"The only thing we need to worry about is sanctions and embargoes, but now there is a gap. The previous Batumi Committee has been dissolved, and the new Wassenaar Agreement is still under negotiation, and it is expected that it will not be signed and implemented until at least this time next year.

"

"In other words, during this period, whether to impose embargoes and sanctions on China depends only on the attitude of the country concerned." Fang Chen said with a smile.

Because the Soviets have fallen, Russia has joined the embrace of capitalism, and the Cold War is over, some European countries believe that the existence of the Batumi Committee is no longer necessary. Therefore, the Batumi Committee, the Sword of Damocles hanging over China's head, was suspended last year.

The company announced its dissolution on April 1.

However, the United States is not willing to accept that the Batumi Commission, a powerful tool for ruling the world and maintaining hegemony, has disappeared, so it is negotiating with other countries to sign the Wassenaar Agreement, which is another form of the Batumi Commission.

Like the Batumi Committee, the Wassenaar Agreement also contains two control lists: one is a list of dual-use goods and technologies, covering advanced materials, material processing, electronic devices, computers, telecommunications and information security, sensors and lasers

, navigation and avionics instruments, ships and maritime equipment, propulsion systems and other 9 categories;

The other is a military goods list, covering a total of 22 categories of weapons and ammunition, equipment and combat platforms.

However, the scope of the Wassenaar Agreement's contracting countries is larger, from the original 17 countries in Batumi to 42 countries including Russia, South Korea, and India.

Even Russia has joined in. It can be said that the Wassenaar Agreement is an agreement specifically targeted at a few red countries such as China and Cuba.

However, the United States has also made some compromises. From the original countries must comply with the products and technologies on the embargo list, to now, it allows member states to exercise national control over the export of items on the control list, that is, it is up to each country's government to decide whether to

Allow or deny the transfer of an item, notify other member states of the Wassenaar Agreement of relevant information on a voluntary basis, and coordinate export control policies.

Relatively speaking, governments of various countries have greater autonomy, but in fact, most countries still have to look at the face of the United States.

For example, when the Czech Republic planned to export "passive radar equipment" to China, the United States put pressure on the Czech Republic to stop the transaction.

However, the Wassenaar Agreement is still under negotiation and is not expected to be signed until next year. This means that there is a huge time gap for China and Qingtian.

As long as he gets the equipment and the country where the technology is located, the United States will have no way to interfere.

In fact, for most European countries, they are still willing to do business with China. After all, hegemony is not in their hands, and they cannot enjoy too many benefits brought by hegemony, but all the money they make from doing business is

own.

And relatively speaking, the 8-inch chip production line and wafer production equipment and technology are really not something that needs to be kept secret. They have long been ruined internationally. There are at least ten companies that have mastered the relevant technology and can produce the relevant equipment.

Several.

He doesn't believe that every family has tried, but not one of them has been moved?

Impossible, as the saying goes, money moves people's hearts, and no one will have a grudge against money.

Furthermore, let alone the fact that there is no longer Batumi or the Wassenaar Agreement, even if there were, wouldn't Toshiba secretly export five-axis CNC machine tools to the Soviet Union?

As a result, the United States was caught in the act and threatened to shut down Toshiba and arrest the chairman of Toshiba. It can be said that Toshiba was forced to survive or die. In the end, Toshiba spent hundreds of millions of dollars, and this was considered a success.

The matter is settled.

In fact, Toshiba was not the only one who secretly exported equipment and technology to the Soviet Union. Even many American companies did so secretly. It was only in the 1970s and 1980s that the rise of Japan and Japan infringed on the interests of the United States, and the United States deliberately caused trouble.

Just take the opportunity to knock on Dongwa.

In addition, the 12-inch chip production line was successfully developed in 1997 and officially commercialized in 1999. SMIC obtained the 12-inch chip production line in 2004.

Judging from this matter, the difficulty of obtaining a chip production line is not too high.

