Zhang Rujing's latest news!

He is known as the "Godfather of Chinese Semiconductors" and has participated in the construction of more than 10 large chip factories in the United States, Japan, Singapore, Italy and other places. He has worked in the semiconductor industry for more than 30 years. With the "fellowship" that has been firm for most of his life, he started his fifth business in Qingdao. The Xin'en Company he built is the first company in China to operate in the CIDM model, and will build a complete semiconductor industry chain and ecosystem in Qingdao. The Qingdao University Micro-Nano Technology College, which he established as the lifelong honorary dean, aims to "localize" the problem of the shortage of integrated circuit professionals in Qingdao and even Shandong...

Zhang Rujing is the chairman of Xin'en (Qingdao) Integrated Circuit Co., Ltd. When the reporter interviewed him, he stared at the computer and carefully wrote a letter to a well-known university in Taiwan to discuss the establishment of a graduate school with Qingdao University. At the same time, he arranged a business trip thousands of miles away - "I will go to the United States during the Chinese New Year to contact universities with semiconductor disciplines to cooperate with Qingdao to run schools." "China's semiconductor packaging, testing and application are relatively mature, but the front-end links of the industrial chain are very weak and are most likely to be "choked" by others. I love my motherland, and I want to do a business that no one in mainland China has done yet."

At the Xin'en factory area, which is more than ten minutes away, the 373-acre first-phase project land is being leveled. The rumbling sound of machinery announces that a new benchmark "China Chip" business is about to rise in the West Coast New Area.

"When will you return to the mainland to build a factory?" His father's question stayed with him for a long time.

Zhang Rujing has always been reluctant to be called the "Father of Chinese Semiconductors". He believes that the Chinese predecessors who conducted research in this field in the early days are the fathers of semiconductors. However, he has always wanted to make the most advanced semiconductor technology take root in his motherland.

"In fact, when I started my first business more than 20 years ago, I wanted to build a factory in mainland China. But due to the influence of current politics, I missed the opportunity." Zhang Rujing's entrepreneurial history may seem brilliant in the eyes of others, but when he talks about it himself, it has a different flavor.

Zhang Rujing was born in Nanjing in 1948. When he was less than one year old, he followed his parents to Taiwan. After graduating from National Taiwan University with excellent grades, he went to the United States to study and obtained a master's degree in engineering science and a doctorate in electronic engineering. After that, Zhang Rujing joined the American semiconductor giant Texas Instruments and joined the team of Jack Kilby, the Nobel Prize winner in physics and inventor of integrated circuits. He started as a research and development design engineer and worked in the semiconductor industry for more than 30 years. In those years, Zhang Rujing participated in the construction of more than 10 large chip factories in the United States, Japan, Singapore, Italy and other places, and was called a "factory construction expert."

"When will you go back to the mainland to build a factory?" Both of Zhang Rujing's parents have a strong sense of family and country, and his father's question has been in his mind for a long time. In 1997, Zhang Rujing, who retired early from Texas Instruments in the United States, began to plan this matter. He found an investment bank willing to support him in building a factory in the mainland, and also assembled a group of elite entrepreneurial teams. Who knew that after just over two months of hard work, he encountered the Lee Teng-hui authorities in Taiwan forcing Taiwanese businessmen who had invested in the mainland to withdraw their capital. Zhang Rujing had to move his position and returned to Taiwan to establish World Semiconductor. But before all the teams he stayed in the mainland, they had already made the line width of logic integrated circuits the most advanced in the country at that time, 0.5 microns (note: only about 1/200 the thickness of a hair).

