Reborn Tech Maniac

Chapter 898 Copper Interconnects and WiFi
……

The war has begun!

Just the day before the opening of the Zheru Spring Developers Conference, the Wall Street Journal reported on the fierce competition in the computer industry at this stage.

The authoritative media will certainly not gossip - the "Wall Street Journal" cites reliable information from anonymous sources and points directly at the PC Alliance, or more precisely, the Fangyuan PC Alliance. It was an opportunity for people to gather together, and a meeting aimed at encircling NC was held in Cupertino.

What's more, the "Wall Street Journal" further broke the news with full confidence that the current two mainstream CPU models of Fangyuan personal computer - Zheru Holder-PC_166MHz and Intel Pentium-MMX_133MHz, the price will usher in a dive, which will drive Fangyuan personal computer The price of computers has dropped significantly.

Specifically, in the second half of this year, a Fangyuan personal computer with a CPU running at a frequency of more than 100MHz, a memory of 16MB, and a hard disk of 500MB or 1GB can be purchased for $1000.

To this end, the "Wall Street Journal" visited the computer sales outlets of various brands at the fastest speed, and confirmed the fact that users who purchase products now have received a price difference compensation coupon valid until the end of this year to ensure Worry-free - if the purchased product, or a product with similar specifications, has a price reduction within the year, you can get corresponding compensation based on this, or convert it to a discount for purchasing other products.

There is no doubt that PC has declared war on NC.

You know, before the two sides were just fighting, spitting, and arguing about which is better; now it's about to see the bayonet.

The Wall Street Journal also conducted a preliminary survey on users who are interested in buying a computer. The result is that if you can buy a Fangyuan PC with good performance for US$1000, then you will not consider the US$800 NC.After all, the latter, which has no hard drive and is only equivalent to a network terminal, cannot be expected to perform well in entertainment such as playing games and watching movies. It is better to spend a few hundred dollars more and buy the full-featured former.

In the conclusion, the "Wall Street Journal" analyzed that the price increase factor of Fangyuan personal computer due to the previous Strait crisis has basically disappeared, coupled with the industry's conscious and active price reduction, the two aspects will be combined together, and the second half of this year will definitely increase. I was stimulated to usher in a wave of sales; the situation faced by the fledgling NC is very severe.

As the saying goes, a fire at the city gate affects the fish in the pond - NC is not doing well yet, but the unlucky Apple computer is sinking deeper into the quagmire of collapse without tears.

The creator of NC pointed out by the spear - Larry Ellison, criticized fiercely - this is unfair competition under an absolute monopoly!

……

Under the double attack of the NC Alliance Conference and the Java Alliance Conference, the Zheru Spring Developer Conference opened grandly.

In Tang Huan's speech, he responded to the current market trend, "Our competitive environment is as free as ever; otherwise, how did NC jump out?"

"With the popularization of 0.35 micron semiconductor technology, technological progress has driven down the price of chips, and personal computers have followed closely - it is very natural, this is free competition!"

"Looking at the enthusiastic response of users, you can know how happy this is and the trend of the times!"

"I want to emphasize one more point, all of this is the natural result of technological progress and fair promotion."

"And this year's Zheru Spring Developer Conference will continue to uphold the spirit of diligent pursuit of technology, and present cutting-edge and latest research results of extraordinary significance to everyone."

"I think that's why you choose to participate in the Zheru Spring Developer Conference."

"Again, I'm proud to tell you all that you will definitely be well worth the trip!"

"For example, on my personal agenda, I will host presentations on two very important topics, namely, the manufacturing technology that can further increase the operating frequency of microprocessors-copper interconnects, and the new standard of wireless local area networks-WiFi."

……

To fight against competitors, tactics are necessary, but not all of them, otherwise, it will be difficult to convince the public—and in the IT field, technological leadership is an undisputed magic weapon for victory.

Naturally, the technical gold content of this Zheru Spring Developer Conference is not comparable to that of the NC Alliance Conference and the Java Alliance Conference.

Take copper interconnection as an example. This idea has been around for a long time, but due to the high difficulty of realization, the industry is generally not optimistic about its prospects. As a result, Tang IT has now researched and understood it.

The so-called copper interconnection, in a simple description, is that in a VLSI such as a microprocessor, the "wires" connecting countless transistors were originally made of aluminum, but are now replaced by copper.

Moore's Law - "The number of circuits integrated on an integrated circuit chip doubles every 18 months" can be called the yardstick of the roadmap for the semiconductor industry.And in the past 30 years, it has been invaluable.

In this process of continuous advancement, the semiconductor industry has kept up with the simple and crude method, which is to blindly seek to reduce the volume of components on integrated circuits in order to increase the number of transistors that can be accommodated, thereby increasing the speed of chips.

To put it bluntly, this method means that the "knife" used to carve "flowers" on the "radish" is becoming more and more delicate, and the knife skills are becoming more and more sophisticated, and the carvings are becoming more and more detailed.

Today, the semiconductor process—the knife used to carve carrots—is popularizing at 0.35 microns; Zheru is about to invest in 0.25 microns and lay out 0.18 microns.

Microprocessors including Zheru's Holder, Intel's Pentium, IBM's Power, Sun Microsystems' SPARC, DEC's Alpha, MIPS Technology's MIPS, etc., are actively adopting a 0.35-micron process to successfully pass the running The very symbolic threshold of frequency 100MHz.

However, this most direct method also has a limit—at least it is foreseeable that when the process reaches a stage more precise than 0.18 microns, the difficulty will be extremely magnified.

In this case, the upgrade of the semiconductor industry, in addition to focusing on the "carving knife" of the external element of the process, has also begun to make efforts to make a fuss about the internal element of "radish".