At least the 8-inch chip production line should be like this.

The only difficulty is probably that Fang Chen wants to get a 12-inch chip production line before the millennium.

At that time, the 12-inch chip production line had just begun to be commercialized, so it was naturally not possible for him to get it so easily.

However, there are still four or five years to go between now and the new millennium, so let’s slowly figure it out.

Zhang Rujing nodded silently. He also felt that what Fang Chen said was reasonable. Now is indeed a good opportunity and it is very feasible.

Suddenly, without knowing what he thought of, Zhang Rujing suddenly fell silent.

After a long time, he slowly opened his mouth and asked Fang Chen: "Mr. Fang, I have always had a question in my mind. I need you to answer some questions, or I need you to make a decision."

"Dr. Zhang, didn't I say that you are the main one here at Qingtian Chip. If there is any need for me to do it, I will be obliged to do it. As for making decisions, there is no need." Fang Chen said with a smile.

His family knows his own business, but he is a layman when it comes to chips. What he knows is only superficial, and there is no way he can compare with a big shot in the chip industry like Zhang Rujing.

Therefore, what he has always wanted is to give Zhang Rujing the greatest autonomy in all aspects related to Qingtian Chip Company. He can do the logistics work well, make more money, and transport the ammunition up in time.

It’s better not to get too involved in things.

"This really requires you to make a decision. What I want to ask is, what is the main business of Qingtian Chip in the future? Is it making memories, chips, or discrete devices? Or is it just a part of these categories?"

Zhang Rujing said.

To run a business, especially one as large and comprehensive as Qingtian Chip Company, which even directly faces consumers, you definitely need specific products.

Unlike the chip foundry he had always wanted to build before, he had to set up the production equipment, train the personnel, and have the engineering and technical personnel in place, and then he would take orders. He would produce whatever the customer needed him to produce, without having to think about it at all.

What kind of products do you need to produce?

"What if I say that only children make choices and adults want them all?" Fang Chen said with a smile.

"Do them all? Are you kidding me?"

Although he had been shocked by Fang Chen's aura time and time again, this time Zhang Rujing couldn't help but take a breath and said in disbelief.

To be honest, since the mid-1980s, the construction cost of the semiconductor industry has become higher and higher, and the scale has become larger and larger. Companies like the 1960s, which produced all categories and had to master all technical equipment themselves, have really disappeared.

.

Even now, many semiconductor companies led by AMD and Texas Instruments have already planned to give up on such an important part of chip production and manufacturing. Instead, they plan to retain only the most important chip design, and the chip manufacturing will be done by more professional foundries.

to complete.

No, even in the 1960s, there would not have been anything like Qingtian, from silicon raw materials to silicon rods, wafers, photolithography, etching, packaging, testing, and even semiconductor auxiliaries such as photoresists and photomasks.

Materials, as well as semiconductor equipment such as photolithography machines and etching machines, all are planned to be developed and produced by enterprises themselves.

To put it bluntly, take Intel as an example. When its industrial chain was the most complete, it only included photolithography, etching, packaging and testing, and the rest were not touched at all.

But now, Fang Chen has to make all of these by himself. He even has to make the three main semiconductor products, namely memory, chips and discrete devices, by himself.

To be honest, there really is no such company in the world...

Thinking of this, Zhang Rujing's expression suddenly changed, and he seemed to have a little more understanding.

Since Fangchen has to make semiconductor raw materials, production, auxiliary materials, and equipment by himself, it does not seem to be unacceptable to make memory, chips, and discrete devices by himself.

Zhang Rujing looked at Fang Chen, suddenly feeling more recognition and understanding.

If he were not from China and understood the long-term suffering that China has endured, as well as the long-term sanctions imposed on China by the United States and other developed countries, he would really not be able to understand why Fang Chen did what he did.

This is simply counter-globalization and goes against the general trend of the times.

"There is no way, and I don't want to, but in the field of semiconductors, there is one thing that China cannot do, and there is a high probability that it will get stuck." Fang Chen smiled helplessly.