In 2000, World Semiconductor, which had only been established for three years, achieved profitability and became a "fat piece of meat" in the industry. It was soon acquired by TSMC, the largest semiconductor company in Taiwan at the time. Zhang Rujing turned back to the mainland and founded Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation in Shanghai, starting another legend of his. Relying on a technical cooperation team of more than 400 people that he had accumulated over the years around the world, Zhang Rujing raised more than a billion US dollars in investment through several investment companies. At an astonishing speed, SMIC built three eight-inch wafer production plants in Shanghai in 2001. After increasing capital in 2003, it established a 12-inch plant in Beijing. At the end of 2003, it acquired the former Motorola Tianjin 8-inch plant. The initial integrated circuit line width ranged from 0.25 microns and 0.18 microns to 90 nanometers. By 2005, SMIC had become one of the top three wafer foundries in the world. In 2008, it successfully introduced IBM's 45-nanometer advanced process.

In 2009, Zhang Rujing resigned from SMIC and entered the field of LED R&D and manufacturing. In less than three years, he invested in three LED companies in mainland China, covering upstream LED substrate materials, chips and downstream lighting applications. When the company entered its growth period, Zhang Rujing transferred the company to Beida Jade Bird and returned to the silicon industry, which he preferred, to start a business again and established Shanghai Xinsheng Semiconductor, the entity responsible for the first 300mm large silicon wafer project in China.

Zhang Rujing always seems to have started from scratch in his four entrepreneurial ventures, and left at the most glorious moment. His explanation for this is: "Starting a business in Taiwan was a matter of fate, and later starting a business in the mainland was to fill the gap. Once it was because the mainland did not have advanced integrated circuit foundries, once it was due to industry transition, and once it was because the mainland did not have a large silicon wafer industry." In 2018, Zhang Rujing, who was "free" again, chose to do a chip business that did not exist in China - introducing the successful overseas IDM model (integrating multiple links in the industrial chain such as chip design, chip manufacturing, chip packaging and testing) into China to create a new CIDM model. The "C" here stands for Commune, which means sharing and common ownership.

In May 2018, Qingdao Xin'en Company was settled in the Sino-German Eco-Park of Qingdao West Coast New Area, jointly built by Qingdao West Coast New Area, Qingdao Aucma Holding Co., Ltd. and Dr. Zhang Rujing's team.

The fifth entrepreneurship started from Qingdao. China needs to build a large-scale IDM company with R&D and manufacturing capabilities.

Since 2013, China has imported more than 200 billion US dollars of integrated circuit chip products for many consecutive years. "There are many reasons, but one of the important points is that China has not yet built a large-scale IDM company with the ability to develop, produce and manufacture high-end chips." Zhang Rujing said that in the previous foundry model, each manufacturer in the semiconductor industry chain was only responsible for its own link, and the communication between upstream and downstream was limited. When encountering product problems, it was not easy to aggregate various links to solve them together. There are already successful IDM experiences abroad. For example, large and well-known companies such as Toshiba in Japan and Samsung in South Korea have integrated multiple links in the industrial chain. However, the internal structure of traditional IDM is not flexible enough, and it is often impossible to quickly determine new market directions and design new products like professional chip design companies. In the system of professional foundry model, foundry companies that develop and produce processes cannot design new products for the rapidly developing market, and their flexibility in chip product development is also relatively limited.

Qingdao Xin'en has developed a CIDM model suitable for the development of China's semiconductor industry, that is, to create a shared integrated component manufacturing company, integrating chip design, chip process technology research and development, chip manufacturing, chip packaging and testing, and providing high-quality and efficient products to end customers in an integrated manner. In other words, Qingdao Xin'en itself is a complete industrial chain. It is like a "tractor" and a "company headquarters". It links excellent domestic and foreign companies in various industrial links. There is a special docking department within the company to communicate with IC design companies, chip manufacturers, packaging and testing units, terminal application companies, etc. that join the co-construction and sharing at any time. This model enables IC design companies to have exclusive production capacity and technical support from chip manufacturers, while IC manufacturers are guaranteed by the market, realizing resource sharing, capability coordination, capital and risk sharing. It is understood that the first phase of Qingdao Xin'en project construction covers a total area of ​​373 acres, with a planned total investment of 15 billion yuan and an investment of 8 billion yuan in the first phase. After the project is completed, it can realize mass production of integrated circuit products such as 8-inch chips, 12-inch chips, and photomasks. It is planned to put the entire first phase of the line into production at the end of this year and full production in 2022. "After the first phase of the factory is completed, the annual output value of the production line will exceed 18 billion yuan," said Zhang Rujing.

