Airplanes need airports to take off, and chips need markets to take off.
Fortunately, we have a large enough market,
Unfortunately, our talent and technology are not ready
The previous article we talked about "SMIC" and the domestic substitution of the semiconductor industry seems to have aroused the interest of all Xinghai intelligence officers. In the background, many friends also told the director a lot of views on the development of the domestic chip industry.
▲ Your TSMC is very good, but unfortunately the next second is mine
According to my cursory glance at the Director- of the Bureau, one view is the most common, and that is:
Occupation of TSMC !!!
Seeing these five big words, there seemed to be such a scene in front of my eyes:
One day, we occupied TSMC's headquarters factory in Hsinchu and "seized" dozens of lithography machines that we now crave and are out of reach.
"TSMC" was also renamed "Cimc" (China Integrated Circuit Manufacturing Co., Ltd.).
Since then, we have mastered the world's most advanced chip manufacturing equipment and the ability to produce the world's most cutting-edge chips.
It's a bold, wild idea, but unfortunately, it's also unrealistic. The director feels that the original intention of everyone to "occupy TSMC" is good, and we need more people who care about the future development of the country and the nation. But the subtext of this idea is like saying, "We're missing TSMC," and we've all heard the same idea— "There's a lack of a programmer." ”
One thing to say, asML lithography machines and other devices are of course good things that we can't get now.
But what we lack is far from these.
What we are missing
To be honest, we lack talent and technology, and the two cannot be separated.
Talents study technology, technology forms equipment, and equipment trains talents. It's a closed loop. We don't have advanced technology now because our semiconductor talent training is broken, and we have lost the best period for cultivating chip experts. Drawing the point, our semiconductor talent training is "broken", not nothing.
In 1956, we made the first crystal transistor, 9 years behind the United States.
In 1962, we built the first generation of silicon planar transistors.
In 1965, research institutes in Beijing, Shijiazhuang and Shanghai all produced their own integrated circuit products.
In the same year, Tsinghua University built the Type 65 contact lithography machine.
In 1977, JGK-3 semi-automatic lithography machine was born in Shanghai.
In 1982, theKHA-75-1 lithography machine of the 109th factory of the Chinese Academy of Sciences was born, and the performance was only 4 years behind the most advanced Japanese Canon in the industry.
......
▲In those years, our lithography machines did not lag too far behind others
Although it was poor at that time, the Chinese semiconductor industry at that time had a fantastic start. Internationally, we are only behind the United States, basically in sync with Japan, far ahead of South Korea and Europe. TSMC, on the other hand, will have to wait another 5 years before it is born.
More importantly, at the most tense time of the "Cold War", we had a complete industrial chain from monocrystalline silicon wafer manufacturing to equipment production to integrated circuit processing. This shows that it is not impossible to catch up with the entire Western industrial chain with a country's internal industrial chain.
To have technology and technology, to have talents and talents, and then, there is no then, don't ask, ask is China's integrated circuit silent thirty years.
What the Director knew was what happened later. At the beginning of the 21st century, when TSMC, IBM and Intel began to think about upgrading the dry lithography machine to become the mainstream infiltration lithography machine, our dry lithography machine had just been established.
It's not that we don't know how important semiconductors are, and it's not that we haven't cultivated semiconductor talents, it's just broken.
Good end, how did it break?
Helpless discontinuity
In the 1980s, the mainland's economy was painfully backward.
When Americans traveled on jetlines and Japanese traveled on the "Shinkansen," we were even using steam locomotives. People are poor and short-minded, and they have become the biggest problem of scientific research, and they have also become the leaves that hinder their vision.
▲ In the 1980s, Americans had Boeing 747s, Japanese had Shinkansen,
We only had green-skinned trains
Taiwan's success depends on favorable external conditions and on its own hard work. In the 1980s, Taiwan seized the tail of the world semiconductor market development wave and Western technology transfer and boarded the train at the last minute.
