Chapter 349

"Lithography should be the most difficult, but there are also gas phase epitaxy furnace, oxidation furnace, wafer dicing machine, magnetron sputtering stage, chemical mechanical polishing machine, ion implantation machine, plasma etching technology, wire bond stitching machine, reactive ion etching system, low pressure chemical vapor deposition system, plasma enhanced chemical vapor deposition system, wafer thinning machine," Xiang Ding said Probe test bench and so on. "

"Among them, we were once close to the world's leading level in lithography. As long as we stick to it for another five years or so, we are likely to become the world's first-class level and compete with the United States and Japan."

"At that time, we started a little later than the United States. We developed it at about the same time as Japan. We were about ten years earlier than Bangzi and Baodao."

Zhang Qianxiu was surprised and asked, "have we ever made chips?"

Tian Shuyuan sighed and said, "yes! That's what our school did. I was one of the members and was responsible for a small part of the research. "

"In 1965, the Academy of Sciences developed the type 65 contact lithography machine. At that time, it was still tens of microns, so it was not difficult."

"In 1980, our university developed the fourth generation distributed projection lithography machine with an accuracy of 3 microns."

"At that time, the mainstream technologies in the world were 3 μ m and 1.5 μ m, but chips were not only a bottleneck of technology, but also other technologies."

"In 1979, Intel released the CPU of the first personal computer, model 8088. At that time, our technology was very close to it, but we did not have a mature and complete production system."

"We have no way to produce wafers, and there are many kinds of chips, not just one, for personal use, for servers, for airplanes, for machinery, and so on."

"In different fields, the internal structure is different, and there should be corresponding software to support the development."

"In the 1970s, there were more than 40 integrated circuit factories, and in the 1980s, there were more than 30 production lines. All of these integrated circuit factories worked independently. Although they all worked in integrated circuits, they did not work in the same direction."

"Wafer production line, because we can't develop and manufacture independently, we began to introduce the world's advanced 3-inch wafer production line as early as 1973."

"At this time, we are two years ahead of Baodao and four years ahead of Bangzi."

"But for a variety of reasons, we originally planned to introduce seven production lines. In the end, we delayed the introduction until 1980, and there were only three."

"Seven years! Mr. Zhang, do you know Moore's law? "

Zhang Qianxiu nodded: "yes, that is to say, transistors on integrated circuits will double every 18 months."

Tian Shuyuan nodded with a wry smile: "yes, we don't believe in this law all the time, and it can't be said to be a law. It's probably a law, and it will be invalid at a certain time."

"But he said this sentence, so far, probably right. In seven years, it has increased by 4.6 times, and the advanced wafer technology that we originally introduced has fallen behind in all respects. "

"From 1980 to this year, in a total of ten years, Japan has developed rapidly. It has surpassed the United States in semiconductors and integrated circuits. In fact, it has already surpassed the United States."

"The full development of the United States has led to the rapid growth of the semiconductor industry in these two countries, while we have no mature industry, and the input-output ratio is seriously inconsistent."

"In addition, in the field of integrated circuits, the technology updates very fast, so we must always invest in R & D, otherwise the products you produce will lag behind."

"Our products in this area have not formed strong competition, so we can't make any profit."

"In the 1970s and 1980s, the Japanese government concentrated all the large enterprises in the semiconductor field, concentrated research and development, and shared the results. For those basic fields that don't make money, the government paid for research and development, and for the fields that can be applied to specific products, the following companies will do research and development."

"By the mid-1980s, 50% of the world's semiconductor products were made in Japan."

"Xiantong is the most powerful company in the United States. They want to find the loopholes in Japanese products. They are surprised to find that Japanese products have completely surpassed them, and the production cost is far lower than them."

"As for the disputes that arose later, they belong to the financial sector. We will not talk about them."

Zhang Qianxiu asked, "Professor Tian, if we want to catch up with them and achieve full localization, what preparations do we need to make?"

Tian Shuyuan took a look at Zhang Qianxiu and said, "in the 1970s and 1980s, we were able to keep up with them, but now we have been left behind by him."

