1991 Starting from the core

The car drove into Zhangjiang High-tech Zone.

At this time, Zhangjiang was far less prosperous than in later generations. There were still large areas of rural areas hidden among the shades of bamboo trees, but the wide cement roads announced the future of this place.

At the entrance of the factory, the four gilt characters of "Xinde International" are shining brightly - the Chinese name of the joint venture factory is derived from one word each of Yuanxin and Deyi.

Zhang Rujin led Shengguangfeng, Italian Alzide, and Chen Jianguo who came to enclose the land to greet them.

Since Chen Jianguo returned to Yuanxin and started working on the copper process, he has been traveling to several laboratories across the country that can do chemical vapor precipitation, and he also went abroad with Professor Su Xinghe. As he puts it, sharpening the knife will not waste time chopping wood, and first understand the theory before talking.

However, the process technology still has to be experimented after all. Although Yuanxin also has an assembled chip line, due to the backward equipment and technology, it can only make a stopgap measure.

Now that the wafer fab has been established here, Chen Jianguo will of course move his laboratory here.

"Dr. Zhang." Su Yuanshan strode forward as soon as he got off the car, held Zhang Rujin's hand and said sincerely, "Thank you for your hard work."

"It's not hard." Zhang Rujin was half a head shorter than Su Yuanshan. Looking at Su Yuanshan's young face, he could naturally feel the young man's heartfelt respect for him - this had actually troubled him for a long time.

Later, it was not until he came to Shanghai and met the employees of Yuanxin, and then attended the annual meeting and became familiar with senior executives such as Li Mingliu and Jiang Tao that he got to know Su Yuanshan better.

Of course, with the arrival of Chen Jianguo, Su Yuanshan's personal senior brother, his understanding of Su Yuanshan became truly three-dimensional.

I also roughly guessed why Su Yuanshan "respected" himself so much.

After shaking hands with the others one by one and introducing each other, Zhang Rujin took the lead and said, "Let's go and see the mask factory."

Photomask, also called photomask, its English name is Mask. It is a master plate made of quartz and can be used in the semiconductor exposure process. From the chip production process, it is a preliminary process.

The process of converting the pattern from the mask master to the wafer is like the work of a money printing machine.

We can think of the photolithography machine as a money printing machine. The process of printing the pattern of the banknote master onto the paper is just like the photolithography machine printing the chip pattern onto the wafer. It requires a master. This master is In semiconductor manufacturing, it is a photomask.

In order to manufacture a chip, hundreds of processes are required, and there is more than one mask. In principle, the higher the precision of the process, the more masks are required.

For example, in later generations, the 14nm process will require about 60 masks, and 7nm may require 80 masks or even more.

Of course, the quality requirements of photomasks are also different. For some processes that require high precision, the corresponding photomasks have the highest accuracy requirements, such as transistor-related photomasks, while processes that require less precision , such as Pad (wiring holes) and other requirements are lower, and the mask price is also cheaper.

Advanced processes have increasingly higher requirements for mask accuracy, and at the same time, there must be no defects, so inspection after mask manufacturing is also very important.

(Note: The above explanation of the photomask is quoted from the Zhihu answer excerpt of Han Ming, BD Director of Quanxin Intelligent Manufacturing Technology Co., Ltd., and I would like to express my gratitude here - I did not organize the language and processing myself because he made it too clear. Already...)

Because the production process of the mask factory is complicated, and the higher the precision of the process, the longer it takes. Therefore, it is not a necessary workshop for a wafer factory - because the wafer factory can completely entrust other mask factories to perform the work. Mask production, and it can also manufacture photomasks required by other industries.

Zhang Rujin also saw this as the reason why he chose to build a photomask factory in the first place.

At present, there is no professional photomask factory in China that provides OEM services. Zhang Rujin can directly bring TI's photomask technology and make some money after it is built.

——Of course, he didn’t know that Su Yuanshan actually planned to lose two billion US dollars on the wafer fab.

"Almost all the main equipment of the mask factory is controlled by Niguo, including the core mask writer. Fortunately, we did not encounter much trouble during the purchase process. Niguo Nuflare said that it has started packing. It will be shipped right away.”

Zhang Rujin led a group of people along the new cement road to the distant workshop, introducing the situation along the way.

Su Yuanshan glanced up and saw that the entire science and technology park was like a rapidly rising city, with countless construction sites busy.

"Calculated, it will take at most half a year for the mask factory to be put into operation."

"Well, when we go to run the business, we can simply ask Huajing to withdraw the mask factory." Su Yuanshan joked: "During a tape-out process, the production cost of the mask is too high. Huajing Technology No, the cost is higher.”