And because everyone understands the reasons, Taiwan can better obtain European and American technology than the mainland, and it is easier to be recognized by the European and American markets, for the early TSMC, it is the recognition of the American Intel that makes it stand firm in the industry. At that time, Taiwan also had a clear understanding of this opportunity, and invested a lot of money in the semiconductor industry, and even the school's education policy also shifted, focusing on cultivating semiconductor talents. Holding the advanced technology of Europe and the United States, and free access to the market, and it also attaches great importance to talent training and capital support, the rise of Taiwan semiconductor is only a matter of time.
Our situation is different.
First of all, we must admit one fact:
The chip is not an atomic bomb after all.
The atomic bomb is a blade mounted on the neck, and if the atomic bomb cannot be solved, it will always face nuclear blackmail, and the waist pole will not be able to stand up straight, which is a matter of life and death. Chips, on the other hand, are like the bank's collection slips, although sooner or later they will come one day, but before the bank comes to the door, the days are too peaceful.
A typical example is Russia, although there is no high-tech industry to sell, can only rely on the sale of natural gas to survive, but with the nuclear warhead inherited from the Soviet Union, it is enough for Russia to give Europe and the United States a face in many things.
▲Intercontinental ballistic missiles at the Russian military parade
In the 1980s, we not only had to face the fancy blockade and embargo of the Wasenal Agreement and The Baui, but also solve domestic economic, people's livelihood and national defense problems.
On the one hand, the chip era that came more than a decade later, on the one hand, there are imminent economic problems, on the other hand, there are future high-tech industries, and on the other hand, there are billions of people living on a tight budget...
Any rational decision-maker knows how to make a trade-off.
That's why we can't do chips when we drop our pants like the atomic bomb – we have more pressing problems to solve, there are too many troublesome things, and there are no chips at all.
"Trade and Industry" VS "Technology industry and trade": the choice of technological development route
"Trade, industry and technology" and "technology industry and trade" are abbreviations for the priority of the two development routes.
The priority of the former is "trade-processing-technology", that is, the original accumulation is carried out through agency and distribution, and then the product research and development and sales are carried out. The latter, on the other hand, "technology-processing-trade", first conducts technology research and development, and then produces products and organizes sales.
Now we have enough financial resources, but we are distressed by the backwardness of technology and the monopoly of foreign countries, and we are eager to obtain technology. But if we stand in the historical background of the 80s, what we need most is money. Therefore, we chose the development route of "trade and industry technology" that year.
Many people think that it is precisely because "trade and industry technology" does not attach importance to technology and attaches excessive importance to profits, so that China's advanced technology has encountered a cold winter, but this is actually biased. The two routes, in fact, have the same destination. Technology is the ultimate goal of "trade and industry", technology is also the initial driving force of "technology industry and trade", and no route ignores the importance of technology.
In fact, history has given the answer, because Huawei, which is in the world mobile phone market today, is the representative of "trade and industry technology". Huawei initially only did the switch trade and sales of switches, is a 100% trading company, but Ren Zhengfei has the foresight, since 2001 began to do technology, research and development of chips, so in the field of communication equipment has achieved great success, and very timely into the mobile phone market. So there is today's Huawei.
This is a very clear "trade-processing-technology" route.
In fact, until 1985, our semiconductor technology was almost the same as that of Europe, the United States and Japan, but at the end of the 1980s, a large number of Chinese companies that developed according to "trade, industry and technology" went astray. The ultimate goal of "trade and industry" is to achieve technological leadership, and trade is only a means of obtaining raw capital. However, many enterprises at that time were addicted to the "fast money" brought by "trade" and "processing".
Yes, since you can make a lot of money by relying on distribution and agency, why do you still need to engage in research and development?
This attitude of abandoning "self-reliance, hard work" coupled with the irrationality of some policies at that time required scientific research institutes and factories to "take responsibility for their own profits and losses", so what we saw was a variety of "diversified operations" phenomena unique to that era: radar factories began to make televisions, nuclear factories made ice cream, researchers engaged in scientific research during the day, sold burnt cakes after work, and Wuhan Radio No. 3 Factory, which was originally able to manufacture lithography machines, switched to selling snacks, but eventually went bankrupt...
When people are running for life, they have no time to look up at the stars.
▲Ice cream from the Nuclear Industry 504 factory
As a result, the gap between us and others has changed from 4 years to 20 years.
