Chapter 681: Photolithography Machine
Island country.
Edo.
The island country does not have a clear concept of a capital. The political center is wherever the regime moves.
At this moment, several senior executives of Connie Company gathered in the conference room. They all had frowned brows and looked unhappy.
After a while, the chairman, Hiroko Toyama, who was sitting at the head of the group, asked, "Are there any results from the laboratory?"
His eyes were gloomy, making the technical director Takada Itsuka break into a cold sweat. He said tremblingly, "The experimental results are out. The good news is that the mechanical exfoliation method has low production efficiency and cannot be industrialized for mass production. It can only produce micron-sized graphene, which is not enough to shake the position of silicon-based chips in the semiconductor industry."
Obviously, this explanation did not satisfy Toyama Hiroko. He frowned and asked, "What about the bad news ?"
Itsuwa Takata sighed and said, "The performance of chips made from graphene wafers is at least ten times that of silicon-based chips, while the power consumption is lower. What's more, graphene wafers do not have very high requirements for photolithography machines."
Hiroko Toyama leaned back in her chair and said with her eyes closed: "So, once graphene is mass-produced, it means that silicon wafers will have to exit the stage of history?"
The ten-fold performance gap and lower energy consumption mean that there is an unbridgeable technological gap between the two materials.
This was a fatal blow to Connie.
After all, half of the island country's semiconductor industry is now in the hands of Connie, because Connie is the absolute overlord of the lithography machine industry at this time.
As for the current ASML company, it is still a small and insignificant player in the lithography machine industry.
It is precisely because of this that the graphene bomb has now fallen on Connie, causing Connie's market value to plummet. The entire semiconductor industry is in a state of panic.
As vested interests, what they fear most is "innovation" or even "revolution".
Although technological advancement is an inevitable part of the development of civilization, even a speck of history falling on us is as heavy as Mount Tai!
Now, the mountain falls on Hiroko Toyama.
It was cloudy and rainy in Zhonghai in April , just like Li Yiwen's mood at the moment.
"I heard from your father-in-law that you were going to fuck Connie?"
"No."
"Aren't you going to make a photolithography machine?"
"That's true, but my opponent is not Connie. It's just unlucky and is blocking my way."
“…”
Lu Yiming's answer left Li Yiwen speechless.
In his opinion, this statement was simply outrageous.
However, for Lu Yiming, this was the truth.
ASML, which later became very successful, was still just a small joint venture company under Philips.
The entire company, including the boss and 31 employees, had to squeeze into a temporary wooden building next to the Philips headquarters to work.
As soon as you go out, you can see a huge trash can next to the board room. When you go out to sell, you can only use the name of the parent company. Compared with your competitors, you look weak, pitiful, and helpless.
In that era when chip manufacturing was still at the micron level, there were at least dozens of companies that could make photolithography machines. However, only Connie, relying on its accumulation from the camera era, became a well-deserved giant in the era when the island nation's semiconductor industry was rising comprehensively.
In just four years, Connie had dethroned the former lithography machine powerhouse, the United States, and became equal to the old king GCA, taking 30% of the market share. Several major customers, including Intel, IBM, AMD, and Texas Instruments, lined up in front of Connie's door every day waiting for the latest products to come off the production line, just like Xiaguo's eagerness to wait for ASML to deliver EUV lithography machines in the future.
Time flies, the years pass by like a shuttle.
The new king of the past has become the old king today. At this critical juncture of the transition between the old and the new, whoever can rise up on the corpse of the old king will be able to occupy the throne and become the new overlord.
Facing Connie, who was about to go downhill, how could Lu Yiming, as a reborn person, not have the ambition to step on him hard?
Although he didn't understand photolithography, Li Yiwen knew that Connie was an optician. He said worriedly, "We have basically made no achievements in the field of optics in China, right? You have to know that the optics majors of European and American powers have basically started to develop along with astronomy since the 17th century. In comparison, we are several hundred years behind. How easy is it to catch up?"
Li Yiwen is telling the truth.
The first telescope was invented by Lipset of the Netherlands in 1608.
Kepler published his book "Refraction" in 1611, proposed the law of illumination, and designed several new types of telescopes.
In the second half of the 17th century, Newton, Huygens and others pushed geometric optics into the era of wave optics.
In 1672, Newton completed the famous prism dispersion experiment, and then published "Optics" in 1704, proposing the theory that light is a flow of particles.
Many well-known optical companies have a long history. For example, the world-renowned German Zeiss Group was founded in 1846. When the First World War broke out in 1914, Zeiss, as a German optical giant and a world giant in optical instruments and equipment, almost monopolized the global market.
Even though the island country was a latecomer in the field of optics, in 1917, the Shimakoku Optical Industry Co., Ltd. was established, which was the predecessor of Connie.
In comparison, Xia State is far from being able to compete with these traditional giants in the field of optics in terms of knowledge accumulation, industry foundation, or talent base.