Zhang Rujing started his fifth business in Qingdao after careful consideration: the semiconductor integrated circuit industry is an industry that is highly related to the global macroeconomic prosperity, consumer demand, downstream application technology level and industrial manufacturing level. Since 2015, the market dominance of the Asia-Pacific region has become increasingly prominent. According to the forecast of the World Semiconductor Trade Statistics Organization, the market share of the Asia-Pacific region is expected to remain at around 60% in the future, and China's market share is expected to reach half of the world. To seize the initiative in this huge market share, we must give full play to our own advantages. Qingdao, a city with a deep manufacturing foundation, has a large number of well-known home appliance companies such as Haier, Hisense, Aucma, and Goertek. It is currently facing the shortcomings of "lack of panels (panels) and few cores (chips)"; the layout of new energy vehicles is in urgent need of rapid development of the automotive electronics industry; the high-speed rail industry is advancing by leaps and bounds, and there is a large demand for high-power, sensor and single-chip chips...

Zhang Rujing said that there are many sub-sectors in the chip market, and Qingdao Xinen focuses on automotive electronics, smart home appliances, smart manufacturing and other fields. According to conservative estimates, in these fields, the market demand for semiconductor integrated circuits in the manufacturing industry in Shandong Province alone will exceed 40 billion yuan in the future.

The semiconductor industry has a talent gap of 300,000 to 400,000. We hope to cultivate more talents for China's semiconductor industry.

To achieve success, talent is indispensable. Zhang Rujing was unwilling to poach talents from domestic upstream and downstream enterprises, so he played the emotional card again. Most of the 273 key talents recruited before the Spring Festival in 2019 were his close comrades-in-arms overseas. Many of them had supported the business empire of SMIC with him. They had originally resigned and returned home to enjoy a peaceful life, but now they were invited to come out again. "Inviting experienced masters back is to cultivate new talents," said Zhang Rujing.

Looking through the roster of Qingdao Xin'en's experts, the resumes behind each name shine. Zu Yongxi, a Ph.D. in semiconductor material science from the University of Illinois, has more than 25 years of experience in semiconductor technology research and development. He once introduced and optimized IBM's 45nm process for SMIC; Ji Minghua, a Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley, has extensive experience in 40nm, 28nm and 14nm processes, 35 years of experience in the international semiconductor industry, and 235 U.S. patents; Su Chongwen, a Ph.D. in electrical engineering from Stanford University, has more than 30 years of experience in IC design and was the first general manager of the semiconductor research and development department of Hughes Aircraft Company; Xiao Deyuan, a Ph.D. from the School of Electrical Engineering at Cornell University, has extensive experience in 40nm, 28nm and 14nm processes, 35 years of experience in the international semiconductor industry, and 235 U.S. patents; , who was the leader and chief scientist of the National Science and Technology Major Project, has obtained more than 100 patents in the United States, Europe and Japan, and more than 120 patents in China; Zeng Weixiong, a Ph.D. from the Institute of Materials Science and Engineering of National Taiwan University, has rich experience in 28nm, 14nm and 10nm process technology development and logic research and development, has applied for more than 20 US patents, and published more than 40 academic papers; Chen Qiufeng, a master and doctor of electronic engineering from National Chiao Tung University, previously served as the deputy general manager of SMIC, has outstanding research and development and design achievements in the fields of logic and memory, and owns 59 design patents...

What makes Zhang Rujing "proud" the most is that he found 25 masters from Taiwan who used to follow him, all of whom are masters of making masks. The mask is an extremely important part of the chip manufacturing process and is also the most expensive part of the process. It is equivalent to a "circuit film". The design layout must be "engraved" on a specific quartz plate according to customer needs, and then the relevant information is transferred to the chip through exposure. Each channel on the mask, or "line width", is thinner than a hair, but due to the influence of the process, the line width is generally less than 1 micron at first. The masters invited by Zhang Rujing can make masks suitable for 14 nanometer processes, which is the current extreme demand for domestic chips.

