#头条创作挑战赛 #
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chip
In today's era dominated by information technology, everyone's daily life is inseparable from the company of electronic products. It can be said that their emergence has profoundly changed the pace of social development. However, do you know that even the most ordinary mobile phone seems to have the high-end technology behind it that many countries are also looking for. So what exactly are they after? Today we will uncover the mystery behind the chip known as the "brain of electronics".
The chip war and Huawei
What can a pinch of sand do? Is it to build a house? Or is it used to repair the road? But if I say that a little bit of sand can be used to make chips, it will inevitably cause laughter. However, the reality may be somewhat different from the idea.
sand
It is these most inconspicuous sands that turn out to be raw materials for chips! This is quite unexpected. If you want to know the transformation process of small sand, please read on. First, the sand is heated, and under the action of high temperatures, people will extract high-purity silicon crystals from them.
Chip production line
It is then processed by a mold to obtain a silicon ingot. It is then transversely cut to make extremely thin wafers. At this time, the prototype of a chip was successfully produced. After that, it is sent to a lithography machine for further processing, from photoresist coating to ion implantation, and goes through about 5 very delicate and complex production steps. Finally, after the actual machine inspection test, this is considered complete.
High-precision manufacturing process
Don't look at the short space describing the manufacturing process. But the extremely high-precision manufacturing process of chips still plagues humans. Up to now, no country in the world can produce chips independently. Even powerful first-world countries like the United States cannot do anything without European technical support.
trade war
The Sino-US trade war some time ago can be described as a riot. In the face of the rising dragon of the East, the US imperialism fears that its status as the hegemon of the world will be threatened. Therefore, they do everything to suppress Chinese manufacturing, but how can China be so easily defeated?
In many aspects of the trade war, the situation in the United States is unclear. Seeing themselves falling into the embarrassment of the downwind, they really made a killer move and started a "chip war".
In May 2019, the United States, together with allies such as Japan and the Netherlands, issued a notice to China. In the name of endangering national security, restrict the export of chips to Chinese companies. One of the most important companies is Huawei.
Huawei
As a homegrown Chinese company, Huawei has been growing steadily in recent years. Its achievements in the field of telephone communication are already many ahead of its peers. And what worries the United States the most is that Huawei has begun to develop its own chips, and even develop its own mobile phone system. If it really succeeds, the technological advantage of the United States over China will be lost.
Military communications
However, what is more shocking is yet to come, Huawei's high-end technology is not only at the civilian level. If it is slightly modified and utilized, it can become an independent military communication system, and if it is applied to our defense industry, the ideal of comprehensively surpassing the United States will gradually become a reality. This is also an outcome that they do not want to see anyway.
chip
Therefore, curbing Huawei's development has become the primary task for the United States to win the chip war. Qualcomm of the United States, as the leading bird, took the lead in launching the offensive. They refused to provide Huawei with their own 5G chips. Immediately after, Google also intervened, and they terminated their cooperation with Huawei, resulting in a significant reduction in the share of Huawei mobile phones in overseas markets.
Sanction Huawei
Huawei's loss of the support of American companies is like an eagle breaking its wings, and the research and development of its own Kirin chip has come to an end. At this time, the chip war seems to be the upper hand of the United States, so who can save Huawei and help us save this game?
How hard it is to make chips
The chip industry has always been our weakness, and in the face of the imposing appearance of US imperialism, how should we fight back? A Taiwanese company has something to say at this time.
TSMC
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., Ltd., he also has a more popular name called "TSMC". It is the world's largest chip semiconductor manufacturing company today, and one of the most important enterprises in Taiwan.
Apple chips
It is the main supplier of Apple's chips, and Foxconn two groups are called, "domestic Apple manufacturing double". It also makes massive amounts of chips for tech giant Intel. Seeing that some people here may ask: "We have such a powerful company in our hometown, why has it been pressed under the feet of the United States?" ”
OEM assembly line
This question can be somewhat complicated to explain. Although TSMC looks like a beautiful scenery. But in essence, like Foxconn, it is just a foundry. The lithography machines, chip engineers and semiconductor production lines in their company are all imported.
TSMC CEO Zhang Zhongmou
A few years ago, they were also laughing at themselves: "There are 1.4 billion people in China, and they can't even make a small chip!" Nowhere between the lines is sadness and sadness. However, the road of self-research of chips is easy to talk about! A high-end chip may be much more difficult to manufacture than a nuclear weapon!
