Technological Hegemony

In an office, Zhang Dongning and An Ran met Mr. Seig Horton, a senior technical consultant of Intel Corporation.

Compared with the generally younger teams in Silicon Valley, the average age of Intel, a veteran technology company, is somewhat older.

Mr. Horton is in his forties and is beginning to put on weight. On his desk is a family portrait of him, his wife, and two daughters taken at Disney.

An Ran contacted Mr. Horton through his mentor at MIT. He also graduated from MIT and was a senior at the same school as An Ran.

Mr. Horton had already heard about this genius who received a double doctorate from MIT at the age of 23.

In addition, there is another reason that Mr. Horton attaches great importance to Anran, and that is the star technology represented by Anran.

Nowadays, anyone who is in the technology circle doesn’t know the name of this Huaxia company. Their continuous achievements this year can be described as miracles. a serious sense of crisis.

Mr. Horton chatted with An Ran about their professors at MIT, and after expressing his feelings about his school career, he turned directly to the topic.

An Ran took out an English version of the test report and put it on Mr. Horton's desk.

"There are rumors in the technology circle that Xingchen Technology is going to be the upstream of semiconductors. It seems that this should be your research result." Mr. Horton said politely.

"Senior, please advise me." An Ran said.

Mr. Horton quickly flipped through the report, his eyes fixed on a series of complicated data, and he couldn't take it back.

His facial expression changed little by little, and he became more and more serious. When he read the last few pages, the measured data of the fully synthetic photoresist, An Ran noticed that his legs were shaking rapidly under the desk.

Mr. Horton took a tissue from the tissue box and wiped his forehead.

"It turned out to be like this..." He sighed, then stood up suddenly, and walked out with the report, "You two wait a moment, I'll go get the CTO."

An Ran nodded, CTO means Chief Technology Officer, the big boss in R\u0026D.

The current chief technology officer of Intel is Dr. Mike Marbury, who is also the head of Intel Labs, specializing in quantum computing, neural computing, and semiconductor research and development.

How high is Dr. Marbury's status in Intel?

Before him, the position of CTO had been vacant for five full years, because the company had too many big names, and it was difficult for anyone to take this position. It was not until Dr. Finally got a leader.

"Looks like there's something going on." Zhang Dongning and An Ran looked at each other and said in a low voice, An Ran nodded slightly.

In a short time, Dr. Marbury with silver hair came to the office. He had a kind face and a bit of a girl. When he smiled, the corners of his mouth would rise sharply.

After all, in the technology world, most of the time, it is still dominated by gentle technical nerds. A company composed of hard-core technical nerds like Xingchen Technology is actually quite rare.

Right now, An Ran and Zhang Dongning walk with a whistling style, and An Ran, who was originally thin, has started to have a little muscle mass in his arms after more than three months of continuous exercise.

The meeting between the hardware president of Xingchen Technology and the chief technology officer of Intel, the super bosses of the two companies, was unexpected and tinged with a bit of gunpowder.

Mr. Marbury did not directly mention the photoresist, but talked about his most concerned issue, energy wave wireless charging.

Since Stellar Technology launched the epoch-making super wireless charging, it set off a butterfly effect, and the whole world is accelerating research, trying to catch up with Stellar Technology in this regard.

However, so far, no second company has been able to succeed.

Although Mr. Mabry is good-natured,

But he held his breath in his heart, and he couldn't understand why, with the strength of Intel, he couldn't produce the same wireless charging module as Star Technology?

Both Marbury and An Ran spoke very quickly. Zhang Dongning, who came with him, was surprised by An Ran's fluency in English. Several grades higher than him.

Marbury had already read the latest December issue of the Star Journal, and he and An Ran had a fierce confrontation about the energy field fluctuations in it.

An Ran has long been accustomed to this level of confrontation, because when he was in the company, Luo Jia would pull him up every now and then to brainstorm.

Luo Jia will gather the brightest brains of the company, and everyone will be fully motivated. The intensity of crazy thinking is by no means comparable to today's office-level conversations.