"To catch up with their technology, five to ten years is a must."

"Even in the 1970s and 1980s, we could only keep up with them in terms of production technology, and there was still no way to break through many technologies."

"But it's going to be fully localized. Seriously, I don't dare say for a while."

"There are too many fields involved in this. I'll tell you about them, including programming, design, optics, mechanics, polymer physics, chemistry, materials science, fluid mechanics, microelectronics, electromagnetism, mathematics, automation, and so on."

"In fact, R & D is not the most difficult. Just invest money. The most difficult thing is to realize it and scale it up after R & D is completed."

"Because our early research and development must be catching up and then surpassing. In the process of catching up, all our technologies are backward. In front of other people, we have no advantage at all."

"In the process of transformation, we can also solve the problems encountered in the actual large-scale production and accumulate more technology."

Speaking of this, Tian Shuyuan sighed again: "we have lost at least ten years. From 1980 to 1990, our country's investment in R & D was getting smaller and smaller, but there was no profit opportunity. With this money, it's better to buy other people's eliminated production lines and produce by ourselves."

"But these eliminated production lines don't make money either. At most, they cheat people in China."

Zhang Qianxiu probably also understood the difficulty of the government. He began to invest in semiconductor research in the 1950s and spent a lot of money on R & D in 1980. Although there were many technological breakthroughs, it did not bring much output. If some of the money was used to buy production lines in other countries, the rest could support the development of other scientific and technological fields, It's better than spending money in this field.

In a word, it's better to buy a mature production line than to develop our own technology, and it's better to buy ready-made products directly than to buy a mature production line.

If the R & D technology costs 100 yuan, the production line costs only 50 yuan, and the finished product costs only 20 yuan or even 10 yuan. In particular, the technology iteration in this area is still very fast.

In this era, the integrated circuit market is not very large, and it belongs to high-end and small category products. Automation, information technology has not been popularized, integrated circuits can not play its real power, has not been widely used.

In the future, it will be applied to almost all electronic products, but not now.

Especially for personal mobile phone business, mobile phones are still mobile phones, and no one in the world can expect much change in the next 30 years.

Zhang Qianxiu felt the difficulty of this road, and at the same time understood the reason why he did not vigorously develop semiconductors in this era. After 30 years, he blamed the decision made in the 1980s and 1990s. He did not put himself in his shoes. The state did not give up until it had invested in it for 30 consecutive years and failed to see the expected results. With the money, other fields had developed early.

After this discussion, all the people present were heavy faced, because all the people present except Zhang Qianxiu were real experts in this field. They were very clear about the situation of domestic semiconductors and could be described as "miserable".

Zhang Qianxiu then asked, "Professor Tian, to be honest, I want to make chips."

All the professors present were surprised to see Zhang Qianxiu. The strength of the whole country has not developed in decades. Zhang Qianxiu, a teenager, is going to do it. It's just impossible.

Tian Shuyuan wry smile: "Mr. Zhang, I've talked with you for so long. Although you don't speak much, most of you are listening to us, but I believe you are a person with patriotism and ambition."

"But let me say something unpleasant. This field can not be developed by one person or one company."

"In order to develop semiconductors, the Japanese government has jointly established VLSI, a very large-scale joint research institute, with the national top companies."

"After the United States was overtaken by the Japanese in the early to mid-1980s, it also established an alliance."

"At present, Bangzi country is also developing very fast. They are also taking the whole country's efforts to develop this field."

"If we want to occupy a place in this field, we almost have to compete with the R & D power of the three countries. It's a long way to go."

Zhang Qianxiu said: "I have to try. I'm not so dignified. I'm ready for myself. Even if I fail, I can guarantee that I'll have enough food and clothing for the rest of my life. As long as I have a cent left, I will continue to do it."

"The main purpose of this visit is to understand the current situation with professors. To be honest, I always thought that our country's semiconductor industry, especially the chip field, is a zero."

"But listen to the professors, our country still has a certain foundation, at least I don't have to start from scratch."