Talent Generation: The Can't Help but "Sugar-Coated Shells"
Compared with those enterprises that have deviated from the "trade and industry technology", the more brutal blow is the "sugar-coated shell" of foreign advanced products.
Tell a simple story.
We all know that the design of the chip was originally hand-drawn. But as the circuits in chips became more complex, people began to use computer-aided design. Let the computer replace people to check those irrational places in the design, the designer only needs to operate on the key nodes, this technology, is the electronic design automation of electronic design automation, abbreviation: EDA.
▲ "Batumi", abbreviated COCOM,
The picture shows the research topic of foreign scholars on Batumi
The history of foreign research on EDA is a long time, even back to the 60s, "Batumi", the full name is "Paris Coordinating Committee", this organization dedicated to the management of the technology embargo has been very strict control of EDA technology for a long time, prohibiting the mainland from obtaining this technology.
In 1991, the domestic panda EDA system came out, which not only had strong performance, but also won awards in international competitions. Well, coincidentally, "Batumi" suddenly removed EDA from the embargo list at this time. Subsequently, the American EDA products entered the Chinese market, so the "panda" really became a rare animal, disappeared from the mainstream of the industry, and was replaced by a variety of European and American software.
The popularity of European and American software has brought about an impact far more than the disappearance of a domestic brand. European and American software is used in enterprises, and what is taught in schools is naturally the same set of things in Europe and the United States. As a result, we are tied to Western standards and compete with the West in the rules of the game set by the West.
At the same time, domestic enterprises are gradually withering, the semiconductor industry is shrinking sharply, and there are fewer and fewer opportunities for the transformation of research results into productivity in schools. Gradually, academia is academic, engineering is engineering, SCI released a lot, but there are not many technologies that finally land.
Luckily, we still have the treasure island of Taiwan. After 2000, with Zhang Rujing, Liang Mengsong and other industry tycoons coming to the mainland to serve the motherland, the local governments of the mainland naturally "smelled the strings and knew the meaning of ya", opened up very rich conditions, and attracted a large number of Taiwan semiconductor talents to the mainland. Since then, China's semiconductor researchers have gradually increased.
▲ Liang Mengsong, who helped Samsung achieve a breakthrough,
SMIC Deluxe Packages are now added
According to the "White Paper on the Development of China's Integrated Circuit Industry 2018-2019", by this year, the mainland needs 720,000 integrated circuit-related talents, and now the mainland has only 400,000 practitioners, and the gap has reached 320,000.
Ten years of trees, a hundred years of tree people. The cultivation of talents is the most taboo to "work hard and go fast". Since we have missed the best period of development, now we have no choice but to calm down and "make up lessons" in a down-to-earth manner. The suppression of the United States has awakened us and made us realize the importance of chips from top to bottom. For the cultivation of talents, from a certain point of view, this is also a blessing.
The Director has said before that whatever the West blocks and restricts us, such as missiles, aircraft, and navigation systems, we can do well ourselves. Whatever the West has taken the initiative to open up to us, such as cars, is often a mess. We often don't die in difficult circumstances, but we always stop breathing in the gentle countryside, which is probably human nature.
After all, doing scientific research is not about making quick money.
The contrast between the chip industry outside and our chip industry is like a bully and a scum. The school bully has a good life, starting from the addition, subtraction, multiplication and division of primary school, and working hard all the way to high school. The scum of the school is poor, from middle school to start serious study, daytime addition and subtraction multiplication and division, at night to learn calculus and organic chemistry, from time to time also by the bully and the small partners of the bully beat. The most important thing is that the scum still wants to enter a prestigious university with Xueba in this case.
Poverty is the original sin of China's failure to catch the chip train
In my eyes, the most fundamental reason why we failed to catch the car was that we were too poor.
The first wave of development in the semiconductor industry was driven by home computers. The most obvious indicator is that in the 90s and 00s everyone was talking about computer chips, full of "Pentium", "Core" and "dual core", but there were really few people in the 90s and early 00s talking about "HiSilicon Kirin" and "Qualcomm Snapdragon", because you can't discuss something that didn't exist at that time.
