Chapter 181 Extraordinary Master Release
"Yuan Guang, good news. According to the information I received, Nikon will soon join this project, and the person in charge they sent is Junji Tominaga. Compared with the current people in Shenhai Microelectronics, Tominaga's attainments in the field of topological semimetals will definitely enable him to understand faster than them what we want and how to achieve our goals." Liang Mengsong was very excited.

China's topological semimetal chip production line is still located in the southwest, not in Shenhai. In China's national planning, the production of topological semimetal sheets is top secret and is one of China's trump cards to take the lead in technology in the future.

Therefore, the science and technology park originally planned for room-temperature superconducting and lithography factories has been expanded significantly. The production line of topological semimetals is already under construction, and part of the future chip production based on topological semimetals will also be located in Mianyang.

All R&D will be placed in Mianyang, and Liang Mengsong has already moved to Mianyang to work.

The national government has provided policy support to Mianyang one after another, causing housing prices here to rise against the trend when housing prices in Shudu plummeted. Housing prices have already risen before the project has even been fully implemented.

After hearing this, Chen Yuanguang asked, "Fuyong? Who is that?"

He knew that Nikon was the unlucky one that was defeated by the joint efforts of Europe and the United States in the field of lithography machines.

During his college years, he often read about the tragic past of Japanese semiconductors on public accounts, and Nikon was definitely a classic case among them.

"He has been committed to applying topological semimetals in the chip field, but the direction he chose is memory chips.

Before I was selected to participate in the topological semimetal chip manufacturing project, I felt that this term was somewhat familiar. Later I remembered that it was in 2014, when I was still in a lawsuit with TSMC.

At that time, I was teaching at Korea and helping Samsung to overcome the 14nm process. TSMC put up various obstacles, and I had to deal with lawsuits from TSMC at 4V, Federal, and Korea.

For a while, I was unable to deal with specific work due to the pressure. I happened to be teaching in Korea, so I attended a lot of academic conferences.

I went to Neon to attend an academic conference hosted by Tominaga. The reason why I was particularly impressed by that conference was that the venue they chose was inside a nuclear power plant.

They applied to Tokyo Electric Power Company for permission to host the academic conference at the Kashiwazaki Energy Hall at the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa Nuclear Power Plant.

The theme of Tominaga's academic conference was superlattice film, but they chose the wrong direction. The superlattice film they chose seemed to be made of chalcogenide compounds.

But Tominaga's achievements in the field of topological semimetals are beyond doubt, and his participation will make our subsequent work much smoother."

It is not only because of this reason, but also because the chip process was only 14nm at that time. The vast space brought by immersion and EUV made semiconductor manufacturers not so urgent to replace silicon-based materials with new materials.

Only Japanese companies hope to achieve overtaking by this means.

The meeting was very passionate, and Tominaga, who explained his research results with his hair flying up to the sky, left a deep impression on Liang Mengsong.

Chen Yuanguang nodded after listening to it and said: "With him as a bridge between us and Nikon, things will surely go much more smoothly.

But we can’t rely entirely on Nikon. We still need to urge Shenhai Microelectronics to continue to advance the development of lithography machines. At least this year, we need to bring out 28nm lithography machines.”

Whether it is him or Liang Mengsong, everyone has the same demand, which is to advance the chip process as much as possible.

Currently, the 28nm topological semi-metal chip made by 7nm lithography machine through a process similar to double exposure is equivalent to the traditional 1nm chip in terms of performance.

This is a huge breakthrough, but they have been slow to use the 7nm lithography machine allocated to them by China.

The reason is simple. SMIC has had extensive experience in using 28nm lithography machines for at least five years, and everyone is very familiar with its processes, internal structures, and parameters of components from upstream and downstream suppliers.

Familiarity is the prerequisite for transformation.

The 7nm lithography machine has never been used after being bought by Hongxin. It is just a decoration. Later, it was moved to many places. To this day, ASML no longer provides subsequent maintenance services. This equipment is just a black box to them.

The arrival of Nikon is undoubtedly good news. After all, Nikon's technology has advanced to 3nm, and Nikon is an original manufacturer, not relying on its own guessing.

In Liang Mengsong's opinion, with Nikon's entry, Shenhai Microelectronics can be put aside. Since everyone is working on 3nm, the domestic 28nm lithography machine is not that important.

Shenhai Microelectronics is advancing slowly at its own pace. His idea is not to get involved. As a supporter of economic globalization, Liang Mengsong is not keen on national production.

“Yuan Guang, our energy is limited, so we don’t need to spend more energy on Shenhai Microelectronics.

Before, people had no choice, but now that they have a choice, Shenhai Microelectronics is not important. "

Chen Yuanguang said: "I am mainly worried that Neon will go back on its word later. Shenhai Microelectronics can help us take the initiative."

Liang Mengsong said: “I also understand this, but I heard that in the cooperation model, Nikon will share all technical information.

If Nikon is unable to continue cooperating with us in the future due to some international factors, we will start a new business based on the technical information left by Nikon instead of relying on Shenhai Microelectronics.”

