Super-divine civilization begins with the civilian use of dark energy technology

Chapter 207 231 Chapter [-] The panic of the chip giant

The small press conference of the Star Dragon Mecha was over, and the news of the emergence of the 0.36nm chip suddenly spread throughout the world.

In particular, the news that Pangu Xinhuo planned to sell lithography machines frightened the management of ASMLl.

Their company's main revenue is the sale of photolithography machines. If the photolithography machine market disappears, their company may collapse.

The president immediately convened a high-level meeting within the company.

In a large conference room, the president looked at everyone and asked, "Are you sure?"

"Are the 0.36 chip and photolithography machine real?"

A capable young white man frowned and said, "I searched many connections and finally found out the detailed information."

"The 0.36nm chip is being tested. According to the data obtained so far, the 0.36nm chip is real."

"The chip is real, and the lithography machine is also real."

"In addition, I received news that manufacturers who originally wanted to purchase our lithography machines planned to change their purchase plans and no longer purchase our lithography machines."

The CEO looked ugly and said in a deep voice: "Can't you persuade me?"

"This..." The young man looked embarrassed.

"They haven't officially signed a contract with us yet!"

"There was an intention to buy a photolithography machine from us before, but we couldn't reach a conclusion. I really couldn't persuade him."

The president continued to suggest: "Tell them about the powerful relationship. Pangu Xinhuo has no experience in manufacturing chips before, let alone researching chips. Now that he suddenly announces a new chip, it must be a lie, just like Bangzi Country." Like normal temperature superconductors, it’s just a gimmick.”

He still held a trace of luck in his heart.

The young man looked at the president intently, quite speechless, but he still agreed: "Okay, I will seize the shortcomings of Pangu Xinhuo, vigorously belittle Pangu Xinhuo, and strive to stabilize the buyers and let them return the money." OK to buy our lithography machine.”

Although he said this, he didn't have much hope in his heart.

Those buyers are not fools. For a photolithography machine worth hundreds of millions of dollars, those buyers will of course have to conduct multiple inspections and also need Pangu Xinhuo to provide after-sales service.

Unless Pangu Xinhuo's chip lithography machine has a major problem and cannot stably produce 0.36nm chips, those buyers will definitely buy Pangu Xinhuo's lithography machine.

当然那些买家也不是需要最先进的0.36nm光刻机，他们可能购买1nm、2nm、3nm、4nm、8nm、16nm等规格的光刻机。

After all, the prices of lithography machines of different specifications are also different, and ordinary companies cannot use the extreme performance of 0.36nm chips.

Perhaps their advantage now is that Pangu Xinhuo does not have low-standard photolithography machines.

But this advantage can only be maintained for a few months. As an ASMLl person, he knows the inside story of the industry and can produce 0.36nm lithography machines. Other low-standard lithography machines are naturally not a problem.

Another manager asked: "How about reducing the price of our photolithography machine?"

He did not believe that talking about the shortcomings of Pangu Xinhuo was useful. As long as the 0.36nm lithography machine was genuine, in order to have a good relationship with Pangu Xinhuo, even if there were some problems with Pangu Xinhuo's various specifications of lithography machines, as long as the problem was not major, Those buyers are also happy to cooperate with Pangu Xinhuo.

Because this can establish a good relationship with Pangu Xinhuo.

The technology controlled by Pangu Xinhuo is not only chips and chip lithography machines, but also Baineng graphene batteries.

Most companies need a large number of Baineng graphene batteries more than high-specification chips.

There is actually a bit of an oversupply of chips on the market right now. That’s right. The shortage of chips is an artificial illusion. In fact, many companies will store some chips to ensure that the company’s products will not be short of chips in the next one to two years.

Baineng graphene batteries are different. Baineng graphene batteries are currently in shortage.

Looking at Pangu Xinhuo’s crazy expansion of production lines, and no company objecting to the nine-month supply buffer period, we know that Baineng graphene batteries are in shortage.

For a market economy, it only depends on the supply and demand relationship of a certain commodity.

As long as supply exceeds demand, no matter how advanced your product is, you don’t need it.

Therefore, compared with the wave brought by Baineng graphene batteries, the impact of the wave of 0.36nm chips is still small.

Except for some military equipment that requires the highest specifications, 0.36nm chips are temporarily out of use.

