The rise of nanometers

Graduates who have just been recruited, or researchers who have been poached, are not immediately assigned to the core laboratory, but undergo a three-month special training.

During these three months, I mainly examined my work ability, character, and familiarity with the internal rules and regulations of the Suiren Department. At the same time, I sorted out my scientific research capabilities and checked for gaps.

At the same time, the Ministry of Security will also secretly investigate everyone's background and whether there is any collusion with external forces.

Suiren Company, which masters many sensitive technologies, pays extraordinary attention to the character and background of researchers and avoids technology leaks, which has become an important task of the security department.

Recently, Huang Weichang led the Security Department, and with the cooperation of Qin Lizhang, they successfully found three people who had betrayed the company's secrets, one of whom was a researcher in the Nano Laboratory.

Fortunately, the Ministry of Security discovered it in time, otherwise the consequences would be disastrous.

Therefore, a three-month inspection period is set for new employees, especially those in confidential departments.

Wang Zhiyuan, Lu Qifu and others, who were recruited from Shanghai, followed the company's recruitment team and returned to Shanmei headquarters.

They don't know at this point what their lives will be like in the next three months.

Huang Xiuyuan, who returned to the headquarters, and Lin Baijie, under the leadership of Lu Xuedong, inspected some projects of the Scientific Research Department.

Semiconductor Laboratory.

In the clean room, everyone wears special protective clothing and gas helmets.

Lu Xuedong introduced to everyone: "Xiuyuan, Lao Lin, this is the first generation product of the Special Textile Equipment Research Institute, Zhenyi 40/60-1, which can be used to produce chips at the 40-60 nanometer level."

Zhenyi 40/60-1, 40/60 represents the processing accuracy of the equipment, and 1 represents the first generation product of this type of equipment.

In the laboratory, there are a total of 7 Zhenyi 40/60-1. Engineers and researchers responsible for designing chip circuits, as well as the equipment research and development team, also sent many engineers.

Both parties are trying to manufacture chips while testing the performance of the equipment, constantly looking for problems. Problems that can be adjusted on-site are adjusted on-site; problems that cannot be adjusted on-site are fed back to the Special Textile Equipment Research Institute for in-depth research.

Because he was wearing a helmet, Huang Xiuyuan raised his voice: "Xuedong, what is the current production capacity of the first generation of Zhenyi?"

"Currently, a single machine can weave 50 to 80 billion transistors every day." Lu Xuedong introduced the specific situation to the two of them in detail.

Zhenyi 40/60-1 has 8 channels. 1 channel means that one chip can be processed, and 8 channels means that 8 chips can be processed at the same time.

The output of simple processing of special chips is definitely not small.

For the production of multi-instruction CPUs, such as the Core i7 that Intel plans to launch next year, it is a 32-nanometer process, with a single CPU integrating 1.17 billion transistors.

According to Zhenyi's 40/60-1 production capacity, if a single chip with 1.17 billion transistors is to be integrated, 42.7 to 68.3 can be woven in one day.

It seems that the output of Zhenyi 40/60-1 is quite small, but looking at the production lines of both parties, the situation is exactly the opposite.

Photolithography requires a large amount of equipment, and it is also an expensive precision instrument. The overall price of a state-of-the-art production line is several billion yuan, and the equipment is difficult to order, especially for Chinese companies, even second-level equipment. No one will sell it to China easily.

The overall cost of a Zhenyi 40/60-1, plus the supporting laser cutting and sintering system and packaging system, is only a few million.

Taking into account the intellectual property rights, once mass production is completed, the maximum price per set will be 20 to 30 million. 1 billion can produce about 40 sets, and 10 billion is 400 sets.

If one set can produce 42 pieces per day, 400 sets can produce 16,800 pieces per day, and 300 days of production per year will reach about 5 million pieces. This is only the minimum output.

As Suiren's technology matures, the production volume of a single piece of equipment will gradually increase.

This year's CPU demand is actually very easy to calculate. Based on the sales of various electronic devices, CPU sales can be basically estimated. The global annual demand is around tens of billions.

Of course, top-level CPUs generally do not account for too high a share. After all, not all electronic devices require the computing power of a computer CPU.

For example, it is naturally impossible for the copycat phones that are very popular in China to purchase Intel Core and the like. Most of them use cheap chips from MediaTek.

Currently, the number of integrated transistors in mainstream CPUs on the market ranges from 100 to 300 million.

If a production line built with Zhenyi 40/60-1 has 400 sets, it can produce 20 to 30 million pieces a year, which is more than enough.

Huang Xiuyuan turned around and smiled: "Dragon Totem's White Dragon mobile phone can consider using our own designed chip."

"The problem now is not that the process can't be done, but that the design can't keep up. We have adopted a completely new process, which has resulted in many integrated circuit designs for photolithography chips having to be readjusted." Lu Xuedong was very helpless.

Huang Xiuyuan was not surprised. He knew about the problem of chip design from the beginning: "Xuedong, there is no need to focus on the CPU chip from the beginning. There are other electronic control chips, audio chips, etc. in a mobile phone. From the simple Start designing.”

"I think so too. Now the chip design research institute is divided into more than a dozen groups that specialize in specific chips." Lu Xuedong then explained the design groups of each specific chip.

Lin Baijie on the side, after understanding the situation of the chip, asked about the situation of the glass disc: "By the way, Xuedong, how is the glass disc now?"

"We'll talk as we walk."

Lu Xuedong led a group of people to the glass optical disk laboratory more than 600 meters away.

Coming to the Glass Disc Laboratory, Miao Guozhong, the person in charge of the project, was conducting experiments on data reading.

Huang Xiuyuan stopped Lu Xuedong and asked him to complete the experiment.

Through the laboratory's internal computer, he saw many specific conditions of glass optical discs. At present, the prototype design of the glass optical disc data recorder has been initially completed.

The recorder achieves fast information burning through the built-in deep ultraviolet laser.

In terms of information reading, low-intensity infrared light needs to be used. The silicon 9 and silicon 6 in the illuminated glass disc will reflect yellow and blue light of different frequencies.

The reflected yellow light and blue light can read about 20G of data in about 0.3 to 0.6 microseconds through the optical signal reader designed by Miao Guozhong and others.

After rearrangement and optimization, the current storage capacity of glass optical discs is around 92G per square centimeter.

The disadvantage of glass optical discs, apart from the irreversible recording of information, is that the cost of the burner and reader is relatively high.

According to the design plan of Miao Guozhong's team, the cost assessment office of the Ministry of Scientific Research gave a cost range of 50,000 to 60,000 yuan per burner and 800 to 1,200 yuan per reader under mass production.

The reason why recorders are relatively expensive is that deep ultraviolet light dot engraving requires sophisticated lasers and very stable control components.

The accuracy of the reader is not high, because it irradiates a large area with infrared light and then reads the information based on the frequency of the emitted light, so the equipment cost is relatively low.

If glass discs are to be used for civilian use, the size of the reader must be further reduced, because the current reader is about the same size as a cigarette box, which is obviously too large.

More than half an hour later, Miao Guozhong finally completed the experiment and found that the chairman had arrived, so he hurried to the rest area.