During the interview, the reporter also noticed that Zhang Rujing is not only the helmsman of Qingdao Xin'en, but also the lifelong honorary dean of Qingdao University Micro-Nano Technology College. This is similar to the founding of SMIC School at the same time as he founded SMIC. (China Semiconductor Forum: CSF211ic) In Zhang Rujing's view, it is more urgent to cultivate semiconductor talents by himself than to recruit talents from overseas. "The semiconductor industry is a hard job, with great development pressure and long profit cycle, and many young people can't stay." Zhang Rujing's own working hours are from 7:30 am to 7:30 pm every day. Sometimes he goes to the factory laboratory and stays there for more than 4 hours wearing a mask. The 120 students recruited by Qingdao University Micro-Nano Technology College for the first time last year made him believe that "they can be cultivated and retained": "Their focused eyes and high interest in class also gave us the confidence and motivation to develop and cultivate talents."

It is understood that by 2020, there will be a talent gap of about 300,000 to 400,000 in my country's semiconductor industry. Therefore, while Zhang Rujing is working hard to cultivate undergraduate talents in Qingdao, he is also constantly extending olive branches to well-known overseas universities, hoping to break through the limitations of the system and mechanism and cultivate more high-end talents through joint education of graduate schools. "What I do in Qingdao is to 'throw bricks', hoping to attract more 'jade' to participate in China's semiconductor industry."

"You may not understand that after leaving my homeland for so many years, my determination to contribute to my motherland has become even stronger!"

Last June, the 87-year-old "Father of Taiwan Semiconductors" TSMC Chairman Morris Chang officially retired. When he was at Texas Instruments, Richard Chang worked in Morris Chang's department. He jokingly told reporters: "Compared with my predecessors, I still have to work for at least another 17 years!"

Apart from the label of age, there is really no "old" character in Zhang Rujing. He is vigorous and energetic, and his meticulous and rigorous work style drives the young people around him to strive for progress. It was previously reported that when Zhang Rujing was working at SMIC, the so-called "president's car" was a Ford Fiesta, and this car was always the first to enter the parking lot every day; every time he took a plane on a business trip, he was always in economy class. In Qingdao, the reporter heard an anecdote that since his wife and children were not with him, Zhang Rujing's life was unattended, so he hired a domestic servant to cook for him. This domestic servant was a "sincerity" and specially selected dishes that were good for health for Zhang Rujing to cook. When he saw that he was satisfied with the first dish he ate, he made the same dish for him for three weeks in a row. "I'm here to do business, and I don't have high requirements in life." Zhang Rujing said with a smile. After three weeks, he couldn't help it, so he tactfully asked if he could change the taste...

Zhang Rujing doesn't care about life because he only wants to do one thing: to make a unique "Chinese chip" that is world-leading. "You may not understand that after leaving my homeland for many years, my belief in contributing to my motherland has become stronger!" Zhang Rujing told reporters that because he returned to China to start a business, his 90-year-old mother was able to return to the mainland with him, live in his hometown, and eventually rest in peace in his hometown. "My mother felt particularly at ease before she died." The younger generation of the family has also returned to China one after another to develop and put down their roots again in this land.

The CIDM project in Qingdao is progressing in an orderly manner, but it is not all smooth sailing. "It's just a matter of progressing faster or slower, but no matter what difficulties I encounter, I will definitely make it a success." A passionate Chinese heart is the biggest support for Zhang Rujing's team to vow to create a unique "Chinese chip".

Content Statement: The content of this article comes from Qingdao Daily, and the copyright belongs to the author. Any views in this article are for discussion purposes only, and do not constitute any investment advice, nor do they represent the position of this public account. Users who invest based on this article and any other views of this public account must bear their own risks and responsibilities. This public account does not assume any responsibility for any consequences caused by this.