"The main thing is technology." Zhang Rujin smiled and turned to Chen Jianguo: "Dr. Chen, I heard that you have a patent for a mask?"

Chen Jianguo nodded sheepishly: "When I jointly produced masks with them at UMC, I had a little inspiration. It's not a big breakthrough."

"Haha, some progress is good. Even if a patent is only enough to reduce the cost of a wafer by one dollar, this also increases competitiveness."

"That's right." Su Yuanshan took over the words for his senior brother. He knew that his senior brother was not good at words and said with a smile: "Especially the cost of time. In the semiconductor field, time is a huge cost."

It was almost six o'clock after visiting the factory. Perhaps he heard from Yuanxin's employees that Su Yuanshan always had employee meals, so Zhang Rujin made no other arrangements and treated Su Yuanshan to a meal directly in the factory cafeteria.

However, he was too embarrassed to treat everyone to an iron plate lunch box, so he set up a table anyway, but the food was still a big pot.

Well... Su Yuanshan is certainly not picky, but he is not used to the food here.

After dinner, Zhang Rujin sent Su Yuanshan and others out of the park, and scheduled Su Yuanshan to meet at his office again at ten o'clock tomorrow morning.

…

Li Mingliu sent Su Yuanshan and Zhou Xiaohui to the door of the hotel. He didn't even bother to get out of the car. He rolled down the window and said to Su Yuanshan, "I won't come over tomorrow. I'll arrange a car for you and wait for you here at half past eight." "

"Well, go ahead. I will stay in the factory for another day tomorrow, and I will be at your place the day after tomorrow."

"OK~!"

The two of them stood at the door of the hotel and watched Li Mingliu start slowly, then stepped on the accelerator and plunged into the street.

Zhou Xiaohui blinked: "He drives so fast?"

"It should be far away from racing - if he dares to race, he has to take care of himself." Su Yuanshan said with a smile: "But his broken Santana can't even hit the accelerator."

"...Last year's new car! I think it's well maintained."

"...I'm talking about performance."

The two of them dragged their suitcases to the front desk to check in. He stayed in a suite as usual, and then opened a standard room for Zhou Xiaohui opposite.

After they went back to their rooms, Zhou Xiaohui put away her luggage and came to Su Yuanshan's living room with the folder, mobile phone and battery in hand.

The two of them sat on the sofa, using the coffee table as a desk, and began to deal with the calls they received today and the matters they arranged.

…

An hour later, Su Yuanshan hung up the call from Gao Xiaodi and took a long breath.

"I'm a little irritated. Originally, Senior Brother Xi was supposed to be fully responsible for scientific research, but in the end, he was like an old man... everything was piled on me."

Su Yuanshan stretched and felt very depressed: "I'm so busy on a business trip."

Zhou Xiaohui stood up and straightened her skirt - Su Yuanshan asked her to dress casually, but she said it would look more formal and look like a secretary... Hearing this, she smiled and said, "You are reluctant to exploit him."

"It's not that I can't bear to part with it...well, there are specialties in the art industry. He may not be as good at it as I am, so he could just concentrate on being his mascot."

What Su Yuanshan said is true. There are so many groups in Yuanxin Science and Technology Park. If you have to find someone who knows a little bit about everything, it must be Su Yuanshan.

As for Xi Xiaoding, let him work on mathematics software, deep learning, and artificial intelligence...

Anyway, these are the future directions, and the group of people under him who are engaged in mathematics can only get the best value for money when they are engaged in these.

Not long after Su Yuanshan put down his cell phone, it started ringing again. After Su Yuanshan answered the call, he heard his father's voice.

"Xiaoshan, are you done?"

"It's okay, what's the matter, dad." Su Yuanshan changed his lazy posture. He knew that the supercomputer motherboard has reached a critical period recently, and he would definitely not let him help if he came to him - Su Yuanshan really doesn't know how to do this, even if When his father asked him to help, he could only stare.

"Nothing, I just want to tell you that the technical paper on the 91 series microcontroller has passed the ISSCC and will be published at the end of the month."

"Really!" Su Yuanshan jumped up: "Congratulations, Dad!"

"Haha, it's just a paper."

On the phone, Professor Su Xinghe was really calm.

Although he has been nurtured by his son, Professor Su Xinghe still inevitably bears the imprint of many old-school intellectuals. For example, he thinks that he has already written a book - more than one. There is no point in publishing another paper, everything depends on the results.

For example, in the process of developing a 16-bit microcontroller, Su Xinghe creatively adopted a three-stage pipeline, which greatly improved execution efficiency and stability. It was simply tailor-made for the industrial control field.

