Chapter 365 MEMS and Seeking Support From ADI
After Liang Beni left, Li Xiaofan saw a piece of news while browsing the Internet:
Recently, the American Analog Devices Company has successfully commercialized micro accelerometers using MEMS technology, and has begun to apply them in large quantities to automobile anti-collision airbags, mainly for the ejection control of automobile anti-collision airbags, marking the beginning of the industrialization of MEMS technology...
Seeing this news, Li Xiaofan became excited all of a sudden.
The two keywords "ADI" and "MEMS" stimulated his sensitive nerves!
ADI is the abbreviation of Analog Device Inc. in English. There are two ways to translate it into Chinese. One is the transliteration "Analog Devices Inc." and the other is "American Analog Devices Inc.".
In the previous life, this Analog Devices Inc. was one of the top ten semiconductor companies in the United States and was well-known in the industry!
ADI's high-performance analog, mixed signal and digital signal processing DSP integrated circuits IC are in the world's leading position.
In the previous life, ADI later became the key protection target of relevant US agencies because a large number of cutting-edge products were used in the aerospace and defense industries of the United States.
In 2009, Dr. Li, who had worked at ADI in the United States, returned with a high-performance DAC (digital analog converter) product map, which improved the performance indicators of domestic DAC products. However, it was subsequently protested by ADI and the United States...
After the incident of Dr. Li, the impact was significant, leading to stricter control of Chinese people's participation in the research and development of key components in the United States, and stricter scrutiny of overseas students traveling to and from the mainland, which caused psychological shadows for overseas students returning to China to engage in the research and development of key components. Many people gave up the opportunity to participate in the research and development of high-performance key components in China in order to protect their personal freedom to travel to and from the United States...
The standard of ADC analog-digital converters that the United States banned from the mainland at that time was: no higher than 8bit10MSPS. Due to the embargo, China had to buy smuggled goods at a high price. At that time, domestic AD products basically did not exceed this standard.
At that time, due to the need to abide by the rules of the game of international intellectual property rights, Dr. Li's methods and products could not be adopted by regular machine manufacturers, and did not actually solve the problems in the industry.
However, many large domestic and foreign companies were more worried about intellectual property rights when introducing domestic suppliers, and required domestic manufacturers to prove their innocence. Some companies even went so far as to require the founders of domestic suppliers not to have ADITI resumes, which further led to a serious lag in the progress of domestic substitution...
These past events left a deep impression on Li Xiaofan.
MEMS is the abbreviation of MicroelectroMechanicalSystems in English, and is called micro-electromechanical system in Chinese. It is a micro-integrated system that uses integrated circuit IC manufacturing technology and micro-machining technology to manufacture micro-sensors, micro-actuators, etc. on one or more chips.
MEMS originated from the invention of the transistor at Bell Labs in the United States in 1947. It was not until 1987 that the micro-motor was invented at the University of California, Berkeley, which caused a sensation in the international academic community. People saw the possibility of integrated production of circuits and actuators. This was the beginning of MEMS technology.
MEMS technology is a typical multidisciplinary frontier research field that involves almost all fields of natural and engineering sciences. MEMS is considered to be one of the most promising technologies in the 21st century. If semiconductor micro-manufacturing is regarded as the first micro-manufacturing revolution, MEMS is the second revolution.
In 1988, a group of visionary scientists in the United States proposed "small machines, big opportunities" and called on the United States to pay attention to the development of MEMS, a major field.
Since its invention, MEMS has always been a shining star in the global semiconductor industry. Whether it is for civilian or aerospace defense industry, its position is very important. Especially in the past life, after entering the vigorous era of intelligent Internet of Things, MEMS sensors have played an increasingly important role...
Thinking of this, Li Xiaofan immediately searched for all the relevant information about the two keywords "ADI" and "MEMS" on Yahoo and other websites.
Relevant information on the Internet shows that fortunately, this Analog Devices Semiconductor Technology Company has not been in the MEMS field for a long time, just over 3 years.
It is only 1996 now. If you seize the opportunity, it is entirely possible to catch up!
In the future, the magnetic sensor chip technology mastered by Mao Siming's team can be combined with MEMS to develop products for consumer and industrial electronics, gyroscopes, inertial navigation and many other high-tech industries...
Suddenly, Li Xiaofan had an idea: the current scale of ADI should not be so large, and the US agencies have not paid much attention to it. Can I invest in it?
He continued to search the relevant information of ADI on the Internet thoroughly.
There is a very detailed introduction to ADI on the Internet:
ADI has two founders, one is Ray Stata and the other partner is Matthew Lo
er, both of whom are alumni of the famous Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Ray Stata was born in 1934 and is now 62 years old.
In his previous life, Ray Stata was called the "Godfather of the American National Technology Industry" by the industry and won the ACE Lifetime Achievement Award from the Electronic Engineering Magazine EE Times in 2008.
In the early 1960s, Ray Stata, who got a master's degree in electrical engineering from MIT and worked at HP, ran into his old friend Matthew Lo
er from his MIT student days in Harvard Square one day.
At that time, Matthew Lo
er was looking for a roommate.
In the end, the two of them not only rented an apartment together, but also founded the ADI company together three years later.
In the winter of 1965, Ray Stata and his partner Matthew Lo
er rented a simple warehouse near MIT, and started with the design and manufacture of high-performance operational amplifiers, and built their own technology kingdom ADI company brick by brick.
At the beginning, Ray Stata and his partner Matthew Lo
er only had entrepreneurial enthusiasm, but actually didn't know how to start a business. They first developed solid-state instrument control products based on their experience in the instrument laboratory of MIT.
Their product was subsequently acquired by the control department of Kollmorgen within a year, and they made a small fortune.
When a reporter interviewed Ray Stata, he said that linear integrated circuits, or ICs for short, had not been invented at that time. At that time, they produced op amps and converters by manually assembling scattered transistors and other devices on printed circuit boards.
ayStata said that two years after they started their business, in 1967, the industry's first integrated op amp IC was invented.
In fact, as early as 1963, Robert Widlar designed the first monolithic integrated operational amplifier circuit μA702 at Fairchild Semiconductor. It achieved great commercial success. It is said that Robert Widlar asked Fairchild Semiconductor to give him a raise, but he was not satisfied, so he left Fairchild Semiconductor.
National Semiconductor at that time was overjoyed and quickly recruited Robert Widlar. Robert Widlar later helped National Semiconductor establish an analog IC design department.
In 1967, Widlar developed a better operational amplifier for National Semiconductor, the famous LM101 product.
Li Xiaofan was very familiar with this LM101 op amp product. When they were in technical secondary school, they made their own audio amplifiers and used many products of this series...
ayStata later found that although their manually assembled modular operational amplifiers had better performance than the LM101 op amp IC products on the market, National Semiconductor's products were smaller in size and constantly upgraded, and were cheaper than their products by orders of magnitude.
In the end, it was the market that forced RayStata and others to take decisive measures to learn to design and manufacture integrated circuits...
After reading some stories about ADI, Li Xiaofan picked up the phone and called Dr. Datong Chen in the United States. Before Dr. Chen started his own business, he was in charge of analog circuit business at National Semiconductor.
Li Xiaofan was going to start looking for this ADI company!