Research Institute in a mighty manner, and first visited the achievement display wall in the exhibition hall - Su Yuanshan saw that the pager chip that he and others had brought over was also listed.

——The first domestic Chinese pager chip with independent property rights was born here.

Su Yuanshan remembered the time when he came here by train. At that time, he also encountered a director named Jia Jibing who made things difficult for him.

Well, fortunately, I "know" Zhou Boguang and know that Zhou Boguang will definitely help me.

Thinking of this, he glanced at Zhou Boguang.

As if they were connected, Zhou Boguang, who had dyed his head full of black hair today, happened to turn back to look at him. Their eyes met and they both smiled knowingly.

After visiting two major semiconductor companies, the symposium was held on time at the Wuxi Guest House at one o'clock in the afternoon.

…

After performing a televised speech for the news footage, the leader picked up the teacup, unscrewed the lid, poured the tea into the lid and took a sip. Then he waved to the reporters and said cheerfully: "Comrade reporters, you can take a break. You won't understand what we're going to talk about anyway, and we can't broadcast it."

The group of people were originally listening with a somewhat restrained expression, but when they heard this, they couldn't help laughing, and they all laughed.

Indeed, reporters wouldn’t understand it anyway.

After the reporter left, the leader looked around with bright eyes.

On his left hand sits Zhang Rujin of Deyuan, and on his right sits Wan Keliang. Deyuan and Huajing, the two major wafer fabs, represent the highest productivity in the semiconductor field in China.

As for Su Yuanshan, he sat next to the new dynasty - he didn't care about this time anyway.

"Okay, all the laymen have left, let's talk about our business - everyone sit closer." The leader smiled and turned to ask the secretary sitting behind him for a report.

As the chairs moved, everyone got closer and formed a circle.

"I have a report here, which is about the development of the domestic semiconductor industry in the past ten years. I believe you have all seen it, right?"

"The report states that as of now, our domestic self-production rate of semiconductor components has increased from less than 3% to 20%. The global share has increased from less than 1% to 8%. .”

"But what is the specific situation? How much share do we have of high-end, mid-range and low-end? How high can we push this market in the future... Only you can understand this. Ah, I am just an outsider."

The leader laughed as he spoke and turned to look at Zhang Rujin: "Dr. Zhang, please tell me."

"OK."

Zhang Rujin took a breath, straightened up, and after thinking for a while, he replied: "Because our manufacturing process is relatively fast, most of the high-end chips in China are currently manufactured in Deyuan. But overall, in high-end chips On the other hand, our country’s market share and voice in high-end civilian chips is not enough.”

"Take the Tamron series processors as an example. Although the Tamron series processors are at the same level as Intel's Pentium series processors, they are limited by the fact that the market cannot open up, so that the production volume has been delayed."

"However, the YX architecture series processors are an exception. They have now occupied the main architecture of SOCs. Our YX series SOCs are also one of the most high-end processors at present."

"But high-end chips are not just central processing units, but also DSP digital chips, GPU graphics processors and other types of specialized chips. In these markets, we are not competitive or even missing."

"If we divide it according to process and identify chips using 0.5 micron or above process as high-end chips, then our market share in the global market will be less than 5%."

…

Next, the leader called on the names of several more people, listened to the status and analysis of their respective companies, and then made a summary.

When Su Yuanshan was asked, he did not let Su Yuanshan play freely like others. He just asked Su Yuanshan about the current status of Yuanxin products, such as Tamron CPU, YX architecture SOC, etc. Su Yuanshan was not allowed to go on in depth.

The symposium lasted for two and a half hours. At 3:30 in the afternoon, the leaders ended the meeting on time and boarded a minibus to go to Shanghai.

Su Yuanshan was specially ordered to go to Shanghai with him.

At seven o'clock in the evening, Su Yuanshan received a notice that his leader was waiting for him at the guest house where he was staying.

…

"Good leadership."

After entering, Su Yuanshan was not surprised at all that the leaders of Shanghai Municipality were also present - the sixty-year-old man even winked at him naughtily.

"Sit wherever you want, don't be constrained." The leader cheerfully pointed to the seat next to him and turned to face him: "I heard that you are now an associate professor?"

