To what extent do you specialize?

In 1973, led by the Japanese government, five semiconductor manufacturers, NEC, Hitachi, Fujitsu, Mitsubishi, and Toshiba, jointly developed memory chips.

This is the "DRAM Manufacturing Law Innovation" national project launched by the Japanese government, which has organized more than 800 technical elites.

Of this, the government invested 32 billion yen, and five companies invested 40 billion yen. A total of 72 billion yen was invested in the research and development of memory chips.

This joint activity is led by the Japan Electronics Research Institute and the Computer Research Institute.

For this purpose, a specific national scientific research institution, the "VLSI Technology Research Institute", has been established.

After paying such a heavy price and concentrating its efforts on big things, it is not difficult to imagine that Japan will soon catch up in the DRAM field.

As for the United States, the development model still injects funds into startup companies through venture capital.

Startups receive support, innovate technology, increase company valuation and then go public.

Finally, the venture capital sells the stock and finally exits at a profit.

This model is completely market-oriented, highly efficient but small in scale, and each operates independently.

It is obvious that in the face of Japanese companies with national power as their background, they will be beaten without the ability to fight back in the future.

Although Japan currently accounts for less than 20% of the memory chip field, this situation will soon be broken.

This is the current main pattern of the chip market in the world.

So what is the situation with processor chips?

It's amazing that no one pays much attention to it.

In the United States, only Intel and Zligo are doing related business. As for Japan... none at all.

The reason for this situation is that the development of personal computers has just started and the market size has not yet been formed.

All demand is determined by the market, and the same is true for chips.

Computers are definitely a luxury product in this era, and the price in Japan is generally more than 200,000 yen.

In the United States, the price is around 700 to 800 US dollars. Both the American people and the neon people say that they cannot afford it! PASS!

Therefore, the market is too small, and the demand for processor chips is pitifully less than that of memory chips.

This is why no one pays attention to processor chips now.

But Shirakawa Kaede chose the "unpopular" field of chips.

The advantage of being "unpopular" is that in the future semiconductor war between the United States and Japan, processor chips are likely to be spared.

Because counting the time, the development of personal computers has not entered the fast lane in a few years, and it is likely to continue to be ignored.

In addition, SIC has no competitors at all in Japan.

Even if it is sanctioned in the future, Neon should be able to survive solely relying on its local market.

Even Japan currently does not have a dedicated chip design company.

Isn’t it strange that Japan, which is already very technologically advanced, does not have a dedicated chip design company.

This is also related to Japan's special corporate structure. Those large companies are involved in many fields.

For example, Sony has a dedicated chip design department under its group.

If necessary, you can directly delegate the task to the following departments for execution. There is no need to entrust other companies to design.

But such large companies are in the minority after all. If most companies need processor chips, they basically purchase American products.

Or those with certain R&D capabilities, like Sharp and Toshiba, purchase the copyright of mature foreign chip architectures and do secondary development themselves.

So in general, does chip design have a future?

Yes, there definitely is.

Shirakawa Kaede’s decision to open up a track was also carefully considered, and there is no doubt that the chip is definitely in the cutting-edge field.

It is enough to serve as the moat of the Shirakawa Group in the future, and Shirakawa Kaede also devotes all his energy to it.

After coming out of the SIC building, just when Bai Chuanfeng was about to talk to the first bank, he received an unexpected phone call.
Chapter completed!