Great Power Technology

The chip project team got enough lenses without any surprise. In order to cover up others' eyes, some of these lenses were sent to Guizhou, and some were kept at the research institute in Shencheng. They were then transferred to Miyagi County in the mountains through official channels.

Along with these lenses, Ye Zhou went to Miyagi County.

The modular construction of the factory progressed extremely quickly. Thanks to the amazing efficiency of the infrastructure maniac and the saturated construction regardless of cost, the entire factory was even completed two days ahead of schedule, and then the preliminary loading of the equipment was completed within three days. The "Spark" factory After completion, it is about to enter the most critical assembly link of the lithography machine.

Ye Zhou must be present at this stage.

Although the assembly-related documents provided through the hard disk are completely complete, various problems that may occur during the process cannot be ruled out. Therefore, the perceptual knowledge that Ye Zhou directly absorbed from the simulator is particularly important. If necessary, He can get started directly, debug related equipment directly, and solve problems on the spot.

Because the project is still in progress, Chen Hao's security level for Ye Zhou has not been lowered. This also allowed Ye Zhou to experience the treatment of traveling by special plane at a military airport for the first time.

The plane landed directly at an almost unknown airport near Miyagi County, and then the transfer that had been prepared took Ye Zhou directly to the newly built factory near the Zhengshan Hydropower Station in Miyagi County.

This is a factory controlled at the confidentiality level of a military base, so all personnel involved in the construction are under closed management. They may not know what they are building, but everyone knows that this thing is of great importance.

Ye Zhou spent eighteen days in this factory.

There is actually no creativity in the assembly work. Instead, it is all mechanical and step-by-step work. All he has to do is to keep an eye on each set of data on the monitoring platform every day and read every operation report that is sent to him. As long as If any discrepancies with the process are found, all work for the day will be rolled back.

Ye Zhou once again became the most stressed person in the factory. His words could decide whether everyone's jobs should be restarted.

Logically speaking, lithography machine assembly is a continuous work, and each step is closely related to the previous one. If there is a problem in any link in the middle, it will lead to an overall collapse - that will lead to the entire process. The photolithography machine was scrapped.

But fortunately, the lithography machine drawings Ye Zhou obtained from the simulator adopted an extremely robust design. The original 100,000 parts were increased to 120,000, of which 20,000 were redundant parts. The remaining 100,000 functional parts are split into more than 400 independent modules. Each assembly is only performed on one independent module, so operating errors will only affect one of the modules.

This is really friendly to engineers who are assembling ultra-precision lithography machines for the first time. After all, they have only been exposed to the assembly of 20nm or above lithography machines at most before, and they have to directly get started with this sub-nanometer level lithography machine. , it’s really a bit powerless.

With robustness comes the cost of trial and error.

Trial and error is not terrible. ASML's standard assembly process only takes 12 days, but it is based on a strict 8-hour work system.

But now these people in the mountains have 24 hours in their day.

At 11 a.m. on September 3, the "Zhiwei" No. 1 lithography machine completed the assembly of all modules and entered the final power-on simulation stage.

The Zhengshan Hydropower Station, originally used to supply power to the county town, has long since been disconnected from the power grid and instead supplies power to the Xinghuo Factory independently. This county-level hydropower station, with an installed capacity of 500,000 KW, will become a complete subsidiary of the Xinghuo Factory from this day forward. It supplies more than 4 billion kilowatt-hours of power to the factory—this amount of electricity is enough for residents of a small island province in the southeast to use for an entire year.

However, this kind of power supply is still somewhat insignificant compared with the power consumption of sub-nanometer level lithography machines.

According to Ye Zhou's estimation, the power input of the Xinghuo Factory can only support up to seven micro-lithography machines working at the same time. To further expand, the entire county's power grid must be transformed.

However, this is obviously not an issue to be considered now.

The future is still long and they still have time.

Ye Zhou took a deep breath of the fresh mountain air and walked out of the monitoring room. Many technicians had gathered outside the door. Their work had been completed. Now they could only wait for the lithography machine to complete the initial settings after powering on.

"Is the power supply normal? Is anyone watching the indicators?"

"Yes, everything is normal now. Engineers specially transferred from Sandouping are in charge of this. Don't worry. In fact, there is nothing to worry about during power-on simulation. There is absolutely no problem with the machine operation. It depends on Whether it will work or not, we have to wait two days until the actual etching begins to know.”

"That's right. How are the silicon wafers? Are they of good quality?"

"ASMT has passed all tests. The purity is 6.9, which is basically no problem. Our domestic technology is very advanced, so you can rest assured."

"Well, the more you say you don't worry, the less worried I become. This month I feel like I'm in a dream, and I'm afraid I'll wake up from the dream at some point."

"Don't tell me, I feel the same way. I was struggling to get to the 20nm level a fucking month ago, and now I'm suddenly going to the sub-nm level. I wouldn't even dare to do that in my dreams."

"This test won't be about sub-nanometers, right? Hey, Liu Chen, what's your plan there?"

"The plan is to go to 5nm. We have to decide what to do with 3nm based on the situation. The main reason is that the drawings of 3nm are relatively new and we haven't fully understood them yet."

"7nm is fine. If it can be made, it can solve an urgent need."

"Don't talk about 7nm. In fact, if the 10nm level can produce stable output, it is already very strong. Forget it, I have to take a nap. I haven't slept in two days and I feel like I can't handle it."

"Go to bed quickly, I'll keep an eye on you for a while."

"What are you staring at? You say it as if you can help now."

"I have to watch even if I can't help. It's so fucking cool to see this thing. Besides, it's not like I have nothing to do. I have to move materials later, so I'll go help too."

"Forget it, I won't sleep either. I have to go see how the photoresist is being prepared."

Ye Zhou did not participate in their discussion. In fact, he was not as nervous as these engineers who could not see the overall situation, because he knew that they had succeeded when the chip plan had progressed to this point.

Even if the chips produced two days later are 100% scrap, it will not affect the final outcome at all.

The factory is here, and the lithography machine is here. Even if there are defects, it is only a matter of time before a usable chip is produced.

He walked out of the core area of ​​the factory and walked towards the hydropower station. The sentry at the door recognized his face and saluted him with a standard military salute. Ye Zhou was stunned and didn't know how to respond.

After all, this was the first time he had left his workspace in more than ten days.

In the end, he just returned a clumsy salute to the sentry, and then walked onto the path connecting Xinghuo Factory and Lapsang Hydropower Station.