Chapter 2390 It’s Settled

Feng Yiping wants to do everything, which makes Academician Zhou and others very happy. China's chip industry needs someone as ambitious and powerful as Feng Yiping to participate.

Feng Yiping's strength is not only that he is the richest man in China and Asia, but also has sufficient funds. He does not need to rely on state support at all. His own financial resources are enough to support him in his own related research and development.

It is even more reflected in his influence.

In chip research and development, one is funds, and the other is, of course, people.

And Feng Yiping is undoubtedly a convincing person.

If it were other people like Zhang San, Li, Si, Wang and Er Mazi, they would go to Japan, South Korea, Europe and the United States to recruit well-known talents in the chip field. Even if they carry big bags of cash, it would be difficult to achieve their goals.

For high-end people in this industry, money is not their primary need. In other words, I am doing well at Samsung and Intel, why should I follow you?

Even if you can give me 10 times my current annual income a year now, who knows whether your company will still exist in 10 years?

And with Feng Yiping's reputation and achievements, the people he wants to recruit will definitely not have such concerns.

However, Feng Yiping wanted to do everything, which made Academician Zhou and others a little worried.

Chip research and development is really not a simple project. Not only the technical threshold is very high, but the investment threshold is also very high.

Roughly speaking, the threshold for chips mainly includes algorithm design, material technology, processing technology, packaging and testing, etc. Not to mention other aspects, the cost of building a semiconductor factory with the latest process is now approaching US$4 billion!

Even around the world, not many people can afford such an investment.

And this cost is still growing rapidly. Let’s say that 10 years ago, the investment was only over one billion US dollars. Academician Zhou estimates that in another ten years, it is not unimaginable that the cost will exceed 10 billion US dollars.

Of course, in this regard, you can find OEMs, but even for OEMs, the related costs are also huge. For example, for tape-out, casual streaming can cost tens to hundreds of thousands.

Speaking from experience, very few chips can be successfully taped out in one go and can be successfully mass-produced...

The expenses in this area are too much, too big, and especially, there are too many pitfalls, and these pitfalls have to be filled with money.

"Mr. Feng, let's give an example." Academician Zhou organized the language. "Let's talk about memory chips. You may be familiar with this. Friends or colleagues around you may add memory to your computer or change it. Hard drive or something,”

"We can be sure that with the increasing number of smart devices in the future, the demand in this area will definitely become larger and larger,"

"But memory chips are a bit special. We all know that, generally speaking, the price of electronic products will drop every year, but memory is an exception. Its price drops sharply, and may drop to less than the production cost, but when it rises, it is equally sharp. It’s not unusual for it to double or triple.”

"This is a bit like the chemical industry, which emphasizes assets and cycles. Prices fluctuate greatly. When they rise, you will be reluctant to count money. But once they fall, you may even want to cancel the project..."

Feng Yiping smiled and said, "Academician, I understand your concerns and thank you for your reminder. I have considered the risks related to this aspect."

"But like other industries, in the chip field, risks can also be said to be opportunities. For example, the memory you just mentioned, when the market price drops, it will indeed bring high losses. However, once we are not afraid of these losses, Did you carry it through?"

"Then, it is very likely that we will become the king in this field, because many other competitors may not be able to withstand the previous recession period and withdraw from this field, but the market will be bigger than before, that is, Supply is less than demand, which means that we can embrace a period of counting money until we feel weak..."

He has said this, what can Academician Zhou say?

"Especially memory chips, we must do it," Feng Yiping waved his hand heavily.

Why did Samsung become so awesome that even Apple sometimes looked at its face? Isn’t it because it occupies more than half of the memory market?

The memory market will undoubtedly be a market worth hundreds of billions of dollars in the future.

Later, South Korea even became the target of our country's largest trade deficit. Among them, South Korea's memory industry can be said to have contributed most.

He doesn't like this.

Feng Yiping is indeed not very familiar with this industry, but now that we all know that Samsung is very successful in this industry, it is simple. If Samsung continues to carry on, Jiaqiang will do the same. If Samsung increases investment, Jiaqiang will also increase investment. Big investment...

If the general direction is correct, then there won't be much problem catching up with Samsung.

"Our long-term goal is not even these traditional chips that everyone knows now," Feng Yiping added.

Academician Zhou and others are a little numb. They don't say anything and still develop other chips?

According to the rules, the technical threshold of new chips will definitely be higher.

"Everyone knows that one of the focuses of our future development, or in other words, many of the current projects in this base, is related to artificial intelligence. Therefore, our long-term goal should be to develop artificial intelligence chips,"

"What is an artificial intelligence chip? I think it is not a problem for experts,"

"We should all remember that the 'Deep Blue' we were in defeated the then world chess champion Garry Kasparov after six games,"

"We should research a stronger version of this chip so that it can defeat the strongest chess player in the world,"

"Of course, in my understanding, AI chips cannot be like us, playing both Go and chess. At the beginning, it should be a dedicated chip, playing chess for chess players and Go for Go players, but with first-class computing power,"

"Not only does it have first-class computing power, it can quickly process the big data in our database, and it can also learn and improve itself,"

"For example, it will never fall into the same pit twice when playing chess with Chess Saint Nie,"

"Its application scenarios will also be very many, such as recognizing our voices, recognizing our images, that is, facial recognition, and, Assisting drivers to drive cars, and eventually, achieving driverless driving - by the way, this is a goal that our Tesla is pursuing,"

"...If we make an analogy, if the CPU is an all-knowing old professor who can solve very complex problems,"

"Then, the GPU is like 100 primary school students, which can do large-scale simple calculations at high speed, such as 5+6=11,"

"And the artificial intelligence chip is probably the geek in the class, and may be particularly good at division, faster than the other 100 classmates combined, but the ability in other aspects is almost 0,"

Feng Yiping made a rough analogy of what he thought of the artificial intelligence chip based on some concepts he came into contact with later.

Don't say it, it's quite vivid, even Lao Ma understood it a little, and he couldn't wait to speak, "Hey, I think this chip can just be used on our cloud platform,"

Feng Yiping nodded, Lao Ma is really a bit like himself, although he doesn't understand technology very well, but he is a bit sensitive to technology.

"Of course, I know that even if we have sufficient funds, even if we have recruited many first-class talents, even if we can break through the blockade and purchase some related high-precision equipment... it will still be very difficult for us to make good results in this regard,"

"After all, from the current point of view, the gap between us and the international level is at least more than ten years, and while we are catching up, the industry leaders are also developing rapidly,"

The experts nodded, and they were most worried about this problem.

"But fortunately, we are not without other ways to make up for it," Feng Yiping finally sat down, "I think everyone may have understood the current somewhat easing subprime mortgage crisis. I firmly believe that this crisis is not only not over, but the climax is still to come,"

"When the crisis breaks out completely, many companies in Europe and the United States will be greatly negatively affected. At that time, it will be a very suitable time for us to buy at the bottom,"

The experts realized that when they asked them to list those technologies that could be considered for acquisition, they were waiting for such an opportunity.

"I can also tell you that the relevant preparations have been underway. With Drucker's efforts, the strength of our M&A team has been further enriched," he nodded to Drucker and stood up again.

"But even if the acquisition projects we are optimistic about in the future are not successful, we still have to insist on investing heavily in this area,"

"This is a key strategic area. If we don't work hard in this area, we will be strangled one day in the future,"

"I don't like being strangled by others, I prefer strangling others,"

"So this matter," Feng Yiping put his hands on the conference table and made the final decision, "It's settled!"