Chapter 138: Digging someone else’s corner

Intel attaches great importance to the arrival of Fan Wubing and his group.

Especially when there is a problem with Intel and is in a sensitive period when everyone is calling for a fight, it is very effective for inspiring to have such a powerful multinational company that hopes to cooperate with it to build a factory.

The company's president personally took action and brought more than a dozen senior executives to welcome Fan Wubing and others at the airport. However, when they saw Fan Wubing's escort, they were also a little surprised. They thought that although Fan's Investment Group was newly established, it was indeed full of talents, and even those bodyguards were not ordinary people.

Of course, using retired SEALs as bodyguards can only be done by Fan Wubing. If it were ordinary people, I would probably not have such a talented and stubborn, especially this would cost a lot of money.

At first, Fan Wubing didn't know much about this chip packaging factory. He just thought it was just an ordinary packaging factory and outsourced Intel's products and sold them. As a result, he visited a packaging factory with Intel executives, and found that he was very wrong.

In fact, like Fan Wubing, the outside world's impression of chip packaging factories has always been on CPU packaging. Many people think that packaging and packaging are similar and do not have much technical content. However, after visiting the chip factory, Fan Wubing found that the facts are just the opposite. The packaging test of CPU is definitely not as simple as many people imagine.

The entire CPU manufacturing is divided into front-section process program and back-section process program. The front-section is mainly wafer manufacturing, which is to create wafers through very complex silicon technologies and lithography technologies such as silicon pulling. Each wafer is covered with hundreds of chips.

The chip factories responsible for wafer manufacturing are almost all concentrated in the United States, and there are also Israel and Ireland.

The commonly known chip factories in Costa Rica, the Philippines, and Malaysia are mainly responsible for the packaging and testing process procedures of the back section, which is to produce a series of complex program technologies such as wafer reflow, filming, cutting, patching, welding, packaging, curing, aging test, electrical performance test, laser marking and multi-channel detection, and finally obtain a complete CPU chip product.

Intel wants to build a chip packaging factory in Shanghai to do this work.

In the workshop of the chip factory, all machines are in a closed state, and some even operate in a vacuum state. Fan Wubing and his group can only wear sealed work clothes like astronauts, and see the wafers spinning around the machine through the transparent windows.

There were almost no workers in the CPU packaging workshop. The entire workshop seemed very quiet, with only the slight beeping sound from electronic instruments. In the wafer cutting area, Fan Wubing saw the machine take out a finished wafer from a stack of wafers next to it. First, he automatically scans the entire disk, and the scan results were immediately displayed on the display terminal above the machine. At this time, a worker wearing a special anti-static safety suit and special safety glasses came over to observe and display the wafer surface image on the terminal in detail.

Intel staff who accompanied Fan Wubing and others to visit explained to them, "This is through visual inspection of whether there are hidden dangers in the wafer to be cut."

After the inspection is completed, the machine will send the wafer into the sealed operating compartment for cutting. When the wafer comes out of the operating compartment, it has become independent chips. Next, the chip will accept the carrier patch, welding and packaging process. The machine will automatically attach the chip to the carrier, and then seal it into the sealed carrier. This is the CPU shell that ordinary people see. At this point, a CPU will basically take shape.

"So this is how CPU is made--" In fact, except for Fan Wubing, no one has seen such things. Although they are all using personal computers, they really don't know what is inside and how it works.

"If we can build such a factory, it would be very interesting even if we just come here occasionally." Fan Wubing said to everyone with a smile.

CPU testing is another highlight of the entire back-stage process program. Through various special testing machines, we check whether the performance of CPU meets the requirements. Whether the pin leads on the surface are normal and whether there is any bending phenomenon. In addition to visual inspection, this test also requires special electronic equipment to be checked.

In the aging test area, Fan Wubing saw that the machine automatically put the basically formed CPU into a special aging test chamber for high temperature baking to check whether there will be abnormalities in the CPU under such harsh conditions.

"This step directly affects how long the CPU can last after leaving the factory." The accompanying staff introduced to everyone.

"Will high-temperature baking burn out the original good CPU?" asked an executive next to Fan Wubing.

The accompanying staff immediately explained, "All test procedures in the test workshop are formulated according to normal standards that the CPU can withstand. Each test project is carefully calculated in advance, and there will be no excessive test intensity that will cause damage to the CPU product. Take this aging test for example. The temperature and humidity in the test chamber are strictly controlled and will not exceed the range that the CPU can withstand."

