Traveling through the sword to engage in military industry.

If an ordinary person wants to put together all these equipment for a chip foundry production line by himself, it is basically impossible.

However, the old professors from the School of Electronics stepped up, and they had many students and old friends who were involved in chip research, and they were also experts in the field. They were all like enthusiastic computer DIYers, and were busy with these things outside of teaching time, so it took only a few months to get this done.

Jincheng Renzhong’s office.

Chen Shude and Sun Shanhe were excited. Professor Chen Shude handed the complete list of production line equipment to Ren Zhong and said excitedly, "Mr. Ren, our equipment is basically complete. This is the list of our 90nm process equipment. The prices and delivery times of these equipment are agreed upon."

After saying this, he and Sun Shanhe stared at Ren Zhong with fiery eyes.

After all, the two of them had been running back and forth for several months, and the matter was finally coming to an end. Chen Shude no longer had the skeptical look he had at first, and he looked at Ren Zhong as if he were the God of Wealth.

This time, he took Ren Zhong to travel for several months, buying second-hand equipment from chip foundry companies all over the country. He even went abroad to look at second-hand goods in Southeast Asia, Japan, and Korea. It was not only the bottom of the foundry industry in the mainland of Dongda that was affected by the economic impact, but also the small and medium-sized chip foundries in other regions had an even harder time.

Thanks to the independence process of Dongda, the domestic low- and mid-end chip foundry has basically been solved independently. It is even more difficult for these foreign small and medium-sized foundry companies to get orders. Many equipment are sold at marked prices, which are even much cheaper than domestic ones.

Ren Zhong was also happy to follow Chen Shude and others to work at the bottom of this industry, because this would allow Ren Zhong to gain some understanding of the semiconductor industry and establish some personal connections, so that he would not be completely clueless about what he was looking for.

After several months of running around, Ren Zhong basically figured out the distribution of domestic chip foundries, which foundries and what types of chips are the most cost-effective. In fact, making power semiconductors and making memory chips are very different.

Along the way, Chen Shude finally witnessed Ren Zhong's bold side. After Chen Shude and Sun Shanhe were satisfied with the equipment, Ren Zhong paid the deposit without hesitation.

It’s not that Ren Zhong can’t pay the full amount, but the thing has not been delivered to Jincheng. If he pays the full amount and gets cheated, it will be a waste.

After several months of running around, they finally confirmed the core and critical equipment of this factory line. The rest were conventional equipment that could be customized domestically. In this way, after counting the equipment list of the complete production line, the production line that Chen Shude and his team had reassembled cost not much less than the one that was scrapped and auctioned.

Ren Zhong took the list and glanced at the final price. The total price was now 8 million yuan.

"Have we fully equipped the entire production line now?" Ren Zhong asked.

"Everything is ready. If we combine these things into a production line and debug it properly, it will be no problem to process and produce 8 0.13-inch wafers a month at full capacity. Although the production capacity is much weaker than the production line you originally planned to buy, after all, it lacks some key equipment, but the processing accuracy of our production line will be one generation more advanced. Our process technology has been upgraded from 90 microns to 2nm, which is a huge improvement. Don't underestimate this improvement. The chips that can be produced can be at least 3- generations ahead."

Ren Dian nodded. Although this production line was not any cheaper than the bankrupt and scrapped product line, the good news was that this product line, DIYed by professors such as Chen Shude and Sun Shanhe, although all second-hand, was in good condition. The key was that its upgrading potential was much stronger than the original one, and the performance of the auxiliary equipment could support the upgrade of the lithography machine to 65nm after the replacement.

This will be another huge progress. For laboratories, they need to have such a process so that they can wake up with a smile even when they fall asleep. This is not only the first among domestic universities, but also ranks among the top even if the universities around the world are ranked.

Of course, these professors are very cunning now and never mention this upgraded function. They just say that such equipment is more suitable to match the 90nm lithography machine eliminated by Z Core, which is more cost-effective than purchasing matching equipment from Z Core. As an illiterate in semiconductors, Ren Zhong is naturally not clear about these twists and turns.

In his opinion, being able to work at 90nm is pretty good.

It can even be used as a prototype for reference by the world of Bright Sword. Now this set of equipment is far beyond the scope of the curriculum. What he requires is that the professors must be very familiar with these equipment.

"Can you completely overhaul that lithography machine, crack the industrial control software and replace it with our own industrial control software to control it?" Ren Zhong said, pointing to the 90nm lithography machine that was scrapped by Z Core. This was a product from 2005 and is already considered a grandfather in the chip foundry industry.

"It may be troublesome to completely crack the source code of industrial control software. After all, these industrial control software are encrypted and cannot be decompiled. We can copy the mainboards of these industrial control software, transplant the software and put it on the new mainboard to replace it directly.

We can even write a new lithography machine industrial control software for this part of the code, but it will cost more. In addition, the mechanical part and light source of this equipment are seriously worn out, so we can also consider re-developing and replacing them to restore this lithography machine with a high failure rate to a good condition. "After following Ren Zhong for a while, Professor Sun Shanhe knew what he was thinking.