In his opinion, Shenhai Microelectronics was a hopeless case, and he knew this three years ago.

Because Shenhai Microelectronics has been promoting that the domestic lithography machines will be delivered next year since 20, but it is already 2024 and they have not been delivered yet.

Moreover, during this period of cooperation on topological semi-metallic chips, Shenhai Microelectronics' management chaos was clearly visible. Engineers were often replaced in the middle of the cooperation, and the new engineers had to spend time to adapt again. The yield rate of their own 90nm domestic lithography machine after the transformation was simply terrible. These were not small problems, but big problems continued.

Efforts are not proportional to benefits.

What’s even more terrible is that if the engineers are not good enough, that’s easy to deal with. They don’t mind slowly training the team and slowly getting them to fit in. Liang Mengsong did this whether he was at TSMC, Samsung or SMIC.

The most worrying thing is poor management. Shenhai Microelectronics is a state-owned enterprise and the management cannot be replaced.

Therefore, Liang Mengsong's plan is to try another company in the future, as long as it is a Chinese company.

It just so happened that when he was at Shenhai, he met a junior fellow named Zhou Xin, who was doing well in entrepreneurship and was also quite interested in lithography machines, so he decided to bring him in to start a new business.

It will be a long process for topological semimetals to replace silicon, which will create a large number of opportunities and give birth to a large number of semiconductor companies in China. This is the consensus among practitioners.

However, the entire upstream and downstream is still in a confidentiality stage at present, and the main participants are state-owned enterprises. It will definitely be gradually relaxed in the future.

The A-share market is also eagerly looking forward to it. Analysts and investment institutions are all looking forward to when topological semimetals will start cooperating with private enterprises to resolve the current situation. By then, the semiconductor sector will usher in an unprecedented market situation.

Chen Yuanguang has heard about the situation of Shenhai Microelectronics: "They are not good enough, but we can't just leave Shenhai Microelectronics alone.

In any case, they are the best Chinese companies in the field of lithography machines. After Nikon enters the market, let them be mixed with Nikon.

Don’t say they are Shenhai Microelectronics, just say they are our staff, we have to bring the team out.”

Unlike the previous Ark chip which was launched with great fanfare, the Huawei Mate Extraordinary Master Edition was quietly launched on Huawei's official store.

Twenty thousand units are sold every day, at ten o'clock in the morning. There is only one version, which is 32G+1T, and the price is 29999 yuan.

There was no press conference, and there wasn't even a hot search. It was only after netizens discovered it and pushed the news of the release of Huawei's 100% Master to the top of the hot search that the outside world learned about it.

Among the parameters, Ark 100 is the point that netizens are most concerned about.

The article does not mention satellite communications, basalt architecture, Kunlun glass, and other publicity highlights of the previous generation of extraordinary masters.

There is only a picture of the Ark chip and some text description:
It adopts a new topological semi-metal chip and its 7nm process is equivalent to the 1nm traditional silicon-based chip, achieving cutting-edge technology and bringing you an extraordinary experience.

No other explanation is needed, it is enough for users to place an order without thinking.

Consumers who entered Huawei's official website at 10 o'clock that day were blessed, because they had a full five minutes to buy Huawei's Extraordinary Master.

By tomorrow when public opinion ferments, it will be gone in no more than a second a day.

"What's going on? How come it's already on the shelves without even a press conference?"

"The price of 30,000 is exactly what I expected. It is more than double the price of the previous generation of Extraordinary Masters."

"I want to support domestic products, but I can't buy them. Xiaomi is playing tricks, and Huawei is starting to play tricks, right? Who can buy 20,000 units a day?"

“This price is really expensive, but the 1nm chip is really good. Is there any evaluation video? What about Digimons?”

All major social media outlets were buzzing with excitement. The launch of Huawei's phone equipped with domestically produced 1nm chips was definitely a big event. However, in the end, we only saw the launch of the Extraordinary Master, and no one got the real phone.

A digital blogger with millions of followers posted a video:

“When I woke up today, my phone was buzzing with calls. Everyone in the chat group was asking, did everyone get the Extraordinary Master?

Those who get orders in the group feel as proud as if they had won the lottery.

I know everyone wants to see our first-hand review, but this time Huawei really didn’t give us a review unit, and they didn’t even notify us before putting it on sale.

I have arranged for my friends to buy second-hand ones on Xianyu. Second-hand orders are really expensive. I hope that after our review video comes out, everyone can give us a one-click triple click to help us recover some of our losses. "

Huawei's Extraordinary Master is on sale. Those who got it will sell it directly on Xianyu. The starting price is 10,000 yuan, and it will be sold out in seconds. Even if you pay 20,000 yuan, there will be people who will buy it.

Almost everything you grab is a profit.

These days, the products are sold out in seconds every day, and even Huawei’s official website is overwhelmed.

Major digital bloggers arrange their team members to go to the designated spots to see if they can get the products, while at the same time they buy second-hand products on Xianyu to take advantage of the popularity first.

(End of this chapter)