Silicon Valley

The cost of building a factory in the United States is too high, and Qualcomm has considered building a factory in Asia.

However, the US side must at least have its own fab. First, it can be used as a technology research and development base. Second, the three caves of the cunning rabbit, the factories are all built in Asia, if there is any good or bad, the factories are sealed up, wouldn't the company not be able to produce its own chips?

Therefore, it is safest to set up a factory in the US base camp and then establish a branch in Asia!

The established fab wants to reach the 8-inch specification, and the technical requirements are very strict. If Qualcomm wants to do it in one step, it does have to spend a lot of money! To improve the specification level of the fab, it mainly depends on the production materials, advanced production equipment and production technology!

The material is good, and the price is not exaggerated.

The production equipment is so expensive that people want to vomit blood! ! !

Not to mention other equipment, just talk about the lithography machine used in it!

Lithography equipment is the most critical equipment for producing semiconductor chips, and it is one of the most expensive equipment!

High-end lithography machines are known as the most sophisticated instruments in the world. If you hear that a high-end lithography machine sells for tens of millions of dollars, don’t be surprised. This is normal, and it’s so expensive! ! ! High-end lithography machines can be called the flower of the modern optical industry. They are so difficult to manufacture that only a few companies in the world can manufacture them. The international brands are mainly Dutch ASML (the lens is from Germany), Japan's Nikon and Japan's Canon.

What is a lithography machine and why is it so complicated?

In fact, to put it simply, a lithography machine is an enlarged SLR, and the designed integrated circuit pattern on the mask is printed on the photosensitive material by light exposure to form a pattern. However, the most important thing is the lens, and this lens is not an ordinary lens. It is 2 meters high and 1 meter in diameter, or even larger! The most advanced processes in the industry are measured in nanometers. How small is the nanometer, it is difficult to see with the naked eye anyway! But the lithography machine has to engrave lines on the chip... This is really difficult enough! ! !

The United States is far inferior to Japan in this lithography machine, but the best lithography machine company is the Dutch ASML company! ASML's lithography machine occupies 60% of the market share in the mid-range market. Occupy more than 80% of the market share in the high-end market, completely smashing two Japanese lithography machine companies!

And Intel, TSMC. Samsung Group may invest in ASML in the future...

So the question is, the fat is in front of you, what should we do?

Actually, there is no hesitation. Eat and then...

Like Intel, TSMC, and Samsung Group Corporation, any one of their factories will have dozens of lithography machines in the future, if all the factories are added up. I don't know how many lithography machines are needed... I made a rough calculation. For each 50 million US dollars, the profit is more than half. Even if only 100 lithography machines are sold a year, the net profit will not be 2.5 billion US dollars!

It is 1991, semiconductors are not as developed in the future, and the market value of natural production equipment companies will not be very high!

If you want to buy early, you have to spend a lot of money later!

TSMC spent $870 million to get only 5% of the shares, and now $870 million can buy the entire ASML company! ! !

What's more, once the company grows. Has obvious development prospects. Then, if you are not rich, others are willing to accept acquisitions!

Applied Materials is the world's largest supplier of semiconductor equipment and has deep pockets, but it has little to do with lithography machines. Two thousand years later, it wanted to buy ASML, but it was rejected!

Therefore, the acquisition should come sooner rather than later!

Qualcomm has no money to acquire ASML, and Henry can only ask Silicon Valley Electronics Group to acquire it. in addition. There is another advantage for Silicon Valley Electronics Group to acquire, because Silicon Valley Electronics Group has obtained part of the patented technology of Carl Zeiss and can develop its own lenses!

Although Japan's lithography machine is not comparable to ASML, the core component of their lithography machine, the lens, is produced in-house. The lithography machine lens of ASML in the Netherlands is from Carl Zeiss in Germany! ! !

Although the lens technology of Silicon Valley Electronics Group is not as good as that of Carl Zeiss, it can catch up. I believe that increasing research and development efforts will definitely be fruitful!

The benefits of acquiring ASML are enormous.

First, after the acquisition of ASML, the cost of chip production will be greatly reduced. If the scale of Qualcomm's fab exceeds that of TSMC in the future, at least tens of billions of euros can be saved within 20 years! It's just saving money, I'm afraid it makes more money...

Second, the core competitiveness of a fab is production equipment. In the 1980s, all kinds of debugging were required after purchasing the equipment, and it was not possible to start construction immediately when combined with the production process of the factory itself! But in the 1990s, due to the deep cultivation of technology and a complete set of solutions by equipment production companies, basically, after buying equipment, you can start work directly! Therefore, whether the fab is good or not depends on whether the production equipment is good or not. After the acquisition of ASML, the competitiveness of Qualcomm's fab will be in an industry-leading position! The chips produced will be better and cheaper!

Naturally, if you want to produce chips, only a lithography machine is not enough. The lithography machine is only the most important equipment in the chip production process, there are many other equipment, such as etching equipment, measurement equipment, ion implantation equipment, CVD/PVD deposition equipment, silicon wafer cleaning equipment, RTP rapid annealing equipment and many more.

It is really difficult to build the strongest equipment production company!

However, this is a long-term goal!

If all the strongest equipment production companies are merged, then each production equipment is the most powerful, and the established fab is still in the sky? ! !

Just thinking about it, my saliva almost came out!

It's just that the road has to be taken step by step, first to win the most important lithography machine production company, and then to expand and merge other equipment production companies!

Henry did not expect that Qualcomm's release of cdma chips would involve so many problems at once. Mobile phone manufacturers, wafer factories, equipment production companies, and crystalline silicon raw material supply companies, etc., must create a perfect industrial ecological chain. These companies have to be bought!

Mobile phone maker, targeting Nokia.

Equipment production company, targeting ASML company.

What about crystalline silicon raw material supply companies? As for the crystalline silicon raw material supply company, Henry is more inclined to the US MEMC electronic materials company. MEMC Electronic Materials is a market leader in silicon wafers, providing polysilicon feedstock, semiconductor wafers and solar wafers, with production fluidized bed and granular polysilicon technology! And it has a subsidiary SunEdison. SunEdison is also awesome, a leader in solar engineering and solar services, a global solar giant! ! !

In the future, the development of photovoltaic cells and the manufacture of solar cars seems to be no worse than Tesla cars...

(To be continued ~^~)