After visiting this trip, Fan Wubing immediately respected Intel's work. It is indeed not easy to be the leader in the industry. If someone thinks that he can easily copy this technology and surpass Intel, he will be laughed at.

Of course, after reading this, Fan Wubing can understand why Loongson has not succeeded for so many years, and the so-called Hanxin is even more fake with chips polished with sandpaper.

To achieve a breakthrough in chip technology, it does not rely on simple chip design technology or huge funds, but also requires a lot of underlying technology to support it. This is exactly what is lacking in China. Of course, it can only exist in jokes.

During the Hanxin incident that year, Chen Jin, an engineer who was testing at Motorola, hired others to remove the original logo of a moto-free scale 56,800 chip bought from the United States, and then added his own Hanxin logo to transform into the so-called Hanxin No. 1, which has completely independent intellectual property rights, applied for a number of patents, and became the dean of the Microelectronics College of Shanghai Jiaotong University, a doctoral supervisor and a scholar in the Yangtze River.

With the help of Hanxin No. 1, Chen Jin applied for dozens of scientific research projects and defrauded scientific research funds of up to hundreds of millions of yuan.

After an insider exposed the matter, some media with a keen sense of smell quickly intervened and conducted difficult recourse and verified. With the joint efforts of the whistleblower and the media, the investigation team of the incident concluded that the fraud of Hanxin No. 1 was basically true.

Due to the gap in the chip manufacturing field and the domestic expectations for the chip industry, the country is very eager to make breakthroughs in the field of high-tech. Independent research and development of high-performance chips has always been a major dream in the domestic technology industry.

It was Chen Jin who used this expectation of the Chinese people to defraud countless funds and honors, turning Hanxin No. 1, which should have brought pride to the Chinese people, into a major scientific research fraud incident that is jaw-dropping.

Thinking of this, Fan Wubing couldn't help but shake his head. The Hanxin incident caused a lot of controversy that year, but in the end it was nothing. No one was even sentenced for it. It seems that this matter is because the country is too lenient to the counterfeiters or the power behind it is too huge.

Basically, Fan Wubing felt that the atmosphere in the academic world had completely broken down at that time, and those who could do practical things would never be as good as those who would commit fraud. However, the government probably couldn't afford to lose face and was unwilling to expose its own shortcomings.

After visiting the factory, Fan Wubing and his party returned to Intel headquarters and began their first talks on the construction of the chip packaging factory.

"Mr. Fan, to be honest, our previous negotiations with Shanghai have reached a critical moment. If it weren't for the sudden emergence of floating-point number calculation problems, or the contract had been signed." Intel's president said to Fan Wubing, "As far as we know, mainland China now expresses great distrust of our Intel processors. I wonder how Mr. Fan will insist on cooperating with us?"

Fan Wubing also pretended to say, "I always believe that a noble person will not be perfect, and it is not shameful to have some shortcomings. A noble company cannot be despised by the public because of a little flaw! Anyone who knows the chip industry should see the great contributions Intel has made to the entire chip industry in the past few decades!"

"Mr. Fan, you are very good at speaking." The president laughed. "Our company executives believe that cooperating with a powerful company like you is beneficial to our development in mainland China. After all, there are not many company leaders like you who are keen, decisive and financially responsible. We should not give up this opportunity, right?"

"Thank you, I can guarantee that Intel will never feel any regrets about this cooperation." Fan Wubing knew that the other party had only his own choice now. If you want to enter the mainland Chinese market, you must find a reliable ally. At some times, the other party's government is unreliable.

It's like Fan Wubing never had anything to do with the US government.

The two sides talked here for three days and finally reached a consensus on most of the issues. Fan Wubing also decided to return to China, but some staff members were left here to discuss the handling of the details.

When sending Fan Wubing onto the plane, the president of Intel smiled and said to him, "Mr. Fan, in addition to congratulations on establishing a cooperative relationship with Intel, I also want to tell you an exciting news. The senior management of our company decided to recall all defective CPUs."

Fan Wubing smiled. He had known this was the result for a long time, otherwise Intel would not be Intel. However, he said righteously, "It is the honor of Fan's Investment Group to be able to cooperate with a responsible company!"
Chapter completed!