"Yes." Su Yuanshan also laughed: "I have been an associate professor for a long time, and I have started to teach graduate students."

"What a genius..." The leader smiled and shook his head while pointing at Su Yuanshan: "But remember, don't be arrogant, be restrained, be steady, and be quiet... By the way, what is your area of ​​expertise?"

The Shanghai city leader on the side interjected: "It's applied physics, specifically graphene. Graphene was discovered by him."

"Oh, right!" The leader slapped his forehead and laughed loudly: "Graphene! I keep hearing about this thing recently. Please tell me whether this discovery is important or not."

Su Yuanshan smiled sheepishly: "Leader, the main thing is that it is a core semiconductor material direction. Whether it is important or not is secondary..."

The leaders of Shanghai Municipality happily interjected again: "I heard it's Nobel Prize-level."

"Okay, okay, then we hope to have a Nobel Prize winner."

Of course, the leader obviously did not come to hear about Su Yuanshan's achievements in graphene.

He quickly got to the point, looked at Su Yuanshan and asked, "I have read the report you handed over, but there are some things that I think it would be better to hear you say it face to face."

Su Yuanshan couldn't help but sit up straight, pursed his lips and nodded: "Please tell me, leader."

"Don't be so restrictive." The leader reminded again: "I agree with what you said. The development of the semiconductor industry cannot be blind and cannot just focus on satisfying the domestic market. But what about the specific plan? Everyone can shout slogans, but how to do it specifically? Which step to take, these are what we need to know most.”

//Note: The needs mentioned by the leaders are real needs. I once read the memories of a leader of a certain X office, saying that what the decision-makers most want to see is not to shout slogans and point out directions, but to give concrete and feasible plans. and suggestions.

"Yeah." Su Yuanshan nodded and spent a few seconds organizing his words before slowly saying: "If we follow the general logic, accelerating the consolidation and expansion of the local market while taking into account external expansion is the norm for an enterprise and even the industry. Facts Yuanxin has done the same thing in the past few years."

"But as several years of development, we realized that semiconductors are not just an industry that can develop with one company or several companies or the industry itself."

Both leaders listened extremely carefully.

"Leader, we cannot be fooled by the old and American market economy - Yuanxin can develop because it has seized the opportunity of history and the market. This kind of opportunity is already rare."

At this time, the big leader suddenly looked at Su Yuanshan and said: "Are the companies sitting at the conference today not worth the sum of one Yuanxin?"

Su Yuanshan's heartbeat accelerated slightly, but he still nodded frankly.

We are all open-minded people, so there is no need to play tricks. Yuanxin does not disclose its financial reports, but it actually pays taxes. Although it is not much, after analyzing the policies, it is natural to reveal the true situation of Yuanxin.

It can be said that it is not an exaggeration to say that today's Yuanxin has occupied half of the domestic market or even more.

The leader didn't say anything, but nodded, and then asked: "How much is your annual investment in scientific research?"

When Su Yuanshan heard the leader ask this question, Su Yuanshan's heartbeat instantly calmed down.

"It's not a lot. Last year it was 15 billion. This year's plan has not been finalized yet, but according to the budget of the R\u0026D center, it will probably rise to about 23 billion this year, because if we plan to get involved in electric vehicles, it will involve a series of technical investments. At the same time, this year’s DSP chips have also reached the most critical moment..."

Upon hearing these two numbers, the leader was visibly shocked.

Upon seeing this, the leaders of the Shanghai Stock Exchange immediately asked: "So much money? Is it all the profits?"

"No, and let me explain to the leader, this R\u0026D expense includes the process promotion of the wafer factory, including Deyuan's." Su Yuanshan said with a smile: "Our net profit last year was around 1.2 billion. "

“Then how do you maintain your expansion?”

"In the early stage, we relied on reducing our stake in EDA. At that time, we obtained more than one billion US dollars in cash, which laid the foundation for rapid development. Now we rely more on cash flow to maintain and rely on promoting market growth. amount to obtain cash flow funds.”

"Then you're not afraid of cash flow rupture?"

"Afraid, but not very afraid." Su Yuanshan smiled sheepishly: "We are all doing business and following the right path. If the cash flow really collapses, I will come to you to cry poverty, and you will definitely control me. .”

