Rebirth 1984: Starting with the development of Hanka

More than an hour later, Zhao Ye arrived at Loongson Design Company.

In fact, NAND flash memory has only been designed and has not yet started tape-out, let alone mass production. It will be available on the market by the end of the year at the earliest.

"Boss, this is the Loongson EDA-1.0 simulation experiment report."

Fujio Shigaoka operates the Loongson EDA-1.0 software on a computer to retrieve NAND data.

Zhao Ye sat in front of the computer and studied it carefully. Since it was the result displayed by Loongson EDA-1.0, there was nothing wrong with it.

He turned to Fujio Sugaoka and said, "Very good, we can do further testing. If there are no problems, we will start the tape-out."

The cost of tape-out is very expensive, so when designing a chip, there will be more detailed testing to make sure there is no problem, and then go for tape-out.

Tape-out is actually trial production. If the tape-out is successful, the chip can be mass-produced.

Zhao Ye estimated that the NAND flash memory developed by Fujio Sugaoka and others has a high cost due to the complex manufacturing process. The production cost of a 20MB NAND flash memory alone is more than 100 US dollars.

Still very exciting!

If it sells for $500, the demand will definitely be huge.

NAND FLASH can be developed into CF cards, SD cards, SM cards... the market prospects are broad.

However, when the time comes, USB interfaces and various card readers will need to be developed...

But that doesn't matter. Wujiang Group will launch its own brand of computers next year, which will develop the USB bus protocol.

"Contact IBM, HP and other companies to see if we can jointly develop USB serial interface standards. If they are not willing, Wujiang Group will have to go it alone and use products to win market recognition, thereby making Wujiang Group's USB bus protocol It has become an established fact of the industry standard!" Zhao Ye thought to himself.

Fujio Shioka nodded immediately after hearing this. He also expected NAND flash memory to be launched earlier.

Zhao Ye thought for a while and said: "Even if the NAND chip has been developed, further development is needed to apply it well. Developers can create portable micro memory cards based on NAND flash memory, which can be used in cameras, Computers, mobile phones, multimedia players..."

"Ok!"

Fujio Shioka nodded and thought of the application scenarios of NAND, which was almost the same as what Zhao Ye thought.

Zhao Ye twisted his body to make himself more comfortable. He said to Fujio Shioka: "Oh, by the way, Fujio Shioka, you develop NAND using the SLC architecture (Single-Level Cell), right? Layer cell flash memory stores one bit of data per cell.”

Fujio Shigaoka nodded when he heard this: "Yes, boss, we use the SLC architecture!"

Zhao Ye said: "Why not try to develop a multi-layer cell flash memory MLC architecture. By using a large number of voltage levels, each cell stores two bits of data, and the data density is relatively high!"

MLC technology is the development trend of NAND Flash. Just like CPU single-core, dual-core, and quad-core, MLC technology achieves exponential leaps in capacity by storing more bits per Cell until more advanced architectures come out.

In the previous life, Intel invented the MLC architecture in the mid-90s, only seven or eight years ago. In fact, this technology is developed based on NAND, and Wujiang Group could have developed it earlier.

When Fujio Shigaoka heard this, his eyes suddenly lit up and he was bursting with inspiration.

MLC technology can precisely control the number of charges on the Floating Gat to present 4 different storage states, each state can represent two binary values...

Therefore, large-capacity NAND flash memory can be developed using MLC.

"I understand, using the MLC architecture not only has a large capacity, but the production cost may be even lower than the SLC architecture!" Fujio Shioka said excitedly.

Zhao Ye nodded slightly. Indeed, as Fujio Shimooka said, the production cost of MLC is lower than that of SLC.

but……

MLC is not without its shortcomings.

The first thing that bears the brunt is that the service life is shorter than that of SLC. The MLC architecture can only withstand 1 erases and writes, while the SLC architecture can withstand 10 erases and writes.

The second is the slow access speed. Under the current technical conditions, the theoretical access speed of the MLC chip can only reach about 6MB, while the access speed of the SLC architecture is more than three times faster than the access speed of the MLC architecture!

Also, the current consumption of MLC is higher than that of SLC. If MLC is compared with SLC under the same conditions of use, the current consumption of MLC is about 15% more than that of SLC.

But for now, the product is still pursuing large capacity.

That’s why Zhao Ye reminded Fujio Shioka to develop MLC flash memory.

But SLC flash memory is also very important and will be widely used in the future, so a small number of people can be arranged to continue to study SLC and maintain the leadership of SLC flash memory technology.

Zhao Ye gave some instructions to Shimooka Fujio and left the company.

However, Fujio Shigaoka felt as if he had been given a shot of chicken blood, and he was full of energy. He couldn't help but look forward to the day when NAND was launched, and he was going to slap his old employer Toshiba Group in the face!

Thinking of the regrets of various Toshiba Group executives, Fujio Masuoka couldn't help but get excited.

"I spent several years developing NAND FLASH. Even if I have no credit, I still have trouble. You only gave me a few hundred dollars as a reward. Now, I, Fujio Shimooka, can finally feel proud!"

……

……

Zhao Ye had just left the Loongson Design Company. After thinking about it, he asked the driver to drive to the nearby Wujiang Microelectronics Company.

"Boss, why are you here?" Ni Guangnan asked in surprise when he saw Zhao Ye.

Zhao Ye smiled and said: "Come and learn about the development of Wujiang Microelectronics Company. By the way, TSMC has been poaching people recently. How many employees of our company have been poached?"

After the establishment of TSMC, there was a shortage of talent. The construction progress of the wafer fab was very slow and it was recruiting people all over the world.

It's a pity that Wujiang Microelectronics Company was the first to arrive, and it had been poaching and digging around the world before TSMC. Semiconductor talents had long been poached by Wujiang Group, and they had also signed long-term contracts with the company.

You can change jobs, but you will have to pay a high penalty.

The higher the position, the higher the liquidated damages.

Therefore, at present, few people from Wujiang Microelectronics will switch jobs to TSMC.

Ni Guangnan smiled and said: "TSMC has hired more than ten employees, but their technical level is average."

Zhao Ye smiled and said: "As the saying goes, 'It's rude to come and not reciprocate.' Since TSMC is poaching our talents, we will also poach their talents."

"We have actually been doing this, but most of the employees have contracts and are unwilling to come. Furthermore, there are many semiconductor talents who come from the island and are unwilling to work in the mainland." Ni Guangnan shook his head and sighed.

Zhao Yehun didn't care and said calmly: "If you don't want to come, just don't come. There's no need to force it."

TSMC is backed by Baodao and many companies in Europe and the United States, and it will definitely occupy a place in the field of wafer foundry.

"Has the new wafer factory been built? We must quickly launch wafer foundry business!" Zhao Ye said in a deep voice.

There were no competitors before, so that's okay.