Although storage, chips, and discrete devices are all the main products of semiconductors, there are actually many differences between them.

The raw materials are the same. They are all made from silica-rich raw materials such as sand and quartz. They are shaped at high temperatures and purified in multiple steps. Then a silicon rod is obtained by rotating and stretching, and then the crystal is cut out from it.

disc.

Our common storage devices such as memory sticks and solid-state drives are cut from wafers into soybean-sized memory particles according to the set size and crystal structure.

Then these memory particles are added to the control chip, gold fingers, casing, etc., and after passing the test, it is basically completed.

The production difficulty of memory particles, the number of transistors on them, and the architectural difficulty are much simpler than that of chips, and they are also much smaller, which is why they are called particles.

With the counter-cyclical rise of South Korean storage companies such as Samsung and Hynix, Toshiba and Elpida in Eastern Japan have been squeezed to death. There are only three companies left on the market that can produce memory particles: Samsung, Hynix, and Micron.

As we all know, the famous Kingston does not have the ability to produce memory particles. In other words, Kingston is also an OEM factory.

However, this is also why when Hynix and Samsung say that their factories are on fire, the prices of memory sticks and solid-state drives can't stop rising.

There are only three suppliers in the market, and two of them are on fire. Can the price not go up?

Next is the chip. Chips are much more difficult than storage devices. First of all, chip design requires the design of tens of billions of transistors, which has stumped most companies in the world.

After the design of these tens of billions of transistors is completed, it is necessary to apply photoresist on the wafer, and use the corrosion resistance formed by the photoresist after being exposed to light to engrave the design pattern on the photomask on the wafer.

Then etching is performed to form temporary gate circuits and metal gate circuits, allowing copper ions to be deposited on the transistors, and finally the excess material is polished, so that a layer of integrated circuits is completed.

Repeat this for more than twenty times, and all the different photomasks are engraved on the wafer, and the chip core is basically ready.

After the wafer is finally tested, the wafer will be cut into chip cores and then integrated with the substrate and heat sink to form a common CPU chip.

Discrete devices are different from storage devices and chips. Although the number of transistors in discrete devices is not large, they are not complex, and their functions cannot be compared with chips.

But it has a significant feature, that is, it can be used alone, such as transistors, diodes, resistors, capacitors, inductors, etc.

However, precisely because the functions are not powerful and the technical requirements are not high, the production volume of discrete devices accounts for almost 50% of all semiconductors, but the output value only accounts for about 5%, which is a proper low-end product.

But for China, the meaning is different. China is a manufacturing power and the world's factory, using 60% of the world's semiconductor products. More than 300 billion semiconductor products are exported to China from abroad every year.

There is no doubt that the number of discrete devices accounts for the majority. Under such circumstances, how could Fang Chen give up the production of discrete devices.

Moreover, discrete devices are relatively cheap, but the profits are not small. And because of their low technical difficulty and wide use, they are now good products for Qingtian Chip to accumulate experience.

As for storage devices and chips, let alone them. They are the most important semiconductor products. If we don't produce these two, then what will Fangchen produce?

"In terms of memory modules, the first task is to catch up with Dongbo and South Korea. Besides being able to produce a 64MB memory module, I believe that as long as there is enough time and enough investment, it will not be difficult to make it."

"As for chips, it's a bit more difficult, especially for desktop CPU chips. I asked Academician Ni about it. It will probably take him more than a year to fully understand Intel's X86 instruction set."

"However, this is not a problem. It is too difficult for us to produce. Let's start with the simple ones and practice. Qingtian's game consoles, learning machines, repeaters, and even the chips including the 04 machine are not particularly complicated. The most advanced things are products from ten years ago, three or four generations ago."

"I believe that designing and manufacturing such chips is not something that cannot be accomplished for us. As for money, it's fine. I'm here to help you, as much as you want."
Chapter completed!