Chapter 417 AMAT's Doubts

The world's leading semiconductor equipment company is an unknown company called Applied Materials Inc., headquartered in Santa Clara, Silicon Valley, California.

1AT has reached the top and become the world's largest semiconductor equipment company, and this glorious honor has been retained by it to this day.

The company is the largest equipment, service and software provider in the semiconductor and related industries, providing manufacturing equipment, services and software for semiconductors, displays and related industries. Although the market value is only "only" more than 60 billion US dollars, and the sales revenue in 1017 of the Xia Yinxing calendar is "only" only 14.5 billion US dollars, it has more than 18,400 employees and more than 11,900 patented technologies, which means that on average more than four new patents are applied for every day, and 90 branches are set up in 17 countries and regions.

Moreover, AMAT is also the world's top nano-manufacturing technology company, and its products and services have covered atomic layer deposition, physical vapor deposition, chemical vapor deposition, etching, rapid thermal processing, ion implantation, measurement and detection, cleaning and other production steps.

Although its own reputation is not big in the worldview of netizens in countries like Daxia, its customers are well-known.

Manufacturers such as Hanxing Electronics, TSMC, UMC, Intel, and Xiaxin Technology are all purchasing and using a large number of AMAT's equipment, materials, and services. As the focus of the semiconductor industry shifts to Asia, AMAT has been the largest supplier of TSMC, the world's largest wafer foundry, for many years.

Advanced semiconductor manufacturing equipment, nano-manufacturing technology solutions and subsequent software upgrades, its products are mainly used in new energy batteries, LED displays, integrated circuits, solar panels, and tailor-made production improvement technologies, software systems and after-sales services for customers.

Moreover, AMAT has a long history with Daxia.

It is the first foreign-funded semiconductor equipment supplier and leading enterprise in material engineering solutions to enter Daxia. It has not only donated money to universities and institutions, but also "provided valuable high-end jobs."

The semiconductor industry chain is divided into upstream chip design, such as Xiawei's HiSilicon Kirin, Qualcomm Snapdragon chips, Intel Core and other manufacturers' chip design solutions. Then comes the main business of Xiaxin, TSMC and other companies, midstream chip manufacturing and downstream chip packaging.

The investment in midstream chip manufacturing equipment accounts for about 70% to 80% of the investment in semiconductor production lines. It is the basis for completing wafer manufacturing and packaging and testing, and plays a connecting role.

As mentioned in the previous article, the semiconductor industry has a highly monopolistic characteristic, and this detailed classification of semiconductor equipment is even more so.

The technical threshold is high and customer stickiness is strong. According to SEMI statistics, the sales of the top 10 semiconductor equipment companies in the world account for nearly 80%, and the market share of the top 3 of some core equipment such as lithography machines and etching equipment exceeds the monopoly of companies such as AT and ASML.

The art industry, entertainment service industry, and food industry are a hundred flowers blooming and a hundred schools of thought contend, and the elimination rate is very high. Sometimes the wind direction changes, and the industry leader the day before will be forced to go bankrupt the next day, so their monopoly is the purpose, not the ability.

However, the monopoly of the semiconductor industry is a manifestation of technical strength. I can do 5nm, you can't do it, so all high-end orders must be given to manufacturers who have mastered 5nm foundry technology.

Take a wafer fab invested by Xiaxin Technology three years ago with a scale of 10 billion yuan as an example. 70% of the investment in the wafer fab was used to purchase equipment. Among the wafer manufacturing equipment, photolithography machines, etching machines and thin film deposition equipment are the core equipment, accounting for about 30%, 25% and 25% of the wafer manufacturing process respectively.

But such a fierce company has been scratching its head frequently in the past two years: "Xiaxin has expanded vigorously, why don't the orders placed with us increase? Although we cannot give you the most advanced due to certain terms, you used to beg for second- and third-tier products. Why don't you buy second- and third-tier products now?"

Fortunately, Xiaxin is a listed company. Some orders can be concealed for a while, but not forever.

After the financial reports for the first and second quarters of this year came out, AMAT's management team keenly realized that Xiaxin had placed a lot of orders with a company called Jiuzhou Technology.

Deposition equipment, etching, cleaning, flattening equipment, ion implantation equipment, process control equipment and other equipment are among them.

With this clue, they made further progress and found a place that made them feel even more strange through more secretive means.

The equipment provided by Jiuzhou Technology was purchased from some foreign companies as second- and third-tier products of AMAT, and then sold to Xiaxin Technology.

This is really strange, and even makes no sense.

Because the equipment obtained by Jiuzhou Technology is not restricted equipment, Xiaxin Technology can directly place orders by itself, saving time, effort and money.

Even the chief engineer of AMAT said at the meeting: "Even if it relies on these second-tier equipment, even if it is adjusted to give full play to the most powerful performance of these equipment, Xiaxin Technology can only have a process foundry capability of more than 10nm."

So this is very strange.

Where did Xiaxin Technology's 7nm foundry process technology and equipment come from?

The lithography machine was provided by Pudong Microelectronics, and these foreign companies do not know the specific situation. But in Xiaxin's 7nm process, where did this level of flattening equipment, ion implantation equipment, process control equipment and other high-precision equipment come from?

In the newly built factory of Xiaxin Technology, researchers sent by Jiuzhou Technology are explaining the technology and related equipment.

"You also know that deposition equipment uses physical and chemical processes in the gas phase to form functional or decorative metal, non-metal or compound coatings on the surface of the workpiece. Ten years ago, only one layer of atoms could be deposited at a time. Three years ago, AMAT adopted new technology and could only deposit three layers. However, after our modification, the number of layers that this equipment can deposit has exceeded the original design.

There is also an ion implanter. We also use the Varian VIISTA series products produced by AMAT, but the process used is more high-precision and low-energy. , high concentration dopants are quickly injected into the entire wafer surface, and the technology of the product injection system is deployed on the universal VIISTA platform. This versatility helps to shorten the time of the first silicon crystal and improve the production efficiency of the application.

In terms of operation, except for the technical difficulties we explained before, the others can be corrected at any time by the intelligent auxiliary system. Of course, I recommend that you wear the SR1 glasses dedicated to work. Its augmented reality technology is matched with our company's production equipment and process flow, which allows users to more intuitively see which process or data setting is most likely to be wrong after the system deduction. "

I still wrote down these IDs!

There are omissions in the hand-typed ones, and I will continue next time.

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There was a charming voice behind him, and Lu Ming looked in response. A beautiful lady with elegant temperament and proud character appeared in his sight among the green bamboo forest.

It must be admitted that when Lu Ming saw his soft rice for the first time, he had a wolf howling in his heart.

But when he knew that his wife was a "girl" who was only more than 900 years old, the wolf's howl instantly turned into the bleating of sheep.

A woman three years older than her husband will hold a gold brick, a woman thirty years older than her husband will hold a kingdom, a woman three hundred years older than her husband will hold an elixir, and a woman three thousand years older than her husband will hold an elixir.

It is said that a woman three years older than her husband will hold a gold brick, a woman thirty years older than her husband will hold a kingdom, a woman three hundred years older than her husband will hold an elixir, so what should a woman three or three hundred years older than her husband hold?

Lu Ming now knows what to hold, hold the air.

From the engagement to the present happy marriage, he has not even held hands...

However, the regret should not be lingered for long, he smiled at the beauty with panda eyes.

"My wife, did you sleep well?"