As a self-media with AI, cloud computing, communications and other technologies as the core focus, chips are a topic that can never be bypassed. The first time the brain polar body began to pay attention to the chip was in 2017, when Huawei HiSilicon led Apple to release the world's first mobile AI chip Kirin 970; Liang Mengsong joined SMIC to help SMIC begin to break through the key nodes of the 14nm process; the product marketing of major Chinese semiconductor manufacturers in Asia, Africa and Latin America; and the mobile phone manufacturers have laid out the road of self-developed chips.
At the time, I thought this was the beginning of the golden age of Chinese chips, and who knew that the crisis would follow.
The ZTE incident occurred in 2018, and then Huawei was included in the list of US entities in 2019, a large number of Chinese companies and scientific research institutions suffered chip supply cuts, and many excellent Chinese technology products were unsustainable. China's chips, which lack the underlying technology and engineering capabilities, are in the midst of the biggest crisis in history, and they have not been lifted to this day.
In 2020, the team discussed what we can do in the face of this situation. In the end, it was decided that the chip blockade and chip breakthrough in history could be recorded again and again, so that everyone could see what the chip game was all about and what the causal logic behind it was. These contents are titled "Chip Wall Breakers" and have been serialized for a long time on the brain polar body platform.
After that, we hope that after discussing the history of chip warfare, we will return to the reality facing China's chips today. Looking at the chip breakout we are experiencing from the perspective of the external environment and China's power. This new content is integrated with the serial content and revised, and it has become our new book "Chip War: History and Today's Semiconductor Breakthrough" published by Peking University Press.
Just in recent days, the Russo-Ukrainian war has once again made people see the horror of science and technology warfare and chip warfare. Technological blockades and chip supply cuts are never far away, and even we can smell the smoke in the transistors at every moment.
According to the old rules, when the new book is published, I want to talk to you about some things outside the book. Perhaps it is these things that push us to write down this topic that is not easy to write.
Three people, three memories
Whether before writing this book, or to complete the content of the book, we have met and communicated with a large number of semiconductor industry practitioners, as well as people who are interested and curious about the industry. These people, these memories may not be suitable for appearing in books, but they do make me seem to capture something.
A few short stories to tell you.
Story One. A few years ago, I met a German technology journalist at a trade fair. The uncle is more talkative, and later we often communicate some views on technology hotspots by email. When Chinese tech companies were cut off from chips, he told me that the European tech media wasn't excited about it. Because China has the world's largest chip market, or even the only market that can maintain high growth. Where can american chips and European semiconductor raw materials and equipment be sold? Can only go to China.
Therefore, only politicians and netizens will shout to suppress China, and almost no one in the industry approves of fighting evil with China on the chip. Not only does China rely on global semiconductor supplies, but the world also depends on China in semiconductors.
The second story is that we once visited a coal mine in Datong, Shanxi. The doorman master at the mine learned that we were from Beijing's science and technology self-media, and immediately asked fiercely: What happened to Huawei? Does China's chip work in the end? He didn't understand so many technical terms, industrial concepts. But his enthusiasm and eagerness seem to be some kind of strength.
Let's talk about another insider. In order to write this book, we have contacted a lot of semiconductor practitioners and managers. Nine out of ten of them made us eat behind closed doors, but fortunately, we accumulated enough material in the end. One of those friends was a package engineer at a big semiconductor manufacturer who, like everyone else, was very cautious about the problem and was only willing to give the bare minimum of insights.
When we asked him, how do you think China should win this chip confrontation. He thought about it and said very firmly: "If we work more overtime, maybe we will win." ”
The semiconductor practitioners we interviewed were generally like this, silent and lonely.
In fact, semiconductors are a chore, and they need to sit on the bench for ten years. Salaries and promotions are not as fierce as the Internet giants, and if there is no change in the international situation in recent years, there is not even much attention.
The above people, their identities are different, their attitudes are different, their opinions are different, but they obviously have a consensus on Chinese chips. This consensus should be settled with a vessel. In the past two years, Huawei has often said that the biggest force is synergy. So how should we form a synergy about Chinese chips?
This was our first goal in writing this book: to complete a communication.
Understand, before love and hate
When part of "Chip Wars" was serialized, a friend in the industry affirmed our work. He felt that he really needed some content to tell the ins and outs of the chip. Now when it comes to science and technology, everyone is generally concerned about the Internet and the myth of wealth creation, and most young people yearn for it. In the long run, everyone does not understand semiconductors, and chip talents will not be difficult to sustain?
It is difficult for us to really understand what young people think about chips, but it is indeed possible to notice that as chips become a national topic, various extreme speeches are rampant, and even occupy the mainstream of many social platforms.