A lithography machine that is extremely difficult to manufacture
The first thing to overcome is the core equipment - lithography machine. On top of this, Continental is also developing machines that support the 28nm process, but the former is not up to the task even if it is built. At present, the manufacturing process of mainstream chips often requires the lithography process to be below 14 nanometers, which shows that the gap between the continent is still very large.
brain drain
The second is to solve the problem of talent. Although there are thousands of high-quality students in the motherland, their outflow is very serious. This is also a point that Americans have always criticized us. We may be surprised to see Caucasian people on the street, and we can't help but exclaim: "Look! Alien. ”
CEO of NVIDIA
It is not unusual to see yellow-skinned faces on the streets of the United States. The world's two largest graphics card companies, Nvidia and AMD, currently have CEOs of Chinese-American. According to statistics, about 20,000 Chinese work in Silicon Valley. If these figures are not straightforward enough, then let me tell you the fact that 81% of Tsinghua students choose to work in the United States.
CEO of AMD
People say that working abroad is well paid. Studying abroad has a high gold content. It can be seen that among the high-achieving population, their outflow has become a common phenomenon. These two points are very serious problems not only for TSMC, but also for our entire country. But even with the difficulties ahead, the mainland is still trying to catch up.
The population is huge
With its strong population base, China is a big customer of many foreign chip companies. Our large demand for chips is also the foundation of the survival of those companies. Although the U.S. offensive is stressing us a lot, they are not feeling good at the moment.
President of ASML
Previously, Japan and the Netherlands, which united with the United States, in the long-term chip war, because of their small size, their shortcomings were quickly exposed. Losing the Chinese market, their revenue has greatly decreased, and the CEO of ASML, an old Dutch lithography machine company, also said: "The security problem in the American population is nothing more than that their hegemonic position is threatened." ”
Therefore, if the chip war continues, it will undoubtedly be a defeat for both sides, the world chip market environment has become darker, and we have a chance to turn the tide of the increasingly uncertain situation?
Heavy responsibilities
In order to save the decline of the domestic chip industry, the real savior is only ourselves. The topic returns to Taiwan Electromechanical again, although there are many practical factors that prevent him from embarking on the road of mass production and self-research, but the so-called technology industry has a specialty, and TSMC has been moving closer to this aspect in recent years.
Sino-US chip war
Since the chip wars go on endlessly. The United States hopes that its chips can be as free from ties with Chinese companies as possible. In this way, we can be completely killed in this war without gunsmoke. Presumably, TSMC has long guessed this idea.
TSMC Enterprise
They clearly know that even if the current TSMC is very large, but only one "foundry" label of the enterprise can never do the characteristics. Therefore, in recent years, they have also been hiring a large number of domestic and foreign technical talents. I want to give the US side a dismount
TSMC chips
The effort paid off, and in the second half of 2019, they developed their own chip with 7nm technology and named it "this". The basic parameters of this small chip have been benchmarked with many well-known high-end chips in the industry, and it can be said that it is not inferior to its own old-timers.
press conference
But sadly, at the same time, TSMC also declared at their press conference: "This chip is only a conceptual product, and it will not be put into production and use in the future", so why is this?
benefit
As we all know, businessmen are profit-oriented and customer-oriented. Simply put, TSMC's current main business is still in the field of foundry. If you really put your own chips into commercial use, isn't it equivalent to grabbing business with your customers one by one? But then again, what is the purpose of such a conceptual product?
Chip Wars
That's their wisdom. TSMC's purpose is to prove to foreign countries that it has the ability to design independently. In layman's terms, they want the United States, which has gradually lost its mind in the chip war, to see that the success of our self-developed chips may only be a matter of time.
Although the research and development process of this chip is definitely completed with the help of imported high-end instruments, it also means that we are not for nothing, and the United States wants to create a complete monopoly in the chip field, which is really a fantasy.
China Chip
Yes, we not only TSMC and Huawei, in addition to MediaTek, Xiaomi, UNISOC and many other companies, although now they do not have the strength to match the strength of American companies, but as mentioned above with the birth of the domestic 28nm lithography machine, we have now passed the stage from "no" to "have", as long as step by step, slowly explore, help each other. In the baptism of years, we are bound to break through technical barriers and make Chinese-made chips famous all over the world.