The problems and difficulties are basically laid out in the open. If you want to surpass your opponent's hundreds of years of first-mover advantage, it means that you must at least pay equal prices and costs to make up for the huge gap between them. This cannot be achieved by just patting your forehead and shouting a few slogans.
However, Lu Yiming had already thought of these problems. After all, if this thing was so easy to do, it wouldn't be impossible to do it decades later with the advantages of the entire industry chain.
Compared with the numerous difficulties and dangers in the future, now is an excellent opportunity to catch up or even overtake others.
"It's because it's difficult that we have to catch up. If we don't catch up now, we won't have the chance to catch up in the future even if we want to."
How difficult is it for a semiconductor company in Xiaguo to buy an ASML lithography machine?
It's not even a matter of spending more money, but that the other party simply won't sell it to you. Even if they do, they'll sell you products that are several generations behind at an extremely high price, and they'll also delay delivery.
Even if you pay the full amount, you may not be able to get the goods even after two or three years. Don't complain about this, otherwise we won't sell it to you.
Lu Yiming considered himself to be a person with a bad temper, and he couldn't stand being bullied like this.
So instead of begging others for help later, it is better to spend more money now and nip the trouble in the bud. After all, isn’t the money to be spent?
Li Yiwen didn't understand lithography machines, but he felt that something like this, which was only in the hands of developed countries, must be top-notch high-tech. Therefore, Lu Yiming's actions seemed extremely crazy to him.
He said in a joking tone: "There are fewer countries in the world with lithography machines than with rockets, right? Why don't we build a rocket for fun? It costs money anyway, and even if a rocket explodes, it will make a noise."
Lu Yiming smiled and said, "In fact, the threshold for photolithography machines in the era of tens of nanometers is not high. Look, ASML, which only has 31 people, can easily enter this industry. Even Intel, which designs chips, can make a few machines by itself to try it out. You can see that the difficulty is not that high. It's just piecing together the expensive parts you bought to make a device that is slightly more difficult than a camera."
"As the 'crown jewel' of the semiconductor industry, the essence of a photolithography machine is actually similar to a projector plus a camera. It uses light as a knife to project the designed circuit diagram onto a silicon wafer. You see, isn't this very simple?"
After hearing this, Li Yiwen's frown relaxed a little, but he was still worried: "Even so, the professional barriers are not so easy to break through, right?"
It should be said that Li Yiwen is not a reborn person, nor is he a business elite trained in a favorable environment, so his vision is naturally not that big. And everything he has now is just Lu Yiming leading him, and he is now standing at a height that does not belong to him. Therefore, when he makes decisions, he is always stingy and not generous at all.
The current lithography machine market is basically a competition between the island countries and Europe and the United States.
The semiconductor alliance led by the United States relies on the joint efforts of the industrial chain, integrating materials and components from various countries to create the strongest products.
The island country's technological route is the Connie development model. All parts and technologies are handled by themselves, just like Apple, which takes charge of chips and operating systems. Just a few lenses may not be able to beat the German optical giant Zeiss, but it is more than enough to cope with the chip manufacturing process at the time.
Now that Lu Yiming wants to develop lithography machines, it is equivalent to declaring that he will punch Europe and the United States and kick the island countries, and bite off a piece of meat from these old predecessors.
But how easy is this?
Li Yiwen said, "Okay, let's take a step back. Even if you make this lithography machine, who can you sell it to? Europe and the United States say it is a free market, but it is not free at all. There is no way their semiconductor industry will purchase your lithography machine. As for the island countries, they have a serious planned economy. We can't get past the Federation of Industry and Commerce."
Lu Yiming said: "To be honest, it is because of what you said that I decided to make our own lithography machine, no matter what the cost - and the cost now is the lowest in the future. The cost will be higher and higher in the future, and it may be so high that it will be useless even if we mobilize the whole country. At that time, we can only surrender."
"As for the question of who to sell to, that's even easier to solve. I've invested in so many chip companies and semiconductor companies, and they all need it. And I tell you, the market demand is here, and it's not a question of who to sell to. As long as it's manufactured, there's no problem selling it. What about SMIC, right? I don't know how many companies are clamoring for lithography machines now."
Li Yiwen saw Lu Yiming talking with great joy, but he felt extremely annoyed. He really didn't understand why Lu Yiming wasted his precious time and opportunities on such a difficult project with a very low probability of success, even if it succeeded, it would not make much money.
Lu Yiming changed the subject and said to Li Yiwen: "Have you heard of Moore's Law?"
Li Yiwen said bluntly: "No. Brother, I studied finance, and there is no such thing in finance."
Lu Yiming said: "The so-called Moore's Law is an industry norm proposed by Gordon Moore, one of the founders of Intel - the number of components that can be accommodated on an integrated circuit will double every 18 to 24 months. And every advancement in the process will also bring a leap in chip performance. This is not only a requirement for chip design, but also a requirement that lithography machines must be one step ahead of the design link and deliver equipment with corresponding specifications."
Li Yiwen was puzzled: "I understand all this, but what does it have to do with your plan to build a photolithography machine?"
