bookbashuk #514 - Side issues
#514 - Side issues
Jin City.
Ren Zhong was stopped by a middle-aged stranger on his way to the office building.
This middle-aged man was wearing a well-tailored suit, looking like an insurance salesman.
"You must be Boss Ren. I'm from X Core Company. My name is Tu Baishi. Boss Ren, can we talk for a moment?" The middle-aged man said politely.
Ren Zhong never expected someone from the chip industry to come looking for him. He was puzzled. What did this person want from him, acting so mysteriously?
"Alright, come to my office to talk." Ren Zhong was curious about what was going on, so he nodded slightly.
The two went up to Ren Zhong's office.
"Boss Ren, I apologize for the intrusion. Let me reintroduce myself. I am Tu Baishi, the Marketing Director of X Core Company. Tu as in coating, Bai as in black and white, and Shi as in poetry. I'm responsible for the auction of ZL Semiconductor's bankrupt equipment. We heard that Boss Ren has also signed up for the auction. May I ask, what is Boss Ren's intention in purchasing this equipment? Are you planning to reopen a chip foundry?" Tu Baishi asked directly.
"Mr. Tu, does this question affect your company?" Ren Zhong retorted.
"It does have an impact. Of course, I'm not talking about future market competition. Boss Ren, we didn't expect this matter to have variables now. Frankly speaking, we at X Core are a state-owned enterprise. We have conducted a lot of communication and coordination with the creditors of this equipment before. Both parties are limited by procedural compliance and are preparing to complete this transaction through an auction. Before Boss Ren joined this auction, we had been progressing very smoothly. Now that Boss Ren is involved in the auction, there are variables. We want to understand whether Boss Ren wants to reopen a chip foundry or if there are other reasons for participating in this auction?" Tu Baishi didn't beat around the bush and directly stated the reason.
Ren Zhong suddenly understood.
On both ends of this matter, the largest creditor and the buyer, Tu Baishi's company, both have state-owned backgrounds. They reached an agreement to complete this transaction, and from the background situation, there is nothing major wrong with it. After all, they are both state-owned systems. Z Core, as one of the leading chip foundries, can make good use of the production capacity of this set of equipment, and it can also be regarded as solving the problem of the creditor's realization. I just don't know how much they negotiated the price for?
"I will not enter the chip foundry industry," Ren Zhong shook his head and said, "I just want to buy this equipment and hand it over to the Electronic Engineering School of Jin City University of Science and Technology to build a chip processing laboratory."
He didn't hide anything from Tu Baishi and directly stated the reason for this matter.
When Tu Baishi heard this, his eyes widened a little. Spending such a large sum of money just to build a laboratory for the Electronic Engineering School was a bit of a waste.
"Boss Ren, this batch of equipment is a complete set of equipment with an annual output of 360,000 wafers, mainly used for mass production. If you simply do small-batch trial production in the laboratory, you don't actually need so much equipment for mass production," Tu Baishi said. "Frankly speaking, this is too much of a waste of the equipment's potential production capacity. Building a chip trial laboratory doesn't require so much equipment."
Ren Zhong hadn't thought about such a problem. He only knew that this set of equipment could produce 0.13-micron chips, but he hadn't thought about how big the difference between mass production equipment and laboratory equipment was.
"If I didn't participate, at what price would you negotiate the transaction for this batch of equipment?" Ren Zhong asked curiously.
This was a bit presumptuous, equivalent to asking about the other party's core business secrets.
After hearing this, Tu Baishi was a little embarrassed, but after a moment of silence, perhaps in order to sincerely persuade Ren Zhong to withdraw, Tu Baishi gritted his teeth and said softly, "Boss Ren, to be honest, if you didn't participate, this batch of equipment would be traded at a price of 780 million. Frankly speaking, we can also buy better equipment in the international market at this price, but you know that the current situation is that our equipment purchases are a bit unsmooth, so we picked up this set of equipment and prepared to expand our 130nm low-end product line's production capacity. After all, this batch of equipment is brand new, and in terms of production capacity, it is much more efficient than equipment that has been used for more than ten years. If Boss Ren is preparing to build a chip trial laboratory, we can help Boss Ren achieve this goal with less cost, and we can even provide second-hand equipment with 90nm technology."
This was quite sincere.
Ren Zhong was silent for a while, "Mr. Tu, can I tell the professors at the Electronic Engineering School what we said today? After all, I have already promised them to get this set of equipment to build a laboratory. If I withdraw, it would be equivalent to going back on my word."
"No problem, Boss Ren. Frankly speaking, we also have very close ties with the Electronic Engineering School. A large part of our core employees come from them. We are very familiar with Dean Liu Xueren, Professor Chen Shude, and Professor Sun Shanhe. We even have many collaborative research projects," Tu Baishi replied.
Obviously, there were indeed many connections between them.
"Okay, if it's convenient for Mr. Tu, let's go to the Electronic Engineering School together to discuss with Dean Liu, Professor Chen, and Professor Sun how to handle the next matter. Mr. Tu, frankly speaking, I just want to get a complete chip production line for the Electronic Engineering School for teaching research and small-batch chip production. At the same time, I am also very interested in chip production and hope to get all the technical data of this production line, because I am very curious about the details of the chip manufacturing process, especially hoping to understand all the details," Ren Zhong said after thinking for a while.
