Former DRAM helmsman Gao Qiquan: Yangtze Memory Technologies is absolutely clean, Zhao Weiguo is a good boss

Gao Qiquan, former executive vice president of Tsinghua Unigroup and "chief helmsman" of Tsinghua Unigroup's DRAM business group, officially retired on September 30, 2020, marking the successful completion of Tsinghua Unigroup's five-year "core road".

Kao Chi-Chuan is the most iconic figure in Taiwan's recent move to the mainland to join the semiconductor industry. Five years ago, this "Taiwanese DRAM Godfather" retired from Nanya Semiconductor and chose to join Tsinghua Unigroup, which was undoubtedly a "nuclear bomb" in the semiconductor industry on both sides of the Taiwan Strait.

From that moment on, the Taiwanese technology circle, which was originally unfamiliar with Tsinghua Unigroup, began to pay attention to the "purple light" coming from the west!

Five-year "core road" successfully completed

Gao Qiquan's official retirement from Tsinghua Unigroup at this extremely sensitive time in the global political and economic environment has sparked many associations from the outside world.

In fact, Gao Qiquan told Wenxin Voice at the end of 2019 that he would apply for retirement and enjoy life once his five-year contract with Tsinghua Unigroup expired, and his decision has never changed.

Gao Qiquan is 67 years old. He said with a smile that in the five years since he came to Tsinghua Unigroup, he had a grandchild every year for four years. Now he has a total of six grandchildren. It is time to retire and enjoy the happiness of family life. He also wants to have time to do what he wants.

He joked that he had finally waited until the day to enjoy the benefits of Taiwan's "Senior Citizen Card" (Taiwanese seniors aged 65 and above enjoy discounts on public transportation), and he would make good use of it.

The rise of the “chip empire”

Zhao Weiguo, chairman of Tsinghua Unigroup, built the "chip empire" by himself. Gao Qiquan joined the company at its infancy and worked hard to build Yangtze Memory's 3D NAND technology. Over the past five years, he has watched Zhao Weiguo's hard work in building the "chip empire" and has been deeply touched.

Talking about Zhao Weiguo, Gao Qiquan described him like this: Old Zhao is a good man, he really is a good man.

Gao Qiquan described, "I know that when he first came to Taiwan in 2015 to be interviewed by Taiwanese media, the 'momentum' he displayed frightened the Taiwanese media a little bit. However, in the past five years, I have seen that all of Tsinghua Unigroup's business units, including Yangtze Memory Technologies, Spreadtrum, and H3C, have very formal and clean technology sources, and their partners and customers are all world-class companies, which is not easy."

Yangtze Memory Technologies has now become a benchmark semiconductor company in China, especially its exclusive Xtacking technology, which was released at the International Storage Conference in the United States in August 2018 and amazed the world.

Xtacking technology processes peripheral circuits and storage units separately on two independent wafers. It is different from the technology and architecture of other international NAND Flash manufacturers, and has its own exclusive patent. This patent will also become an important umbrella for Yangtze Memory's future operations.

He humbly pointed out that the architecture of Xtacking technology is the result of the efforts of Yangtze Memory's entire mainland engineering R&D team, and his task, as the acting chairman of Yangtze Memory at the time, was to fully support the launch and mass production of this technology. Now it has become a breakthrough that Yangtze Memory and the domestic storage industry can be proud of.

He also mentioned that when he first arrived at Tsinghua Unigroup, they had very different ideas about how to do things in the domestic semiconductor industry.

He insisted that before the technology and product yield have reached a certain level, factories must not be built blindly and production capacity must not be expanded. Otherwise, the yield must be too low and production must be started, and the resulting losses will be terrible. Many unfinished semiconductor factories in mainland China were built blindly without the technology.

He said that in the semiconductor industry, it is necessary to spend time to firmly establish the technology and lay out the patents carefully, and then gradually expand production in a planned manner. Don't be impatient. What does it matter if you start mass production two years later? China has been making semiconductors for so long, so what's the difference between these two years? Facts have proved that Yangtze Memory has followed this blueprint and has now become one of the few domestic semiconductor manufacturers that are both technologically independent and very successful.

Gao Qiquan stayed in Wuhan for three and a half years. In the second half of 2019, he was transferred back to Beijing to plan Tsinghua Unigroup's DRAM project. He did not officially leave the board of directors of Yangtze Memory until June 2020. On September 30, he officially retired from Tsinghua Unigroup and handed over the DRAM project to Yukio Sakamoto, former CEO of Elpida and current senior vice president of Tsinghua Unigroup, to take over the planning.

Domestic equipment will inevitably rise

Referring to the recent frequent targeting of Chinese semiconductor companies by the United States, Gao Qiquan believes that even if the United States is determined to block China's semiconductor development, as long as it is given 10 to 15 years, the domestic mid- and low-end semiconductor equipment base will definitely be established, but the technical difficulty of high-end extreme ultraviolet (EUV) equipment is too high.

He also specifically mentioned that mainland companies such as SMIC and North Huachuang have done very well in equipment technology. Currently, about 15% of Yangtze Memory's equipment materials are domestically produced. In fact, all American equipment manufacturers are very opposed to the US sanctions. He also pointed out that when Wuhan was closed due to the epidemic at the beginning of the year, many Yangtze Memory cadres did not speed up their departure from Wuhan when they heard about the city closure, but chose to return to their jobs. He was very impressed and moved.

Regarding his future career plans, Gao Qiquan said that he would serve as a director of some companies and make his own investments. He also invested in a 12-inch recycled wafer factory in Huangshi, Hubei, but he would never join a company that competes with Tsinghua Unigroup. This is a kind of respect for his former employer.

Gao Qiquan explained that there is currently no recycled wafer factory in mainland China, Luyi, and it cooperates with Taiwan's equipment supplier Xinyun. As wafer factories are built one after another in mainland China, the cost of producing recycled wafers in Taiwan and then transporting them to mainland China is too high. The average additional cost per wafer is as high as US$6. Therefore, it is cost-effective to manufacture in mainland China.