Lu Yiming said: "Whether it is chip manufacturing or lithography machine manufacturing, the level of hurdles is actually increasing exponentially. In the 1990s, the wavelength of the light source of the lithography machine was stuck at 193nm, which became a difficult hurdle for the entire industry."
"You know, when carving, the pattern needs to be fine, and the tip of the knife needs to be sharp. But how do you 'grind' the 193nm light wave even finer? Now most of the semiconductor industry in the world has participated in this, and two teams are eager to try it out."
"Connie and other semiconductor companies from the island countries advocate using 157nm F2 lasers based on previous generation technology to take a steady path. The newly formed EUVLLC alliance, on the other hand, is betting on more radical extreme ultraviolet technology, using extreme ultraviolet light of only a dozen nanometers to carve chip processes of less than ten nanometers."
At this point, Lu Yiming paused, took a sip of tea, and continued, "But the technology has come to this point. No matter which method is used, it is not easy to do. This is a key node in the development of technology, and it is also a battle between the new king and the old king. It is also our only chance to get involved."
Finally, Lu Yiming's eyes became firm, and his tone was sonorous: "Once the island country and Europe and the United States decide the winner, there will be no place for us in Xia Country in the next 20 to 30 years."
Li Yiwen is not a reborn person, so he is "content with a small fortune" and seeks stability in everything. But Lu Yiming knows that if he seeks stability now, he will have to kneel down and talk to the powers in the semiconductor industry in the future. Even if the kneeling posture is not standard, he may not even have the qualifications to speak.
At this moment, the cell phone on the table rang. When Lu Yiming answered it, he recognized Li Qiu's voice.
"Boss Lu, I have accomplished my mission and won the lawsuit."
Lu Yiming smiled and said, "Okay, isn't it nice to slap someone in the face on their territory?"
Li Qiu laughed and said, "That's great. It's a pity that you didn't come. Those old white people are all Sima-faced and are trying to quibble. They said that regardless of the facts, we sent people there just to steal their European technology."
"Alright, alright, that's enough, it's enough to just watch the fun, where's the person? Did you bring him back?"
Lu Yiming was talking about Gu Lizhi.
Originally, Lu Yiming didn't want to get involved with Gu Lizhi. After all, the two of them had no relationship at all, and Gu Lizhi almost ruined Mo Xin Technology's good fortune.
Moreover, as a man of his age, he must bear the consequences of his own choices. All this is his own fault.
However, Yu Kebao couldn't bear to see such a young man from the countryside ruin his life by going astray, so he asked Lu Yiming to bring him back.
In fact, after the lawsuit was over and it was proven that Gu Lizhi was not a thief, the prison released him.
But in Europe, Gu Lizhi definitely had nowhere to go. No school would accept him, so he could only wander around. In such an unfamiliar place, no one would know when he would die.
Li Qiu said, "I brought him back. Let him meet you after we get off the plane?"
Lu Yiming quickly said, "No, I don't want to see him. Send him to Zhonghai Jiaotong University, and don't worry about the rest."
Zhonghai Jiaotong University also lost its reputation because of this incident. It became the object of collective ridicule in the education circle and was labeled as a traitor.
Anyone who knows the whole story will feel extremely sad. Originally, at least half of the credit for the world-shaking discovery of graphene belonged to Zhonghai Jiaotong University, but Zhonghai Jiaotong University insisted on licking the ass of foreigners and turned itself into a joke.
It is foreseeable that even if Gu Lizhi returns to Zhonghai Jiaotong University, Zhonghai Jiaotong University will definitely put the blame on him at the first opportunity, and it will not be surprising if he is punished or expelled.
Lu Yiming didn't care about these things. Bringing him back to the country was already the most he could do.
Li Qiu finished reporting on this trip to Europe and was about to hang up the phone when Lu Yiming remembered something and said, "Oh, by the way, can you help me get someone over here?"
Li Qiu smiled and said, "Boss Lu, shouldn't you ask a headhunter for this matter? Why are you looking for me?"
Lu Yiming said: "This matter is very important. We must win but not lose. I don't feel comfortable leaving it to others."
Hearing what Lu Yiming said, Li Qiu's expression suddenly became serious, and he said, "Okay, who do you want to poach?"
Lu Yiming said: "The person I want you to poach is Lin Benjian, he is an employee of TSM, no matter what the cost, you must bring him back to me."
After a pause, he added, "Alive."
The reason why they don't hire a headhunting company is that they are worried that the people in the headhunting company will leak the news and cause unnecessary trouble. They are also worried that the headhunting company will mess around for their own interests.
On the contrary, Lu Yiming felt much more at ease when it was handed over to Li Qiu. After all, this was not the first time they had worked together.
Regardless of whether what Li Qiu does is legal or not, there are only two words to describe it - reliable!
Seeing that Lu Yiming was so concerned about this man named Lin Benjian, Li Qiu did not dare to neglect him. After all, the fact that the richest man in Asia could say "no matter what the cost" was enough to show that this man named Lin Benjian was indeed extremely awesome.
"Okay, I understand."