It can be seen that the biggest driving force for the development of the semiconductor industry is the market, without the contribution of hundreds of millions of consumers in the market, who will share the research and development costs of up to billions of dollars? Behind the rise of ASML was the huge investment of TSMC, Intel, IBM and Samsung, and the mainland semiconductor companies at that time had no money to fund ASML research and development activities.
In the '80s and '90s, we were poor, we had no money to spend, and home computers were a rarity until 2000. In 1995, TSMC's market value was $14.5 billion, while the mainland's foreign exchange reserves were less than $80 billion at the time.
With our spending power at the time, it was impossible to support the giants that needed to invest billions of dollars a year. Even if we got on the bus at that time and gave birth to many chip companies, who will pay for their research and development?
At the beginning of 1995, the mainland's foreign exchange reserves were only 54.7 billion US dollars.
Approximately equivalent to three TSMC...
Some people may say that the domestic market can't afford to buy, we can make money by exporting chips. But the problem is that Intel, the strongest king in the chip field in the 90s, took the IDM route of its own design, self-manufacturing, and self-testing, not to mention the manufacturers in the mainland, even TSMC could not beat it.
Occupying TSMC will not help either
At this point, we can return to the topic at the beginning of the article - is it really useful to occupy TSMC?
Occupy TSMC, can we have a mature team of engineers?
No, because many of TSMC's employees have foreign status, and it is also a company with a strong international background, with employees from all over the world. It's not difficult to occupy TSMC's factory, and it's easy to get those lithography machines, but how do you keep those employees from all over the world? Is it by force?
Occupy TSMC, can you get the most advanced technology in the industry?
No, the production of chips includes hundreds of processes, thousands of devices, and countless patents.
TSMC is just a Foundry, a wafer foundry. Upstream of it, it is scattered around the world, responsible for the manufacture of monocrystalline silicon wafers, as well as companies responsible for the development of various equipment, and downstream, it is also scattered around the world responsible for packaging and testing manufacturers. We can occupy TSMC, we can get the lithography machine that we can't get now, but we can't get the upstream equipment manufacturing technology.
Then again, even if TSMC gets it, even if tens of thousands of employees up and down TSMC volunteer to support China's semiconductor development, if the US "long-arm jurisdiction" ban is still in effect, then TSMC, which uses a lot of American technology, still cannot produce chips for Huawei "in the bright light". In fact, even SMIC in Shanghai, due to the use of American technology, made it clear in the prospectus that it was "temporarily unable to provide services for some users."
According to the current situation, if you want to save Huawei and save the domestic chip industry, there are only two situations:
First, the U.S. lifted the ban or TSMC obtained a U.S. license.
Second, Chinese companies have opened up the entire industrial chain, from silicon mines to lithography machines, and we have packaged the entire line.
The former depends on the attitude of the United States,
There's always something to say about sniffling.
The latter is as difficult as ascending to heaven,
But it has the hard core of revolutionary heroism.
What's more, we now have a huge market,
That's the biggest motivation.
End
Writing this, the director suddenly remembered the story he had seen before.
After the end of World War II, the United States and the Soviet Union began to divide the "scientific and technological heritage" of Nazi Germany, and the United States had German scientists, in addition to Einstein, Bohr, and Von Carmen, who came to the United States before the war, and von Braun, who was "captured" by the US military. The Soviets captured nazi machine tools. What happened next, we all know.
From left to right: Einstein, Von Carmen, Bohr, von Braun
The point of this story is the importance of people. Tools are only tools, and the real decisive thing is people.
"Openness and inclusiveness" is the main theme of our times, to catch up with the world level with China's supply chain is by no means to "close the country", but to adhere to "self-reliance" at all times in an open environment, and to make the entire industrial chain bigger and stronger, just like we once did in aerospace and high-speed rail.
Today, we who are worried about China's chips will be angry, disappointed, and will think of "occupying TSMC".
But please don't forget that more than 50 years ago,
When we were still poor,
Pioneers of Chinese semiconductors,
It has already made a supply chain based on China
Catching up with the world's advanced level has been a feat.
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