The most popular chip technology on the market now is 5nm chips.

The chips that the public can use in large quantities are 5nm chips, because the most high-tech product in the hands of the public is mobile phones. Now the more advanced technology for mobile phone chips is 5nm chips. For example, the Kirin 9000s chip is a 5nm chip.

The chip performance on other products will be lower than that of mobile phone chips.

Therefore, the new 0.36nm lithography machine is not necessary, but those buyers will still buy lithography machines with other specifications.

Purchasing a photolithography machine is actually a kind of resource exchange. By purchasing Pangu Xinhuo's photolithography machines of various specifications, you can exchange for the right to purchase large quantities of Baineng graphene batteries.

0.36nm chips are not used, but Baineng graphene batteries can be widely used in batteries.

If other companies want to maintain market share, they must have Baineng graphene batteries.

Because recently, when people buy electrical appliances, they will ask, does this appliance use Baineng graphene batteries?

If people hear that the Baineng graphene battery is not used and they are not in urgent need, they will turn around and leave.

Everyone knows that Baineng graphene batteries will be sold in large quantities in a few months. Rather than buying electrical appliances now, it is better to wait a few more months.

So around the world, sales of electrical appliances have dropped significantly.

This has made many electrical appliance companies pay more attention to Baineng graphene batteries.

In order to obtain a large amount of Baineng graphene batteries, many companies have begun to lick Pangu Xinhuo Group.

Now that Pangu Xinhuo Group plans to sell chip lithography machines, other companies will naturally not miss this opportunity.

Most of the companies that use higher-standard chips use batteries, so there are not many companies that buy lithography machines to please Pangu Xinhuo, and they are not limited to China, but the whole world will buy Pangu Xinhuo. Lithography.

After all, Pangu Xinhuo only promised to sell large quantities of Baineng graphene batteries, but Pangu Xinhuo has the power to control the purchase volume of a certain company.

So if you can curry favor, you will naturally want to do so to your death.Even enterprising companies don’t care if their photolithography machines are more expensive. They may spend hundreds of millions to curry favor with them. Anyway, the wool comes from the sheep.

Under such a trend, ASMLll's lithography machine really has no competitiveness.

If their prices remain high, and they cannot compete with Pangu Xinhuo, they will die without a burial place.

Their prices have come down, but they are still competitive to a certain extent. Not all companies can spend as much as they want. Even if some small companies want to curry favor, they will still choose cheap chip lithography machines due to their strength. Not every company can Be confident that you will make back money that exceeds your budget.

The president of ASMLl heard the suggestion of lowering the price. Although he was full of rejection, he hesitated for a while and finally said decisively: "The price can be lowered. As long as 20% of the net profit is guaranteed, then we can negotiate."

In fact, the net profit of 20% is already very low. After all, photolithography machines are not high-volume products.

Everyone in the conference room had ugly expressions, but after thinking for a while, they did not say anything wrong because the company had reached a life-or-death situation.

Yes, it is a matter of life and death. ASMLl is basically a chip research institution. Now they are still researching 2nm. Pangu Xinhuo has reached 0.36nm, which is almost the limit of silicon-based chips.

What can be seen is that ASML[-]'s chip technology will be in the catching-up stage in the next few years, and the sales volume of chip technology and lithography machines will be significantly reduced.

ASMLl alone may not be able to support the research and development of 0.36nm chips and will require capital injections from other shareholders.

But this capital injection is really not cost-effective. Unless strategic technology reserves are needed, consortiums that mainly focus on making money will definitely withdraw their investment.

Making money is the most important thing for the consortium, and the rest is incidental.

Unless someone makes an exchange with the consortium in exchange for the consortium's support for ASMLl, it is normal for the consortium to withdraw its investment.

By lowering prices now, they are just delaying death and trying to find a solution.

An old man in a straight suit asked in a hoarse voice: "Isn't there a better solution?"

As an old man in ASMLl, he will retire next year. He did not expect that he would encounter such a thing in a few months before retirement.

When he heard the news, he almost had a heart attack.

If it weren't for his last shred of sanity, he would be in the ICU now.

Facing the old man's inquiry, the entire conference room fell silent.

The company has led the entire chip industry for decades. The problem now is that its technology is lagging behind. It is not just one or two years behind, but several years or even decades behind.

