Traveling through the sword to engage in military industry.

For the people in the world of Bright Sword, the shocks of the University of Tokyo in recent years have been too many to keep up with, and they are now feeling a little aesthetically fatigued.

The advent of the aircraft carrier only caused a stir for one day before things returned to normal.

After all, compared to sending people into space, the advent of this aircraft carrier has far less impact on ordinary people.

Even people deliberately ignore this.

Whether or not this is the case, everyone has long known that the University of Tokyo is not easy to mess with.

So when it comes to Tokyo University’s first aircraft carrier, people were only slightly surprised and that was it.

They couldn't even feel the passion of the people of Dongda for this aircraft carrier.

Of course, Dongda’s aircraft carrier is no secret to the world of Bright Sword. After all, Dongda had no intention of hiding it from the beginning, and even brought John Bull in to contribute his technology.

Therefore, the major countries in the world are actually well aware of this progress.

However, after it was launched, for the bigwigs of various countries in the world of Sword, the progress of the University of Tokyo seemed a bit fast. It took more than three years to complete an aircraft carrier. This efficiency is comparable to that of the Rogue Eagle during World War II!

You should know that this is not a simple escort aircraft carrier converted from a merchant ship, but a real war monster designed from scratch!

However, Ren Zhong didn't care about these. He completed the last link of the military layout. This new aircraft carrier, designed from beginning to end, almost used up all the aircraft carrier information that Ren Zhong had painstakingly moved from the main world.

The team then had a practical experience and completely experienced a new modern aircraft carrier of the new era.

It can be said that apart from some insurmountable differences in the times in terms of carrier-based aircraft and avionics, in terms of power, number of carrier-based aircraft, deck design, catapult and arresting, the current Yandu aircraft carrier is not inferior to any modern aircraft carrier.

This means that Todai has bought more than half a century of time to enter the aircraft carrier era ahead of schedule.

With this start, the future East China Navy will no longer have any bottlenecks. It will have everything from large black fish, large destroyers, amphibious assault ships to aircraft carriers. In terms of quality, it has begun to completely surpass any current opponents.

We may not have as many as them in quantity, but we will surpass them in quality.

Therefore, as for the development of the military, the heavy responsibility has finally been handed over to the subordinate teams to iterate on their own!

Their next tough task will probably be their continued efforts to upgrade Doppler radar to phased array radar, further improving avionics, and then further optimizing and iterating new gas turbines and nuclear power reactors, as well as power machinery such as super-large diesel engines in terms of drive, to continuously improve energy utilization efficiency to new heights.

In terms of the technical route planning for technological evolution, Ren Zhong has already given them enough information.

Therefore, after careful consideration, Ren Zhong, after clearing out the multiple technology development paths in his hands, resolutely refocused his strategic focus on the crucial field of the electronics industry.

Although the current lithography technology has made breakthrough progress and entered a new 2-micron era, giving birth to new production equipment for the production of 286 chips, but in Ren Zhong's profound vision that has read the history of technological development in the main world, this is only the embryonic stage of the booming development of the electronics industry.

The 286 computer is just a tiny moment in the long history of computer development. It marks the transition of personal computers from their initial buds to preliminary applications, but it is far from reaching the peak of technology. The lithography machine that Dongda has just developed, even the latest model, is just a prehistoric artifact from Ren Zhong's perspective in the main world. Those ancient devices are almost impossible to find in the main world, and can only be occasionally glimpsed in dusty historical materials.

The development history of the lithography machine, which truly led the electronics industry into modernization, is far more complex and glorious than imagined.

The birth of the first generation of modern GLINE lithography machines truly marked the first leap in the history of semiconductor manufacturing technology. They used g-Line light sources with a wavelength of 436nm. This technological innovation made it possible to produce chips with a process of 0.8 to 0.35 microns. The corresponding equipment was the first generation of modern contact and proximity lithography machines, which opened up new horizons for the manufacture of 486 and later new CPUs.

In the early CPU manufacturing process, the 1-micron process could only support the production of 386-level CPUs at most, and the maturity of the 0.8-micron process marked the arrival of the 486 era. If we want to further leap to the 586 Pentium-level CPU, the process must evolve to 0.35 microns, which is undoubtedly a huge challenge in the field of semiconductor manufacturing.

However, as far as the current development of Dongda CPU lithography machine technology in the world of Liangjian is concerned, they are still far from reaching the threshold of modern lithography machines.