By the way, it is worth mentioning that in addition to the tough guy group, Star Technology's higher-level brainstorming group has gradually gained fame and has become the target of countless technology companies to emulate.

After a while, the high-speed conversation between the two gradually eased down.

People with a technical background have relatively simple thinking. If you want to gain the respect and trust of the other party, please show your real skills.

Marbury finally understood that the young man with black hair and black eyes was far stronger than he imagined.

At this time, Horton added, "Mr. An Ran is an alumnus of mine in Massachusetts. He was only twenty-three years old when he obtained a double doctorate in mechanical engineering and electrical engineering."

Marbury was slightly taken aback, and there was an obvious change in the way he looked at An Ran.

The U.S. is different from our country. Universities are liberal in admission and strict in exit. It is easy to enter a university, but difficult to graduate. An Ran was able to obtain a double doctorate at the age of 23, which is definitely a genius among geniuses.

Dr. Marbury turned his attention to the photoresist inspection report on the table. He had already read the content of the report, a fully synthetic modified photosensitive colloid.

According to the research of Star Technology, if the semiconductor factory uses this new photoresist, it can increase the chip yield by 2%.

For all semiconductor factories, the yield rate is the most troublesome issue.

When the chip is produced by the fab, it will enter the testing stage. The engineer will use the ATE automatic tester to run the program given by the chip designer to divide the chip into good and bad parts.

Broken ones that cannot be used will naturally be discarded directly, and every chip discarded is worth money!

After passing the test, the wafer will be diced and then sent to the packaging factory for system-level testing, that is, SLT. During this process, waste products will still be detected and will be discarded for the second time.

Moreover, with the improvement of the process level, the yield rate is getting lower and lower. This is an objective law that the semiconductor industry cannot get around. Even Moore's Law has its limit, not to mention the complicated semiconductor manufacturing.

Anyway, for those who are engaged in the semiconductor industry, how to improve the precision of photolithography, and then improve the yield rate, is a hurdle that can never be bypassed.

Let's put it this way, which semiconductor factory, if the good product rate can exceed 90%, basically set off firecrackers for three days and three nights, and celebrate wildly.

The photoresist newly developed by Star Technology, despite the data, only increased the yield rate by 2% on average, but the value of this 2% is simply more expensive than gold!

When the technology is close to the limit, it can be increased by 2%. Every year, Intel sells hundreds of millions of chips all over the world, and 2% is hundreds of millions of chips!

However, as an American company and a giant in the global semiconductor industry, it is not easy to convince Intel to trust a Chinese company. That's why An Ran and Zhang Dongning came to visit this time.

"We will arrange testing as soon as possible," Dr. Marbury said.

"But it will be the Christmas holiday soon." Holden said with a frown.

Americans attach great importance to Christmas, which is the biggest festival of the year, which is equivalent to the Spring Festival in China. It is very inhumane to ask employees to work overtime during Christmas.

Dr. Marbury looked firmly, "Our largest overseas factory is in Malaysia. They don't celebrate Christmas, so they put it there for testing."

An Ran and Zhang Dongning looked at each other. It was not easy to come to this step in the context of the increasingly serious competition between major powers.

If it weren't for the excellent photoresist performance of Star Technology, it would be impossible to enter Intel's supply chain.

An Ran and Zhang Dongning stood up and shook hands with Dr. Marbury to say goodbye.

When they walked out of the Intel Building, the sunshine in California was still bright, and the two of them breathed a sigh of relief at the same time, feeling indescribably comfortable all over their bodies.

Unlike Xinyang and their four companies, which are fighting from low to high, Xingchen Technology is fighting from high to low, directly attacking the Tianwang Mountain in the semiconductor industry, Intel Corporation! The base camp of those international giants headed by Yue Chemical!

"Shin-Etsu and the others probably won't be able to pass this new year." An Ran opened the door of the Lincoln sedan, smiled slightly, and said to Zhang Dongning.