Suddenly, such a thing popped up. Ren Zhong looked at Tu Baishi and didn't think he was making it up. He didn't think about necessarily interfering in this transaction with two state-owned backgrounds, but the chip laboratory must be done. Z Core, as one of the leading chip foundries in China, probably wouldn't lie about this kind of thing.
Electronic Engineering School of Jin City University of Science and Technology.
Dean Liu Xueren and Tu Baishi were indeed acquainted. After a brief communication, they quickly understood each other's demands.
"Mr. Ren, this is quite a situation. It seems that it's not appropriate to bid for this set of equipment. How about we switch to the second plan and buy a set of second-hand equipment according to our needs?" Professor Liu Xueren knew the weight of Z Core in Dongda. Such an asset transfer arrangement did indeed meet the maximum interests of Dongda. The value of this set of equipment in Z Core's hands would be much greater. After all, their business volume could feed this production line, while the school would leave this set of equipment idle most of the time.
"I have no problem here. Regarding the purchase funds, I've discussed it with Professor Sun. As long as it doesn't exceed 900 million, there won't be any issues. However, I hope to donate equipment rather than cash, and I hope to get this equipment up and running in the school very soon." Ren Zhong didn't care where it was bought. He was more concerned about the time. "Ideally, within a year. But I will review the rationality of the production line combination in advance."
Ren Zhong didn't have any particular opinion on this matter. Although he hadn't anticipated these twists and turns, the fact that they came to him for this matter meant that, both in terms of emotion and reason, Ren Zhong couldn't block their path.
Moreover, now that there is someone like Ren Zhong who looks a bit rich and foolish to pay the bill, Tu Baishi is working very hard to promote his company's second-hand goods.
As for the quality of these things, they can definitely be used. But after more than ten or twenty years of use, if you say there are no problems with the failure rate, basically no one will believe you. However, there is definitely no problem with repairing and patching for small-scale production.
"It's okay, we can also choose retired equipment from other manufacturers to form this production line." Of course, Professor Liu Xueren is also very clear. Although he wants to get this matter done as soon as possible, he won't let Tu Baishi push a pile of junk over.
He has no objection to replacing the main lithography machine with a 90nm lithography machine with a high failure rate, but if the dry etching machine, physical vapor deposition machine, and chemical vapor deposition machine are all junk that needs to be repaired and patched at any time, Professor Liu Xueren is a little unwilling. He would rather buy from other second-hand dealers.
Ren Zhong didn't want to care about these twists and turns. In his mind, it's okay if it's a little junk. On the contrary, there are more opportunities to repair and analyze the equipment, and the information about the equipment will be more detailed.
Ren Zhong even wished that the professors at the School of Electronics would disassemble these machines and equipment from beginning to end and reinstall them. In that case, Ren Zhong would have a more detailed set of information.
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He will have a more intuitive understanding of the composition, dimensions, and materials of these parts.
A complete set of imaging equipment for repairing these devices will obviously be more beneficial for imitating and learning in the Bright Sword world.
But buying new ones is not a big deal. New things have better performance, which is even better for Ren Zhong, who is trying to copy the equipment of the main world.
The auction proceeded as scheduled, and Ren Zhong saw that the auction floor price was indeed reduced to a starting price of 700 million.
Then, after several shills symbolically raised their placards to bid, the Z Core Company representative quickly closed the deal with a price of 780 million.
Ren Zhong was like a spectator who came in with a 100 million deposit and didn't move at all.
Anyway, he had already received Tu Baishi's promise that he would be given a complete electronic version of all the manuals and information for this set of equipment. He would even be given a set of video materials for repairing, debugging, and producing the production line to satisfy Ren Zhong's curiosity about learning chip manufacturing and processing.
Anyway, this set of equipment is already outdated old equipment. For companies like Z Core, confidentiality is for business rivals. For outsiders like Ren Zhong, taking these materials is just for self-entertainment and will not really play in this industry where the initial capital requirements are particularly high.
Therefore, the information on these production processes may be a treasure for competitors, but for a third-party nouveau riche like Ren Zhong, it is just some laughable information.
On the other hand, the School of Electronics regarded the construction of the laboratory as a top priority.
Therefore, Professor Liu Xueren personally served as the leader of the construction team to coordinate various matters, including the laboratory project application in the school. After all, in addition to hardware equipment, the laboratory also needs supporting software, laboratory plant, and staffing. Not to mention anything else, a long production line requires at least seventy or eighty professional workers to operate this production line. In a commercial production line, more than 100 people are needed to achieve high-intensity full-load production.
Don't look at the high degree of automation in chip processing, but it has many links, and many places also need people to keep an eye on it to ensure the performance and quality of the entire production line.
After Ren Zhong confirmed that he would basically bear the equipment purchase cost, the staffing of the laboratory immediately got on the right track. In addition to recruiting from outside, some of the doctoral and master's students who graduated this year could be retained to enter this laboratory.
The equipment list was also quickly confirmed by all parties. Z Core provided more than half of the equipment this time. In addition to the 90nm process lithography machine with a high failure rate, the School of Electronics required that the remaining equipment be stable. They didn't want equipment that broke down every other day!
According to the principles of insurance period and quality reliability, they chose to purchase their retired surplus equipment from domestic chip foundry companies.
The chip foundry business is very competitive now, and many small and medium-sized chip foundries are also having a difficult time. Some old and redundant equipment has to be sold to maintain their livelihoods. The group of professors at the School of Electronics really didn't brag about finding bargains. They know where there are cheap deals in the domestic chip industry!
, (End of this chapter)