“We need to have an understanding that there are no absolute advantages or disadvantages in technical routes.

Even if the Lion City's biophotovoltaic technology has advantages in all technical indicators, this does not mean that we have to give up our country's photovoltaic industry.

Previously, foreign countries had comprehensive advantages in the semiconductor field, from cost to technical indicators to the degree of adaptability of the entire industry chain, and were superior to China.

China has never given up its support for domestic semiconductor companies, although its support for these companies was not enough before 2018.

Let them be in a half-dead stage, but they will never give up their own industries just because other countries' products are good.

Because the relevant considerations are based on the strategic security level.

Judging from your age, most of you have experienced the wave of localization of the semiconductor industry chain more than ten years ago."

"Professor Zhu is right.

For us, companies that rely on policies to survive do not make sense.

Although he survived, neither profit nor revenue are included in our investment considerations.

Not to mention that only leading companies can survive purely by relying on policies.

Small and medium-sized enterprises, especially those that have seen the photovoltaic industry boom before and have launched a large number of related industrial chains but have no technological and market advantages, may not be able to survive this year."

"I got you.

Companies that survive like this have no investment value."

"Yes, just like Ziguang Group, if they had not acquired H3C, even if the other party was a school enterprise of Shuimu University, we would not consider investing in Ziguang companies.

First they acquired H3C, and then they caught up with the wave of localization of semiconductors, so that it became the object of capital attention.

If not for the superposition of two factors, Ziguang Guowei, a subsidiary of Ziguang Group, would not be the first semiconductor company to rise sharply."

In the bull market of 2020, the first semiconductor company to start was Ziguang Guowei. Ziguang Guowei made changes together with the brokerage sector, one week earlier than other semiconductor companies.

Professor Zhu nodded. After thinking for a moment, he said:

“Going back to what I said before, there is no good or bad technical route.

In other words, there is no absolute superiority or inferiority.

It just means that from an economic perspective, technical routes with early advantages will be supported, while technical routes without advantages will soon disappear without additional resource investment.

Resources are limited, and money is the amplifier of scientific research.

However, in fact, some technical routes that require less initial investment and quick results may not be able to maintain this advantage in the later stages.

For example, silicon-based chips developed rapidly in the early stage, and the technology developed so rapidly that there is a special Moore's Law.

Costs double every two years, while prices drop to half their original value.

From the perspective of the time, this was such an advantageous technical route.

As technology develops, computer performance will become more and more advantageous.

How could anyone invest in biocomputers?

Except for some research studies of a scientific nature.

For enterprises, biocomputers have no advantages in terms of performance or cost.

However, judging from biological storage and the recent emergence of virtual reality devices, biological computers seem to be a technical route with a higher ceiling.

With the current accuracy of traditional silicon-based chips, Moore's Law has expired.

But can we blame those who chose the carbon-based chip technology route at that time?

Can academia and industry be blamed for not investing more in carbon-based chips?

No, because from the perspective of the time, no one would be willing to invest heavily in the research and development of carbon-based chips.

You may invest 100 billion yuan and still not see any substantial technological progress.”

The number of transistors on a chip is getting smaller and smaller, and temperature and leakage make it increasingly difficult to develop silicon-based chips.

In order to break this shackles in recent years, chip manufacturers have developed from flat to vertical stacking.

"Professor Zhu, I didn't expect you to know much about the chip industry."

“Photovoltaics are also silicon wafers, and the semiconductor industry is also silicon wafers.

I understand somewhat."

"Then do you think Chinese companies can really make photonic chips?"

Professor Zhu’s eyes were much larger than usual: “Which company made the photonic chip?

Science and Technology Biotechnology?"

"No, it's another listed company called ** Chip. It was a laboratory product before. They made the world's first photonic chip prototype board in 2019.

Recently, it was said that it has made a photonic chip for personal use. As a result, just after the announcement, Kechuang Biotech launched a virtual reality device.

But after we researched this company, we felt it still had investment potential.”

"Sorry, I am not engaged in research in this field, and I don't know much about photonic chips.

Judging from my personal intuition, since it was not launched by Kechuang Biotechnology, does this product already have similar products abroad, and then we developed similar products as a chaser?

If we are pioneers, we need to be more cautious about the authenticity of things and find more angles to verify."

Amerikan started research on photonic chips in about 2015, and Chinese companies fell behind by about three years.

On the eve of the end of the core industry in 2018, companies in China gradually began to conduct research in this field.

The earliest investors were Baidu Venture Capital and an Americen semiconductor investment institution, which jointly invested 10 million yuan. Later, CICC, Matrix Partners and Baidu participated in the A round of financing, raising 26 million yuan.

If it hadn't been for the fall of the core curtain, this company would not have been able to get so much investment.

A total of nearly 2 billion yuan has been raised in financing successively. You must know that SenseTime Technology only raised 2 billion yuan back then.

The company has been falling since its listing on the Science and Technology Innovation Board. Like SenseTime, its peak is when it is listed.

“The main reason is that this company has products before.

Later, there were also specialized photon computing processors for the enterprise, specifically for algorithm calculations in the field of artificial intelligence."

"No, if there really is such a processor, I should have heard about it in school.

This is still a domestic company.

I often communicate with students from the School of Computer Science, and I still have some understanding of which parts have been domestically produced."

"Professor Zhu, the main thing is this. The photonic chips previously developed by this company were mainly aimed at specific neural network algorithms.

Only in these specific recurrent neural networks are hundreds of times faster than high-end GPUs.

But its universality is not high enough.

So it may be used in some specific situations.

If they can adapt to all situations and are hundreds of times faster than mainstream high-end GPUs on the market, then the company's price-to-earnings ratio should be in the hundreds, not less than fifty today."

"Are there similar photonic chips abroad that can adapt to all scenarios?"

"not yet."

"Then why were they able to do it before foreign countries?

It’s not that I doubt the level of domestic companies.

It's about chip scams, which to put it mildly is called bragging, and we've seen too many of them.

Especially this kind of so-called technological breakthrough, I always question it first.

As for technological development, especially the most cutting-edge technological breakthroughs, there has never been a strong correlation with money or policy.

But it’s a weak correlation.”

"Yes, what you said, Professor Zhu, makes so much sense.

In recent years, places like Yanjing, Shenhai, and Pengcheng have implemented many relevant policy packages to promote investment in high-precision industries and promote the development of high-end green and intelligent manufacturing.

What other future industrial highlands are there, such as industrial clusters around VR and 6G?

One set after another.

As a result, why did Susu become an industrial highland and an industrial cluster?

The GDP of Suzhou is even close to that of Shenhai.

Whether it is new energy, biomedicine, artificial intelligence or VR, a large number of high-tech jobs are concentrated in Suzhou.

Can Suzhou compare with places like Shenhai in terms of policy advantages?

I wouldn't have believed it before, but this company still has a history of research and development in the field of photonic chips, and it has a long history.

In addition, even the virtual world has emerged, and photon chips do not seem so fantasy.

After all, this is an industry that has accumulated over many years.”

"I'm not completely dismissing the possibility.

It’s just that you need to be cautious.”
To be continued...