There are so many pioneers in the scientific community in the country, who have published papers abroad?

But Su Yuanshan is different. Su Yuanshan has always asked his father to submit his paper... He not only asked his father, but also asked several senior brothers to publish it in foreign journals. Even if the influence is not that big, they still have to publish it. .

This is not about "getting recognized by foreigners", but about influence.

So Professor Su Xinghe submitted his application - first he made changes once, and then after sending a sample of the 16-bit microcontroller, he passed it in one go.

"Dad, you don't know... This is really a big step for domestic semiconductors and even the domestic scientific research community."

Su Yuanshan took a deep breath.

ISSCC (International Solid State Circuits Conference), known as the Olympics in chip design, only publishes the highest level results in the field of integrated circuit design.

In addition, there is JSSC (IEEE Journal of Solid State Circuits) - which can be regarded as an expansion and supplement to ISSCC. The influence and value of the two are equal.

The conditions to go up are very simple, choose one of two or choose two of two.

The most awesome.

creativity.

The best and/or the first.

You know, in China, it was not until 2005 that there was the first ISSCC paper born in mainland China.

In the following ten years, the average number per year was only one article.

Moreover, Su Yuanshan, who has experienced it, knows that before the 1990s, the domestic scientific research community was basically the same as his father, who just immersed himself in research and participated in any foreign conferences with the attitude of "seeing" and "learning".

It was not until the mid-to-late 1990s that a large number of turtle scholars returned to China, and they slowly began to expand their horizons as a whole, actively embracing international scientific fields, actively publishing journals, and then establishing and improving the future paper system.

Moreover, the main significance of this ISSCC is that it means that mainland China has moved from a "sanctioned" microcontroller blind spot to an internationally advanced level.

…

After chatting with his father for a few more words, Su Yuanshan hung up the phone, sat on the sofa and laughed non-stop.

"I feel happier than when you published a paper yourself." Zhou Xiaohui pursed her lips and joked from the side.

"That's how old is my dad? He can still produce results." Su Yuanshan was quite proud: "Hey, but it's also my contribution."

Zhou Xiaohui didn't know how to answer this sentence, so she just smiled.

Su Yuanshan grabbed his cell phone and looked at the time, then ordered: "That's it for today. Get up at eight o'clock tomorrow morning and we'll set off on time at nine o'clock."

"Okay." Zhou Xiaohui responded and began to pack the documents.

The next day, the two were driven by Yuanzhong's driver to the Science and Technology Park again.

In the morning, Su Yuanshan communicated with Zhang Rujin alone for nearly two hours. After lunch, he talked with Shengguangfeng, Italian Alzide and others respectively.

Of course, encouragement is out of the question, but as the actual controller of Yuanxin, he must show sufficient sincerity and attention to these people who have traveled thousands of miles to the Shanghai stock market.

In the afternoon, Su Yuanshan declined Zhang Rujin's request to send him out of the factory, and only Chen Jianguo accompanied him out of the factory.

…

"Xiaoshan, I won't lie to you. It's really not that difficult to switch from aluminum to copper."

Chen Jianguo put his hands in his pockets and kept kicking the pebbles on the ground, his brows furrowed into a deep frown.

He looked up at Su Yuanshan: "The copper conductive process involves chemical and physical vapor deposition... I now deeply feel that my knowledge is insufficient."

"It's okay, don't be in a hurry." Su Yuanshan smiled and comforted: "No one is born with it, learn slowly."

"...I think you were born with it."

Su Yuanshan: "..."

"Brother, don't be anxious." Su Yuanshan stared at Chen Jianguo and said softly: "I don't want you to produce results even if you don't know how to learn. Why are you anxious?"

Chen Jianguo looked at him straightly: "What can't be learned? Then by the end of the day, won't you know everything and be a master of everything?"

"Well... you can't say that. What I mean is that after you understand the general principles, you can control the overall situation. You don't need to specialize in every step. You only need to know the direction, determine the goal, and then work hard to get your team to move forward. A directional drill will do.”

"Having said that, I always feel very unhappy when I see experiments failing all the time and money still being burned."

"Haha... Where did it get burned just now?" Su Yuanshan held Chen Jianguo's shoulders and said without breathing: "Seven years, five hundred million US dollars - is it enough?"

"Holy shit..."

"Really, senior brother, I won't lie to you, that's not technology, it's direction."

Chen Jianguo held his breath until his stomach was filled.

He knew that once Su Yuanshan said the direction, it must be the direction. As long as it's a direction, you have to get through it even if you're beaten to death.

He clenched his fist and said viciously: "Okay! In seven years, I will get a Ph.D. in my later years!"