The leader laughed loudly, stretched out his finger and tapped Su Yuanshan: "Slippery head."

"Okay, let's not talk about this for now. Let's talk about the main topic. What I want is the plan and the steps." The leader stopped laughing and said slowly: "What do you mean, the country wants to actively intervene?"

Su Yuanshan nodded: "Yes, the state must support and promote self-research and production of core equipment and materials in the semiconductor industry chain."

Then he reported on the specific situation of the current semiconductor industry chain and made suggestions: to fill in the gaps in the domestic blank areas, to catch up in the domestically based fields, and to catch up in the domestic fields that have already caught up. Achieve transcendence.

…

"And the EUV Alliance was established last year, and it was led by the government departments in the west - leader, let me tell you something."

"Huh? You say."

"The EUV Alliance, which is the technology alliance for the next generation of lithography machine light sources, not only abandoned us, but also abandoned Niguo, and even local companies. Xinghai and Texas Instruments went to find the person in charge and questioned them. Why did the other party reject them?"

"The person in charge of the EUV Alliance said that because they were unreliable and suspected of leaking secrets - they said that the rise of Yuanxin was due to their help."

The leader frowned slightly when he heard this: "This is a bit too stingy."

"Yes, they just want to keep their technological lead over us. So... we can't sit still and wait for death."

Immediately afterwards, Su Yuanshan told the leader exactly what happened when Cui Taiyuan approached him about cooperation some time ago.

Including his analysis of Cui Taiyuan's intentions, as well as the direction and intention of the negotiations between the two parties.

"SK found us to cooperate, which allowed us to see an opportunity, that is, we can rely on the intersection of technology and equipment to form a regional center for the Sino-Korean semiconductor industry chain."

The leader nodded slightly: "Then, who is in charge of this regional center?"

"Whoever contributes more technology to the industrial chain, has a larger market, and is larger in size will be able to take a leading position." Su Yuanshan laughed: "So, it must be us!"

The leader laughed, nodded, and motioned for him to continue.

Su Yuanshan glanced around and found that there were domestic maps and world maps hanging on the wall. He walked to the map in a few steps, pointed at the Asian region and said: "Leader, please see, once our industrial chain area is formed, it will be easy to Radiating the most densely populated area in the world."

The leader asked again: "How to radiate?"

"Services, products." Su Yuanshan answered without thinking, and then added: "Communication and Internet services, electronic and digital products."

"In order to be able to go global, Yuanxin started laying out communication infrastructure a long time ago. Now there is the term information highway, so this highway cannot be built by just any country. I still remember , in order to build the first base station more than ten years ago, the Special Administrative Region actually required a loan of US$5 million - that was US$5 million more than ten years ago! But what about now? The cost of one of our base stations can be controlled at Within 1 million yuan. And most of the technology is independent.”

"Relying on technology and cost advantages, we have now laid a solid foundation in Southeast Asia. This means that the information highways of these countries are in our hands!"

"An analogy is that what we are doing now is exactly the same as Western developed countries building railways in backward countries 100 years ago!"

Upon hearing this metaphor, the two leaders couldn't help but look at each other, and then fell into deep thought at the same time.

"This is just infrastructure. We can also release our production capacity and increase our product exports by actively leading and joining regional economic cooperation agreements - yes, the main purchasing power now is indeed in developed countries. But mass consumer goods The potential of the market has never been determined by how much money the country has, but by how many people there are in the country."

Su Yuanshan took a deep breath and began to talk about his theory of population advantage.

From communication products to communication markets, from digital products to mobile Internet, he demonstrated one by one that all products will eventually fall on the basic factor of population.

Finally, he talked about why Yuanxin chose to build the Sino-Korean semiconductor industry chain in the process of globalization.

"Resources and wealth are limited, and there is an upper limit to the growth of resources and wealth brought about by the development of productivity. If the speed of our rise exceeds the increase in resources brought about by the improvement of productivity, then the redistribution of resources is inevitable of."

Su Yuanshan licked his lips, and the Shanghai leaders stood up and handed him the tea cup.

"Thank you, leader."

After taking a deep breath, Su Yuanshan looked at the leader and said in the most sincere tone: "When that day comes, they will never allow us to live a life like theirs."

"They will definitely block us again."