In the past, the means in this regard were also very direct and crude, that is, mainly to increase the size of the wafer. Since the early 1990s, under the leadership of Zhe Ru, the semiconductor industry has introduced the manufacture of 200 mm, that is, 8-inch wafers. technology.

Obviously, after the wafer diameter increases, the number of transistors that can be accommodated is also greatly increased, but the bottleneck encountered in the process of making "radish thicker" is more difficult to break through.

Therefore, the semiconductor industry must change the "extensive" development model and instead focus on "delicacy".

The introduction of copper interconnection technology is equivalent to starting locally, which improves the taste of radish and improves the tolerance for carving with carving knives.

To explain in professional terms, because the resistivity of copper is about 1.7 nano-ohm m, the resistivity of aluminum is about 2.8 nano-ohm m, the conductivity of copper is much higher than that of aluminum, so copper interconnection is used in VLSI , can reduce the thickness of the interconnection layer and reduce the distributed capacitance between the interconnection layers, so that it is possible for the microprocessor to further increase the operating frequency.

At the same time, as the density of integrated circuits further increases, the electromigration phenomenon becomes impossible to ignore, and in this regard, copper also has a strong advantage over aluminum.Gein, the melting point of copper is about 1084 degrees Celsius, and the melting point of aluminum is about 660 degrees Celsius, and copper is relatively less prone to electromigration.

Citing more specific data is that the conductivity of copper is about 40% higher than that of aluminum, which makes the operating frequency of microprocessors increase by about 15%; at the same time, copper is more durable than aluminum, which also allows integrated circuits to be made Being smaller also increases reliability by about 100 times.

Of course, everything cannot be perfect—compared with traditional aluminum interconnects, although copper interconnects have advantages such as low resistivity and better anti-electromigration ability, they are also accompanied by new problems.

For example, groove defects, bubble defects, missing metal and so on.

It is precisely these kinds of technical difficulties that most people in the industry believe that although the limitations of traditional aluminum interconnections in chips are very obvious, it is impossible for copper interconnections to replace them.

Others worried that they would not be able to get a return due to the high investment, but Tang Huan would not doubt this "from 0 to 1" qualitative change process-copper interconnection is the only way and the way to success, so he went to the front again.

Relying on innovation in the field of new materials, copper interconnection technology is coming as promised!

Through the improvement of the new process, the copper interconnection layer in the integrated circuit can accommodate six levels.

The existing production conditions of the semiconductor factory, including the manufacturing process, remain unchanged. The introduction of copper interconnection technology is enough to allow the operating frequency of the current highest-end microprocessor to step up from the 200MHz range to 300MHz.

And this is still killing chickens with a sledgehammer. The copper interconnection technology must at least cooperate with a more advanced process than the 0.18 micron process, so that it will not be suspected of being overkill.

Tang IT said impassionedly: "Through the successful research and development of magnetoresistance and giant magnetoresistance applications, Zheru has brought 1GB capacity to the 3.5-inch ordinary personal computer hard disk, allowing ordinary users to have more relaxed and more freedom. The local storage space; copper interconnection technology will surely allow the operating frequency of the microprocessor to reach 1GHz when the new millennium comes."

"Everyone, the road ahead of the PC is still very broad. What we have to do is to continuously enhance it, and its cost will naturally continue to decline as technology advances."

"I'm here to make another positive judgment - at least in the next ten years, PC will not only not die, but will grow stronger, and those products that go against the trend will only be reduced to useless electronic waste!"

Those "spies" of the NC camp who had to pinch their noses to inquire about information, after hearing Mr. Richest's last words, all of them changed their faces, and their uneasiness was hard to suppress.

……

The traditional mainstream media has long been staring at Zheru's every move at the Spring Developers Conference - that night, CNN specifically reported Zheru's copper interconnection technology.

The industry experts among the guests commented: "Copper interconnection technology can make Zheru's new products including Holder microprocessors three years ahead of competitors; It will take ten years for other companies in the semiconductor industry to keep pace with this technology platform.”

The host then asked: "You just mentioned the impact of copper interconnection technology on the industry, but what about us ordinary users?"

Industry experts say: "The use of copper interconnects in the manufacture of semiconductor chips means that laptops require less battery power, Internet servers can provide faster page download speeds - in short, the things we encounter every day Computers, video cameras, phones, and other electronic devices can all be made smaller, faster, and cheaper."

The host turned the topic to the dispute between NC and PC, which is very gossipy in the outside world, "Someone once joked that when Tang spared no effort to promote the development of the Internet, he certainly did not expect that Larry Ellison took advantage of the wave of the Internet to launch NC , so he was beaten and ambushed.”

"At this time, Zheru solemnly introduced the research and development results of copper interconnection, does it imply that Tang has been irritated, so through this move, he demonstrated to the NC camp, and at the same time gave the PC a shot in the arm to prove it. The outlook remains bright.”

The industry expert laughed, "I think, if face is not considered, Tang's heart should be very calm."

"According to market data, the number of personal computers in the United States at this stage is conservatively estimated to exceed 1 million. This is also a major basis for the explosive growth of the Internet today."

"Compared to this, although Larry Ellison has repeatedly claimed that in his plan, the first step is to sell 100 million NCs, and the industrial park on the island of Asia already has such a capacity."

"However, including the other two major NC manufacturers—IBM and Sun Microsystems, the pace of NC advancement is not as brisk as expected."

"Obviously, NC is not so easy to replicate the miracle of the early 1980s, when a new computer platform was first launched."

"After all, the personal computer platform, which has been developed for more than ten years, has gathered a lot of work results, and it cannot be simply let go."

"The introduction of copper interconnection technology should help Tang to consolidate the position of PC from a high level. Didn't he mention that he will also host a wireless LAN topic called 'WiFi'? This should be a shout and cheer in terms of breadth. "

(End of this chapter)