Great Country Academician

After inspecting the carbon-based chip laboratory and gaining an in-depth understanding of the current research situation of carbon-based chips at the Xinghai Research Institute, the group left the Qixia Industrial Park.

After returning to the villa at the foot of Zijin Mountain, Xu Chuan shouted after entering the living room.

"Xiao Ling, help me collect relevant reports from this year's 'ISSCC International Solid-State Circuits Conference', focusing on content related to processors and communication system-level chips."

As soon as the voice fell, the AI ​​academic assistant responded in the living room.

"Okay! Master."

With his steps, Xu Chuan did not stop and walked towards the washroom, ready to wash his face first.

The ISSCC International Solid-State Circuits Conference, whose full English name is International Solid-State Circuits Conference, is the highest-level conference in the field of integrated circuit design recognized by the global academic and industrial communities.

This conference held in San Francisco, USA in the first half of each year, is known as the "Olympic Conference in the field of integrated circuit design."

The organizer of the conference is the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers.

This summit of the ISSCC International Solid-State Circuits Annual Conference, which began in 1953, has a history of more than 70 years. It has received great attention from the international academic and industrial circles, and attracts more than 3,000 participants from the industrial and academic circles around the world every year.

The most important thing is that in the more than 70 years of history of ISSCC, many milestone inventions in the history of integrated circuits were first disclosed here.

For example, the world's first TTL circuit was exhibited in 1962; the world's first integrated analog amplifier circuit was exhibited in 1968.

There are also GHz microprocessors, multi-core processors and other chips and designs that are more familiar to the public now, which are also exhibited at this world-renowned summit.

And this top-level summit is often not only open to the industry.

Many times, in addition to Intel, Nvidia, Qualcomm, Samsung and other top companies in the chip field will display the latest products of this year at the venue, there will also be top scholars in the semiconductor industry to participate, give public lectures or display paper technology, etc.

It is no exaggeration to say that the products and technologies disclosed at this summit are the latest products of major manufacturers at that time, as well as the development path of silicon-based chips in the next few years.

After wiping off the water stains on his face, Xu Chuan sat in front of the computer and clicked on the report that the AI ​​assistant had collected for him.

The 2025 ISSCC International Solid-State Circuits Conference will still be held in San Francisco, USA, with more than 3,500 experts and scholars participating in the conference.

Xiao Ling has sorted out the important contents of the summit according to his instructions.

The first thing that caught his eye was the speech of Nvidia CEO Huang Renxun.

Standing on the spacious stage, Huang Renxun, wearing a leather jacket and with white hair, looked at the empty lecture hall on the stage with a smile on his face.

"Dear guests, I am very honored to be here again. First of all, I would like to thank IEEE Solid-State Circuits for providing us with this venue for the event."

"Before we start the in-depth discussion, I would like to emphasize one point: NVIDIA is at the intersection of computer graphics, simulation and artificial intelligence, which constitutes the soul of our company."

"For nearly two decades, we have been committed to research on accelerated computing. For example, CUDA technology enhances the functionality of the CPU, offloading and accelerating tasks that special processors can complete more efficiently."

".The new Blackwell Ultra AI chip we launched this time uses HBM4 memory chips and is manufactured by TSMC's 3nm top process. It is the core of the new generation of AI chips and supercomputing platforms."

"As the name suggests, it is a chip specially built for AI and supercomputing platforms."

"In terms of performance, Blackwell Ultra is fully worthy of this reputation! "

"It can provide at least 30 times the performance improvement for large language model (LLM) inference loads compared with the same level of process chips, and reduce costs and energy consumption by 25 times. "

"In short, if you buy it, you can get up to 60 times the performance improvement for every 1 million yuan you invest in cloud data processing. "

"Speed ​​up 100 times, while the power only increases by 3 times and the cost only increases by 1.5 times. The cost savings are real!"

"It is no exaggeration to say that the new Blackwell Ultra AI chip will be the most powerful chip in the world!"

When the speech got here, the audience was already in turmoil.

The new Blackwell Ultra AI chip, specially built for AI and supercomputing platforms, can provide up to 30 times the performance improvement, and reduce costs and energy consumption by a full 25 times on the original basis!

If the performance of such a chip is really as the president of NVIDIA said, then it is indeed a super chip!

As we all know, with the further advancement of technology, the 7-nanometer process, which was originally limited by the quantum tunneling effect, is no longer a threshold for silicon-based chips.

However, the 5-nanometer chip manufacturing process is still the process limit of most foundries, and only a few manufacturers, such as TSMC, Samsung and other top wafer foundries, can produce 3-nanometer chips below 5 nanometers.

Especially after the 3-nanometer and 2-nanometer processes, silicon-based chips face many problems.

Whether it is the limitation of the material itself or the increasing impact of the quantum tunneling effect on electrons, it is a problem that plagues the rapid development of silicon-based chip performance. It is already difficult to work hard on chip manufacturing to improve chip performance.

For example, although TSMC's GAAFET all-around gate transistor technology used in 3 nanometers does reduce power leakage and improve chip performance and efficiency.

But compared with the 5nm process, the 2nm process has only a performance improvement of about 10%-15% while maintaining the same energy consumption and complexity.

And the new Blackwell Ultra AI chip created by NVIDIA can provide up to 30 times the performance improvement of the 5-nanometer chip they produced before.

Although the performance of a chip is far from being simply measured by multiples, after all, this is a chip specially built for AI and big data, and it will definitely be better at large language model (LLM) inference loads.

But based on the HBM4 memory chip, this new Blackwell Ultra AI chip can be completely called black technology.

Looking at the shocked expressions on the faces of the audience and feeling the noisy discussions, Huang Renxun showed a proud smile on his face.

NVIDIA will shock this International Solid-State Circuit Summit and the world!