In general, there are two kinds of extreme chip speech. One is highly depressed, believing that China's development of chips from the bottom is a closed country, which has long been proved to be impossible; the other is strength self-confidence, believing that everything must be done by itself, starting from lithography machines and wafers, and importing a little thing should be used as a defection to the enemy.
However, the development of the semiconductor industry has become entangled to this day, and each link has its own problems and situations. It is impossible to go to any extreme, and no country, region or enterprise can win the race with an extreme semiconductor strategy.
Behind these extreme remarks, the real problem is that semiconductor-related knowledge is too scarce, and the reading threshold is often too high. Why is it that the taxi driver can talk about the international situation incessantly, and know more about the world than the Secretary-General of the United Nations? It was because he was always listening to the radio and the supply of knowledge was plentiful. Then if you want to form an effective consensus on chips, you may also need to improve some of the knowledge supply.
After all, understanding precedes love and hate.
Fortunately, books discussing chips are starting to increase today, but perspectives tend to focus on the problem rather than the cause and effect behind the problem.
"Chip Wars" hopes to switch multiple perspectives and show the game and competition around the chip in a more three-dimensional way.
First, let's go back to history. Chip wars were not created against China, and not only today. Historical memories and experiences can allow us to understand the real chip game.
Second, the book hopes to look at chip problems from multiple perspectives. The game and breakthrough from the dimensions of technology, company, geography and so on, fully show the competitive relationship of chips, rather than just staying at the simple level of the international situation.
Finally, we also hope to integrate the latest situation and history into china's current chip development opportunities and processes. Therefore, we can see the most popular chip keywords in China, such as diversity computing, AI chips, and RISC-V.
Regarding Chinese chips, of course, we want to build IDM one day, we hope that a company, a great scientist will solve the problem in an instant, and some people even hope that a war can change everything. But these are impossible, the chip has no miracles, and it cannot be bet on extremely unlikely events. To win the chip war, we can only rely on endurance, rely on wisdom, and rely on ourselves.
This is our second goal in writing this book: to discuss some common sense.
Chips must not become men's soccer
On the day that the Chinese men's football team lost to Vietnam, Hu Xijin, former editor-in-chief of the Global Times, said on Weibo that China's "national + market" style of play is not only men's football, but also some major scientific and technological research with a high proportion of civilian use today. These major scientific and technological breakthroughs must avoid the trap of men's football.
In my opinion, this passage is almost like reporting the chip's ID number. But this is indeed the case, along with the United States to cut off the supply of chips to some Chinese companies, the country began to vigorously promote the development of the semiconductor industry. Relevant support policies have been introduced, capital has followed the scene, various fancy chip projects have risen from the ground, and various amazing goals have been proposed, making the semiconductor industry very impetuous.
These enterprises, bases, and projects have successively experienced thunderstorm incidents, and a large number of them have also stopped after vigorous publicity has been launched. There are many reasons behind these "chip chaos". For example, it is difficult to regulate the relationship between the government and the market, which eventually leads to the lack of commercial value of the product to cope with acceptance; it involves too many non-technical elements, losing the original intention in the game of capital and power; in order to win the support of the big wish, it is ultimately unable to fulfill the excessive expectations of the outside world.
These problems do have a lot of shadows in men's football. But be aware that men's soccer probably only gets attention when it fails miserably.
Football needs to be calm and sane, not to mention the highest peak of human intelligence, the chip. Around The Chinese chip, there are too many voices outside the technology. So this book does hopefully make some industry-oriented appeals. For example:
1. History has proved time and again that chips have friends to have a future, and it is not feasible to fight against internationalization. In fact, China is the most good at internationalization of the nation, from the Silk Road to the community of destiny, and the difference is the real demand for chips, behind closed doors to make chips is absolutely not OK.
2. What should be given to the market must be handed over to the market. Semiconductor manufacturers need to understand consumer demand, but also need to actively cultivate and guide the market to obtain normalized support. There is a need for positivity, patience, and even a little sacrifice in the process.
3. Cultivating new core technologies requires the joint efforts of the whole industry chain and will slowly mature immature. New technology is the key point of China's chip breaking, which is an industry that will never stand in the way of the new road. Fortunately, we have a lot of opportunities. For example, AI, such as the Internet of Things, such as softwareization, storage and computing integration.
This is our third goal in writing this book: to complete a little shouting.
Openness, disenchantment, win-win, Chinese chips can finally transform.
In "Chosin Lake", Wu Qianli said to his brother Wu Wanli: An egg is ripped open from the outside and is destined to be eaten. If you can peck yourself out of it, it's probably an eagle.
I hope you enjoy this book.
I hope that we will peck ourselves away with China's chips and become eagles.