488: Chapter 488: Deal Made, Production Line Collapses

After obtaining the authorization, the headhunters began their next move.

Zhou Mingyuan also opened with a sky-high price, quoting 1 billion USD for that customized algorithm.

Finally, after repeated back-and-forth negotiations, the fifth transaction was officially reached.

The total technology transfer fee was 500 million USD.

It would be paid in two installments: the first deposit of 200 million USD would be wired to an account designated by Zhou Mingyuan, and the remaining balance would be paid after the full set of materials was delivered.

However, Zhou Mingyuan refused the work visa offered by Samsung and only accepted remote guidance.

Although the headhunters were a bit suspicious, they didn't ask further questions, as Zhou Mingyuan's reasoning was:

"I'm already so rich, can't I just enjoy life? Why would I go and work myself to the bone? How is that even possible?"

In the end, the headhunters had no choice but to agree!

When delivering the technology, he was also extremely cautious!

The algorithm was divided into three parts, and Zhou Mingyuan would only deliver a part once Samsung paid 100 million USD of the remaining balance.

And these three parts were all indispensable!

So, during the second transaction, Lee Jae-yong finally got angry, and the headhunter immediately changed his tone:

"Zhou Mingyuan, for a single algorithm, our sincerity is already enough. Why are you playing me like this? Do you not want to make this deal anymore?"

"Han Peng, am I giving you too much face? This is how I do business. Take it or leave it!"

Lee Jae-yong, standing beside him, saw the other party's tough stance and completely understood the value of this technology.

"Mr. Zhou, don't be so angry! I still welcome you and your team to join Samsung! As long as you are willing to come, an annual salary of 100 million... plus bonuses..."

Zhou Mingyuan instantly realized that the person negotiating with him had changed, but they still maintained that arrogant attitude.

"I appreciate your kindness, Mr. Lee."

"However, I just received a huge sum of money and I still need to launder it, so I'm not considering it for now... But I can consider Samsung for my next job."

"However, I am more familiar with the Morning Star series Lithography Machine, so I hope your side has sufficient production capacity."

"I understand! We are also a major client of Morning Star..."

After saying this, Lee Jae-yong laughed heartily. He was a wild horse, but he liked that; sooner or later, there would be a day to tame him.

After hanging up the phone:

"Take those two lines and test them first. If there are no problems, then put them online!"

The wafer factory manager hesitated for a moment. After all, this was technology bought for 500 million USD, and he wanted to use it on those two crappy production lines?

Although they were 22nm production lines, because the Lithography Machine was too old, the overall yield rate was only 78%.

From the beginning, these two lines were used as 22nm test lines, and after serving for another two years, they would be sold to some backward factories.

Like Huaxin International, but now that there was the Morning Star series Lithography Machine, this kind of business was not easy to do anymore!

"Just use those two. If there really is a problem, it won't cause massive losses."

"Understood, I will go handle it right away!"

...

But to their surprise, the effect after applying the algorithm was surprisingly good.

In just three days, the yield rate rose from the previous 78% all the way to 84%, achieving a 6% increase in three days.

This slapped all their engineers in the face once again!

"Good! Very good! Good!"

After hearing this, Lee Jae-yong's secretary instantly prayed silently for the engineers in the factory, because the last "good"...

"This bunch of idiots, I approved so much funding for them, yet it's still not as useful as someone else's algorithm! How far has the reverse engineering progressed? Have they actually discovered any problems?"

After speaking, Lee Jae-yong shifted his attention to his secretary.

"Mr. Lee... Lee..."

"No need to make excuses for them. I just want to know how far their progress has actually come. Don't tell me it's not even as fast as the factory's yield rate improvement."

A bitter smile appeared on the secretary's face again. Wasn't Mr. Lee making things difficult for him? After all, the answer was already obvious!

But caution told Lee Jae-yong that this matter was definitely not that simple, so he decided to observe for a while longer.

A few more days passed, and the date arrived at May 20th. During this time, Zhou Mingyuan also took advantage of his break time to provide online guidance.

The yield rate of those two production lines further increased to 89%, which was simply a miracle in the field of wafer processing!

After learning this, Lee Jae-yong was pleasantly surprised again. He directly sent a 5 million USD bonus to the headhunter team and simultaneously gave them a new task:

That was, no matter what means were used, Zhou Mingyuan must be poached. This was much better than Liang Mengsong, who had been snatched away by Transsion back then.

Besides funding, he could be appointed as the director of the research institute.

After receiving this new message, he immediately sent a message to Shen Fei: "Boss, the fish has entered the net. Prepare to close the net."

...

Sure enough, on May 25th, problems began to appear at the Suwon factory.

Individual batches on those two old production lines experienced lithography pattern shifts, and the scrap rate increased slightly.

The yield rate dropped from the original 89.5% to 87%.

However, the relevant person in charge did not attribute the problem to the algorithm, simply thinking it was a deviation caused by the Lithography Machine being too old, so they stopped the machine at the first opportunity to begin maintenance...

But after checking for a few days, they still couldn't find any problems. Moreover, the second line, which was also undergoing testing, showed the same problem, and the error was getting larger and larger.

From a few nanometers, it surged to dozens of nanometers. The produced wafers were basically all scrapped, and the pass rate of the second line instantly plummeted from the original 90% to below 30%.

Samsung's technical team panicked completely. They worked overnight to troubleshoot the equipment, searching everything from equipment to materials to process parameters, but they couldn't find the root cause of the problem at all.

They also tried uninstalling the optimization algorithm provided by Zhou Mingyuan, but the production line control system collapsed directly, and even basic production could not be carried out.

The technical lead reported to Lee Jae-yong with trepidation: "Mr. Lee, we haven't found any problems for now! However, I suspect whether this algorithm has other issues. After all, we have been reverse-engineering it for so long, yet we still haven't found any problems. I feel that this is the biggest problem."

Just at this moment, Lee Jae-yong also received a questioning call from Liu Deyin.

Because TSMC also encountered the same problem. Although Liu Deyin stopped production at the first opportunity, but... TSMC's problem was significantly larger than Samsung's.

They discovered that the Lithography Machine's objective lens system had already suffered irreversible damage!

"Mr. Lee, this is your great idea! We directly damaged 5 production lines; this is an investment of tens of billions!"

"Since Mr. Liu chose this path, no one should complain. We are still troubleshooting the relevant problems on our side..."

"The problem is that this algorithm is deeply bound to a specific hardware and material system. That's right, what they gave was indeed a real algorithm, so we couldn't find any problems at all."

"But as I said before, it requires a specific hardware and material system, which is completely incompatible with the underlying logic of our production lines."

"It's equivalent to putting gasoline into a diesel car. It can run for a short time, but after a long time, it burns out the engine directly."

"Our objective lens system has suffered varying degrees of damage. To completely repair it, we can only reinstall all the production lines, recalibrate every Lithography Machine, and replace the damaged Lithography Machine components."

"This requires long-term debugging!"

Lee Jae-yong's face also turned pale. Then they...