He has already seen that tomorrow's stock will show a beautiful upward curve.

For him personally, this will be another beautiful asset increase!

Sitting in the audience, Cristiano Amon, Qualcomm's chief engineer, crossed his legs and watched his peers on the stage "show off" their products crazily, with a mysterious smile on his face.

It has to be said that NVIDIA's new AI product is indeed very strong and can be called black technology.

But this year, he came with a mission!

Nvidia's Blackwell Ultra AI chip is very powerful, but it is only limited to AI and supercomputing platforms.

But Qualcomm is different!

The mobile platform is the biggest core of the global semiconductor industry competition today!

And this time he brought Qualcomm Snapdragon 8Gen4, which is manufactured using TSMC's second-generation N3E process and equipped with Qualcomm's self-developed Oryon core!

The most important thing is that the CPU frequency of Snapdragon 8Gen4 reaches 4.4GHz!

Compared with the previous Snapdragon 8Gen3's 3.34 main frequency, it has increased by nearly 1GHz, far exceeding the 0.1-0.2GHz increase of 8Gen3 to 8Gen2.

Nvidia's Blackwell Ultra AI chip is indeed very powerful, but sorry, Snapdragon 8Gen4 is the protagonist today!

The same idea as Qualcomm's chief engineer Cristiano Amon is shared by Apple's hardware engineering director Steve Sacman.

They also brought their own killer weapons!

In the study, after watching the keynote report of the ISSCC International Solid-State Circuits Summit, Xu Chuan deleted the video on his computer.

No wonder Yuan Zhouli, the director of the Department of Science and Technology, told him this morning that he hoped that Xinghai Research Institute could help share some pressure in the chip field.

If it weren't for the major breakthrough in the carbon-based chips they were researching, then this carnival in the semiconductor field would be despairing.

Whether it is Nvidia or Qualcomm, or Apple and Samsung, they have all come up with what can be called "unique skills" in their respective chip fields.

Compared with the performance advancement of squeezing toothpaste in 2024, the progress of major manufacturers in the chip field in 2025 is simply an explosive advancement.

Just one year is enough to equal the past five or six years.

Whether it is the Blackwell Ultra AI chip launched by Nvidia, the Snapdragon 8Gen4 with the self-developed new Oryon core launched by Qualcomm, or the new 5G chip launched by Apple, for the chip and semiconductor fields, each of the finished products of previous years can be called black technology.

Especially for the domestic semiconductor industry, it is a technology that strikes at a dimensionality reduction.

Huawei's Kirin chip is indeed very strong, and HiSilicon's design is also very powerful, enough to enter the high-end field.

But for Huawei, how to manufacture 5-nanometer, 3-nanometer and 2-nanometer chips is the biggest problem.

After all, under the control of those unfriendly Western interest groups, wafer foundries capable of producing 3-nanometer and 2-nanometer top chips refused to accept orders, and even refused to provide them with low-nanometer high-performance chips.

It has to be said that the strength shown by major semiconductor manufacturers at this International Solid-State Circuit Summit is indeed a bit exaggerated.

Fortunately, the goddess of luck is on their side.

The breakthrough in carbon-based chip technology is enough to change everything!

The conductivity of carbon is better than that of silicon. In comparison, carbon-based chips can provide faster computing and higher storage capacity.

Carbon-based chips made of carbon nanotubes are more suitable for the rapidly developing science and technology field than silicon-based chips, both in terms of superior performance and lower power consumption.

More importantly, this is a blank field with a very broad future development prospect.

Compared with silicon-based chips, the upper limit of carbon-based chips will be higher.

In addition, with the continuous development and maturity of technology, the manufacturing technology difficulty of carbon-based chips will be reduced, and the cost will also be reduced.

There is no suspense. Today, when finished carbon-based chips have appeared, they really master the future information field!

As the thoughts in his mind turned, Xu Chuan's mouth curled up a smile.

After turning off the reports related to the ISSCC International Solid-State Circuits Summit, he created a new paper report.

After thinking for a while, he tapped the keyboard.

"High-performance carbon-based chips based on high-density carbon nanotube arrays!"

His fingers tapped on the keyboard a few times, and a popular and easy-to-understand title quietly came into Xu Chuan's eyes.

Looking at the title of the paper on the screen, the corners of his mouth curled up.

Since he was needed to help share some pressure in the semiconductor field, and he happened to have the ability now, he might as well take this opportunity to further promote the influence of the journal "Exploration"!

I believe that no one will miss the latest issue of "Exploration General Journal" and "Exploration Materials" of the journal "Exploration"!

With the help of the AI ​​academic assistant, it took most of the day to write the paper "High-performance carbon-based chips based on high-density carbon nanotube arrays!"

Compared with papers on basic disciplines such as mathematical physics, this kind of industrial-oriented paper with finished products and detailed experimental data is much easier to write.

Whether it is the paper itself or the related experimental data, there are complete files for reference.

After all, the carbon-based chip laboratory has actually prepared a finished chip with 10 million transistors per square millimeter and a frequency of up to 5.8GHz.

It's just to sort it out, and then simply use some of his own understanding and language to describe the future of carbon-based chips. This is simple for him.

If it weren't for the fact that some experimental data or places might involve some confidential things, the speed of writing this kind of paper could be even faster.

After asking Xiao Ling to help check it, Xu Chuan checked the freshly-published paper again. After confirming that there was no problem, he sent it and another paper, "A method for high-density synthesis of carbon nanotube arrays based on carbon-based semiconductor materials", to Ouyang Ji, the deputy editor-in-chief of "Exploration" through a dedicated intranet.

The former was published in "Exploration·General Journal", and the latter was used as the opening paper of "Exploration·Materials Science".

I believe that in the next period of time, the academic and industrial circles will be lively, even crazy!