In Ren Zhong's eyes, the 2-micron process is nothing more than a relic of prehistoric times. The road ahead still has four generations of different light source lithography technology to overcome, and every step is full of unknowns and challenges.

The second generation of lithography machines uses i-Line as the light source, and the wavelength is shortened to 365nm. The technological advancement has made it possible to produce chips with a process of 0.8 to 0.25 microns. In the main world, this process level corresponds to the glorious era of the Pentium III CPU. As a classic product of Intel, the Pentium III not only achieved a significant improvement in performance, but also set a new benchmark in semiconductor manufacturing technology.

Then, the third-generation lithography machine adopted KrF light source, the wavelength was further shortened to 248nm, and the process node was upgraded to 180 to 130nm. This technological innovation provided strong support for the production of the first and second generation Pentium 4. The first generation Pentium 180 Willamette with 4nm process technology and the second generation Pentium 130 processor Northwood with 4nm process technology in the following year were both products of this technological advancement. They not only improved the performance of CPU, but also promoted the development of the entire semiconductor manufacturing industry.

The fourth generation of lithography machines is an extremely important milestone in the development of lithography technology. The introduction of ArF (DUV) light sources shortens the wavelength to 193nm, and through technological innovation, the actual wavelength utilization rate is increased to 134nm. This technology is the famous immersion lithography technology, which further improves the level of ArF lithography: by filling the bottom of the projection lens and between the wafers with water, because the refractive index of water is close to that of glass (at a wavelength of 193nm, the refractive index of air = 1, water = 1.44, and glass is about 1.5), the light emitted from the projection lens enters the water medium, and the refraction angle is small, so the light can be refracted normally from the lens. The actual equivalent wavelength of ArF light source plus immersion technology is 193nm/1.44=134nm.

This technological breakthrough, full of genius ideas, has made it possible to realize a wide range of modern processes after 130nm, and the most advanced process can even be upgraded to the 7nm level (of course, the yield rate is far inferior to that of EUV lithography machines under such extreme process limits). This generation of lithography machines is currently the most widely used and representative generation in the main world. Starting from the third generation of Pentium 4, the production of most CPU, GPU and memory particle chips is completed by this generation of lithography machines. In the main world of Renzhong, this is also the most powerful process technology that Dongda can currently master.

However, the challenge did not stop there. The fifth-generation lithography machine uses EUV as the light source, with a wavelength shortened to 13.5nm, using extreme ultraviolet light technology. This technological innovation allows the process node to reach the level of 14nm to 3nm, and is one of the most advanced products on the market. In the main world, it is known as the most powerful lithography machine and is widely used in the production of the latest CPUs and GPUs. The emergence of this technology has not only promoted another leap in the semiconductor manufacturing industry, but also laid a solid foundation for future technological development. Faced with such a difficult task, Ren Zhong knows that if he breaks through step by step, it may be a detour for Dongda in the world of Liangjian.

Although the g-Line light source is more in line with the technical background of the world of Bright Sword, it is somewhat repetitive research and development for the i-Line light source. Therefore, in the subsequent evolution of the lithography machine, Ren Zhong decided to directly challenge the second-generation lithography machine of the i-line light source from a technical perspective. This technical route will eventually be able to reach the limit of 0.25 microns and produce modern CPUs such as the Pentium III. At this level, it can basically achieve the performance requirements of multimedia presentation needed in the Internet era in Ren Zhong's vision.

However, in this way, the technical difficulty increases sharply.

Modern chip manufacturing technology, not to mention wafer production, just chip manufacturing includes multiple complex process flows such as initial oxidation, photoresist coating, exposure, development, etching, ion implantation, etc.

A wide variety of equipment is required in these process flows, including oxidation furnaces, coating and developing machines, photolithography machines, thin film deposition equipment, etc., ion implantation machines, polishing equipment, cleaning equipment, and testing equipment, among other professional steps. In fact, even the final packaging test is not simple.

This is one of the reasons why Ren Zhong cannot do DUV directly in one step, because it is impossible to do it at this stage because it would take too many leaps!
Ren Zhong can get the theoretical information of these devices now, but if he can't bring the prototype to the world of Sword, he won't be able to research such a complex thing in a short time. You know, a DUV contains more than 10 parts! This is much more complicated than making an atomic bomb!

This is still about hardware, as well as software systems. It also takes time to mature and cultivate truly top-notch computer scientists!

Ren Zhong can bring top-level minicomputers to the Liangjian world to create special R&D zones such as the Fifth and Ninth Districts of Dongda, and deploy a development environment that can truly be considered modern in the main world, but the training of experts cannot be achieved overnight.