Technology is lagging behind. How to solve this problem? The common approach of companies is to introduce advanced technology, but this method is of no use to their company.

Then there is only another way, which is to change the market positioning. Since the technology is lagging behind, they will enter the low-end market.

However, photolithography machines are not a commodity that can be sold in large quantities, and their path has been cut off.

After the conference room was quiet for a few minutes, the young man who spoke before spoke again: "I suggest that we give up research on silicon-based chips and focus our research on quantum chips."

As soon as this statement came out, everyone's attention was attracted. Everyone looked at the young man in astonishment. No one immediately spoke against or agreed with it, but they all thought about it seriously.

When talking about quantum chips, we must mention quantum computers.

A quantum computer is a machine that can achieve quantum computing. It uses the laws of quantum mechanics to implement mathematical and logical operations, process and store information.

The principles involved include profound principles such as qubits, state superposition principle, quantum entanglement, and quantum parallelism principle.

Quantum computers use quantum states as memory units and information storage forms, and quantum dynamics evolve as quantum communication and quantum computing based on information transmission and processing. In quantum computers, the sizes of various hardware components reach the level of atoms or molecules. .

A quantum computer is a physical system that can store and process information represented by quantum bits.

Just like traditional computers realize the distinction between 0 and 1 by turning on and off circuits in integrated circuits, and their basic units are silicon wafers (silicon-based chips), quantum computers also have their own basic unit - qubit. .

Qubit, also known as qubit, expresses 0 or 1 through the two-state quantum mechanical system of the quantum.

For example, the two orthogonal polarization directions of photons, the spin direction of electrons in a magnetic field, or the two directions of nuclear spin, the two different energy levels of quantum in atoms, or the spatial mode of any quantum system, etc.

The principle of quantum computing is to evolve the quantum state in the quantum mechanical system.

Quantum computers, like many computers, are composed of a lot of hardware and software. The software includes quantum algorithms, quantum coding, etc. The hardware includes quantum transistors, quantum memories, quantum effectors, etc.

Quantum transistors break through physical energy limits through the high-speed movement of electrons, thereby realizing the switching function of transistors. This kind of transistor can control switching very quickly. Transistors have much stronger computing power than ordinary chips, and they are also adaptable to the environmental conditions used. Very strong, so in future development, transistors are an indispensable part of quantum computers.

Quantum memory is a kind of memory that stores information very efficiently. It can assign a value to any calculation information in a very short time. It is an indispensable part of a quantum computer and one of the most important parts of a quantum computer.

The effector of a quantum computer is a large control system that can control the operation of various components.These components occupy a major position in the development of quantum computers and play an important role.

The so-called quantum chip integrates quantum circuits on a substrate to carry the function of quantum information processing.

Drawing on the development history of traditional computers, after overcoming the bottleneck technology, quantum computer research needs to take the road of integration in order to achieve commercialization and industrial upgrading.

Superconducting systems, semiconductor quantum dot systems, micro-nano photonics systems, and even atomic and ion systems all want to take the road of chipization.

From a development perspective, superconducting quantum chip systems are technologically ahead of other physical systems; traditional semiconductor quantum dot systems are also the target of people's efforts to explore, because after all, the development of the traditional semiconductor industry is already very mature. For example, semiconductor quantum chips are in Once the decoherence time and control accuracy exceed the threshold of fault-tolerant quantum computing, it is expected to integrate the existing achievements of the traditional semiconductor industry and greatly save development costs.

ASMLl also conducts research on quantum chips, but the research progress is very slow.

Quantum chips involve quantum theory and quantum circuit integration, which is too difficult.

Scientists and commercial companies have not developed scalable, commercial, consumer-grade quantum computer prototypes.

The commercialization of quantum technology is still slow.

At present, quantum computers for commercial and even civilian use mainly face four problems that need to be solved.

The first point: Quantum computers can currently only calculate specific program codes and cannot use currently mature software integration solutions.

Second point: Currently, quantum computers are huge and cannot be integrated into a small chassis.

The third point: The initial research and development costs of quantum computers are high, and the cost of a single unit is high, which is far more than that of current computers. Therefore, in terms of cost performance, users will not choose it.

The fourth point: Quantum computers are not stable enough and need to work in a special dust-free environment, so most places do not have operating conditions!

(End of this chapter)