"Now the most advanced technology is 1 micron. We have 3 micron technology. If we work hard, there is still hope."

Tian Shuyuan shook his head and said: "the chip also needs an architecture and instruction set. Without this, even if we have the manufacturing technology, it is useless to make the chip, but this is another problem."

Zhang Qianxiu asked suspiciously, "what does this mean?"

Tian Shuyuan said: "say so! A chip is an integrated circuit. There are many circuits in it, but in the final analysis, it's just an integrated circuit. It can't understand what you ask it to do. It also needs a matching instruction set. "

"This instruction set is to connect the human and machine interface, so that the chip can understand your instructions. This is the simplest instruction."

"On the basis of this instruction set, we have developed software. The computer system we use is a software."

"If you type A, you will give an instruction. The system will be transformed into the language of chip architecture. After the chip receives the command, it will operate on its complex circuit and finally display on your display screen."

"The more advanced the instruction set is, the better the performance of the chip will be."

"Chip, instruction set and system are a whole, and they are indispensable."

Zhang Qianxiu was stunned and asked, "what instruction set do you have now?"

Tian Shuyuan said: "x86, MC68000 these are, you may not know these."

“X86？ On the computer Zhang Qianxiu asked.

"Yes Tian Shuyuan was a little surprised: "I didn't expect Mr. Zhang to know this."

Now computers are not popular. They are not professionals. They don't know about it at all.

"Is arm also an instruction set?" Zhang Qianxiu asked.

Tian Shuyuan was stunned for a moment and said, "yes, but it doesn't seem to have been applied in the market."

Zhang Qianxiu probably understood that in the chip war of that year, the only manufacturer in China who could design chips used arm architecture, and almost all mobile phones used this architecture.

But what Zhang Qianxiu didn't know was that there were two architectures in the world that monopolized the computer market and the mobile phone market, namely x86 and arm.

X86 architecture, Intel only licensed to AMD, win system is based on x86 architecture development.

That's why the company that can produce computer chips has its own Intel and AMD, and other companies can't produce it even if they have this technology. Because Intel doesn't grant authorization to other companies, other companies can't use x86 architecture. If they can't use x86 architecture, they can't install win system. Who can buy your chips?

Later, all the instructions used in the mobile phone architecture were arm architecture. Qualcomm, bangziguo four-star, our country's Mou Wei, and MediaTek all used arm architecture. We often say that chips such as Kirin chip, snapdragon and so on can't escape arm architecture. This company can make a lot of money only by authorization of instruction set.

Zhang Qianxiu said, "we still have a chance. We haven't developed yet."

Xiang Ding said: "Mr. Zhang, if you make semiconductors or integrated circuits, there are other ways. If you want to make computer chips, you can't escape the x86 architecture."

"Intel will not authorize other companies. Without the x86 architecture, we can't install the win system."

Zhang Qianxiu said, "how feasible is it for us to develop a new instruction set and supporting system ourselves?"

"No less difficult than CPU." Tian Shuyuan said.

Well, now I have another problem. To make a chip, there must be an instruction set. There must be a system on the instruction set.

If we want to make full use of domestic products, we should not solve a series of hardware problems, but also solve software problems.

Zhang Qianxiu, even a reborn, has no confidence that he can develop a system to defeat Microsoft; Then, we developed the arm, which will take over the current Intel Architecture and dominate the mobile phone architecture in the future; Finally, the chip manufacturing industry was developed, and Bangzi, Japan and China were all defeated.

"It's up to people." Zhang Qianxiu said: "we can't let this life go to waste. We have to do something."

Zhang Qianxiu said this to himself. After all, it's too simple to live a new life without worrying about food and clothing. He has to do something beneficial to the country and the people.

It's not that Zhang Qianxiu is so great. It's just that he, as a Chinese, wants to make some contribution to the land where his ancestors and grandchildren live under the premise of ensuring his living conditions. He doesn't think it's so great.

To put it simply, I don't have to worry about food and drink, and I have enough money to spend. It doesn't matter if I toss about. It depends on people and heaven.