Now between the fifth and ninth zones, in addition to the normal research and development of new products.

Ren Zhong also recruited a large group of geniuses in mathematics and physics. These people are being trained in depth as computer system experts. Ren Zhong used the top computer and industrial control textbooks of the main world. After re-editing the PDF documents, he eliminated as many traces of the main world as possible, and provided real-time operating systems such as μClinux, μC/OS-II, eCos, FreeRTOS, mbed OS, RTX, Vxworks, QNX, NuttX, large distributed systems such as the Hongmeng open source system, and many system source codes such as DOS, Linux open source servers and desktop systems for these seed players to study and verify.

In such an environment, these potential computer talents devoted themselves madly to the process of watching, learning, introducing and digesting.

This R&D team, composed of top scientists and engineers, is not only selected from schools, but also selects insightful talents from all walks of life. Therefore, the team members come from different fields, and eventually they will apply what they have learned to their own industries.

It's just that the chip capacity of the Bright Sword world is not strong enough now. In order to test these systems and ideas, Ren Zhong has to bring in the boards and chips from the main world. Fortunately, the chips are not heavy. After completing the design of the main world's circuit boards in the Bright Sword world, what Ren Zhong brings into the Bright Sword world are mainly chips, instead of the complete boards as he had to bring in at the beginning.

It is precisely because of the supply from the main world that these experts in the fifth and ninth districts have made rapid progress in computer technology. The speed of chip design progress has even surpassed Moore's Law in the main world!

A new generation of chips will be iterated out in less than a year. Since the current chip design program in the Liangjian world is basically the same as that in the main world, Ren Zhong will spend a large amount of money to buy a complete set of chip design software from the main world!
For design software that can support the design of billions of integrated circuit chips, it is even more of a piece of cake to deal with a small scale like 286/386 with hundreds of thousands of circuits.

Not only is the X86 technology route evolving rapidly, but another technology route based on the ARM and RISC-V open source architecture is also evolving. Because these two technologies can directly purchase source design data and circuit diagrams, Ren Zhong can move faster on this technology route compared to the X86 route!

However, the ARM and RISC-V design materials purchased now are still too advanced for Liangjian Design's processing technology!

Basically, the manufacturing process of entry-level industrial control chips on the market, even the low-end stm32 Cortex-M3 chips, is required to reach the 130nm level.

Therefore, when it comes to chips, Ren Zhong faces too many tasks.

Moreover, after cross-generational research, it was found that most of the technologies and equipment involved were beyond the scope of the Bright Sword world, and there was no way for them to solve it themselves.

It's not just the lithography chip process, there is also a new challenge in wafer production.

Wafer manufacturing involves multiple steps, including wafer growth, cutting, cleaning, etching, chemical mechanical polishing, photolithography, etc. Each step requires strictly controlled conditions, and there is a strong demand for automated control. In the early 8080 chip manufacturing, the University of Tokyo developed the first generation of three-inch wafers, but in the further 8086 chip it evolved to 4-inch wafers.

If we want to further produce 386 and 486 level chips, we basically need to use 6-inch wafers. When it comes to the Pentium chip level, we need 8-inch wafers to achieve the best yield rate.

It’s just that technological advances must be followed in the basic materials for chip manufacturing, otherwise having excellent lithography machines will be useless.

However, now, whether it is lithography machines or the preparation research of chip basic material wafers, the R&D costs required for each generation of iterative evolution are increasing by orders of magnitude.

It is important to promote the development of technology in this entire industry, and there are many mutually restrictive conditions that need to be overcome.

For example, a precision control device like DUV requires a more powerful industrial control system, which in turn requires the support of chips with stronger processing performance. The current 8086 chip is weaker than the STM32 F3 in the main world, so it is impossible to complete this industrial control system.

To solve this problem, we must first find a way to produce old lithography machines, such as 1-micron process lithography machines, to create chips more powerful than 8086, such as 386 or 486 level, and then use the industrial control systems produced by such chips to match the production of more powerful lithography machines, such as 0.35-micron lithography machines!
In this way, we will be able to produce Pentium-level chips, and use the new Pentium chips to develop new equipment that can control the 0.13-micron process. After several cycles, we will be able to produce embedded systems similar to the stm32 Cortex-M3 chip level, allowing industrial control systems to slowly evolve to the current level of the main world.

Each of these links cannot be accomplished overnight. It will take at least ten or twenty years.

It can be said that it is too difficult to skip grades.

(End of this chapter)