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 must at least have its own fab. First, it can be used as a technology research and development base. Second, the three caves of Guitu, the factories are all established in Asia, if there is something wrong, the factory is sealed, can't the company produce its own chips?

Therefore, it is safest to build a factory in the U.S. base camp and then establish a branch in Asia!

The established wafer fab wants to reach 8-inch specifications, and the technical requirements are very strict. Qualcomm really has to spend a lot of money if it wants to do it in one step! Raising the level of fab specifications mainly depends on production materials, advanced production equipment and production processes!

The materials are okay, and the expensive ones are not exaggerated.

Production equipment is so expensive that people want to vomit blood! !

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

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

The high-end lithography machine is known as the most sophisticated instrument in the world. If you hear that a high-end lithography machine sells for tens of millions of euros, don’t be surprised. This is normal, and it is so expensive! ! The high-end lithography machine can be called the flower of the modern optical industry, and its manufacturing is so difficult that only a few companies in the world can manufacture it. The international brands are mainly Dutch A**L (the lens comes 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, the lithography machine is an enlarged SLR, and the designed integrated circuit pattern on the photomask is printed on the photosensitive material through light exposure to form a pattern. However, the most important thing is the lens, and this lens is not an ordinary lens, 2 meters high and 1 meter in diameter, or even larger! The industry's advanced processes are all based on nanometers. How small the nano is, it's hard to tell with the naked eye anyway! The lithography machine has to engrave lines on the chip... This is really difficult! !

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

And Intel, TSMC, and Samsung Group will all invest in A**L in the future...

So here comes the problem. The fat is right in front of me, what should I do?

Actually, there is nothing to hesitate to say, "I have eaten"...

Like Intel, TSMC. In the future, Samsung Group will have dozens of lithography machines in any of their factories in the future. If all the factories add up, they don’t know how many lithography machines are needed...a rough calculation, 50 million for each one. Euro, the profit is more than half, even if only 100 lithography machines are sold a year, it will not make a net profit of 2.5 billion euros!

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

If you want to buy it early, you will have to spend a lot of money late!

TSMC spent 870 million euros and only got 5% of the shares, and now 870 million euros can buy the entire A**L company! !

What's more, once the company develops, it has obvious development prospects. So, it's not that you have money, others are willing to accept the acquisition!

American Applied Materials is the world's largest supplier of semiconductor equipment, with strong funds, but it has nothing to do with the lithography machine. Two thousand years later. It wanted to buy A**L, but it was rejected!

Therefore, the acquisition should be done sooner rather than later!

Qualcomm didn't have the money to buy A**L, Henry could only ask Silicon Valley Electronics Group to buy it. In addition. Silicon Valley Electronics Group has another advantage to acquire, because Silicon Valley Electronics Group has obtained some of Carl Zeiss's patented technology and can develop its own lenses!

Although Japan's lithography machine is no better than A**L, the core component of their lithography machine-the lens, are all self-produced. And the lithography machine lens of A**L company in the Netherlands. It's from Carl Zeiss, Germany! !

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

The benefits of acquiring A**L are huge.

First, after the acquisition of A**L, the cost of chip production will be greatly reduced. If the scale of Qualcomm's wafer fab surpasses TSMC in the future, at least tens of billions of euros can be saved in 20 years! This is only the money saved, I am afraid that more money will be made...

Second, the core competitiveness of a fab is production equipment. In the 1980s, all kinds of debugging were required after the equipment was purchased, combined with the factory's own production technology, and construction could not be started immediately! But in the 1990s, due to the intensive cultivation of technology and a complete set of solutions by equipment production companies, basically, you can start work directly after you buy the equipment! Therefore, whether the fab is awesome or not depends on whether the production equipment is awesome. After the acquisition of A**L, the competitiveness of Qualcomm's fab will be in a leading position in the industry! The chips produced will be better and cheaper!

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

It is too difficult to build the strongest equipment manufacturing company!

However, this is a long-term goal!

If all the strongest equipment production companies are merged, then every kind of production equipment is the best, and the fabs established are not too big? !

Think about it, the saliva almost came out!

However, UU reading www.uukanshu.com has to go step by step, first take the most important lithography machine production company, and then expand and merge with other equipment production companies!

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

Mobile phone manufacturers are targeting Nokia.

Close to the production company, the target is A**L company.

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

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

(To be continued.)