"But we can't completely replicate this lithography machine and replace all its parts. I think even domestic optical institutes cannot achieve such high precision in the objective lens system. But we can basically replace the light source now."

"According to your estimation, how many parts do we have that cannot be replaced now?" Ren Zhong was no longer sleepy when he heard this.

"If we follow the current domestic level, in fact, in theory we can replace 100%. Of course, there is still about 10% that cannot be completely replaced, but only approximately replaced, to achieve the complete localization of the 90nm lithography machine, but that is another design. We can't directly replace the parts of this machine with domestic products. After all, some things involve patent protection, and we can't make them too similar. But in theory we can produce most of the same parts for replacement." Sun Shanhe is obviously very familiar with this lithography machine. "Our Modu Microelectronics has mass-produced 90nm lithography machines, and the 28nm is close to mass production, but the light source and objective lens system are still shortcomings."

"Professor Chen, Professor Sun, if you want to make a research-based replacement for this lithography machine, I will fully support your research work. I will fully fund the investment required for the research and mass production process of each component!" Ren Zhong's eyes lit up when he heard what Sun Shanhe said.

If these professors re-produced all the parts of this machine, wouldn't that be the same as developing a new one from scratch?
If we round it up, doesn't it mean that the world of "Dragon Sword" has leapt over several generations to achieve moderate prosperity?

You should know that although 90nm is very old in the main world, its performance is no less than that of the two bombs and one satellite in the Bright Sword world. It is equivalent to skipping the previous six generations of CPUs from 386 to Pentium 3, and directly leaping to the level of processing Pentium 4 or ARM9/ARM11! If the Bright Sword world can copy the equipment of this production line, it can be said to be a rocket-like leap.

You should know that CPUs such as Pentium 4 and ARM9/ARM11 have already reached the level of chips for Internet multimedia applications and quasi-3G mobile phones.

If this is the case, if the lithography machine and supporting equipment can be developed within ten years, we can enter the Internet era and the early days of mobile interconnection in the 70s!
Compared with other countries in the world, this is no longer just a far-leading move, but a cliff-like technological advancement.

For the aviation industry, if this production line is put into full play, the CPU it processes will have surpassed the performance level of the CPU of the first generation F35 airborne computer. It should be noted that the PowerPC G35 used in the early F4 airborne computer only adopted a 0.13-micron process technology.

The construction cost of an early 90nm process chip foundry was as high as over US$30 billion, and most of the cost was spent on these equipment!

Now Ren Zhong has built a simple 8nm production line by collecting scraps, patching them up and spending 90 million yuan on equipment. Although the production capacity is a bit weak, it can really process chips such as PowerPC G4 and PowerPC G5, which directly raises the level of aviation industrial control computers to the level of the main world in the early 21st century, and it can also achieve all the goals for avionics, ship electronics, aerospace satellites, etc.

If Professor Sun and his team can really copy that second-hand lithography machine, then they will be not far from copying this machine in the world of Bright Sword.

You have to know that in the world of Bright Sword, the development of the extremely difficult optical objective lens system is assisted by the famous Zeiss. As long as the specifications are clear, I believe they can find a way to complete this thing, which is more convenient than the University of Tokyo in the main world.

In addition, if the industrial control system of this lithography machine can be copied onto a new motherboard, it means that there is the possibility of unlimited copying. Although the program cannot be modified, for the world of Bright Sword, there is no issue of piracy. There is no obstacle to unlimited copying of this system. Ren Zhong only needs to bring the motherboard and use it directly. After all, bringing goods worth a few hundred yuan is not a big problem.

After hearing what Ren Zhong said, Professor Chen Shude's eyes lit up. His major was semiconductor equipment research, and Ren Zhong's topic happened to be the direction he was responsible for. Although this thing had not been included in the research topic before, it was because there was no money. The project team had to develop more urgent things.

However, if Ren Zhong is willing to provide research funds, Chen Shude would not only want to copy this 90nm lithography machine, but also want to upgrade this 90nm lithography machine to 65nm himself. From a technical point of view, the evolution from 90nm to 65nm is not a leap, but a gradual one, which means that most of the components in the lithography machine are universal, and there may be differences in a few key subsystems such as industrial control and optical objective lens systems.

With these technological research breakthroughs, there is still a considerable amount of 65nm process flow in China, which is very worth studying whether for replacement or for repair and refurbishment. More importantly, this is a dry lithography machine. If immersion type can be achieved on this basis, it can break through to the 28nm level in one fell swoop. After multiple irradiations, 14nm or even 10nm chips can be mass-produced. This is a very advanced process technology in China.

"Mr. Ren, if that's the case, we might as well carry out the alternative research of this lithography machine as one of our next topics. There are many 90nm lithography machine product lines in China, and there are even more machines. A conservative estimate is that there are hundreds of machines. If we can break through the manufacturing substitution of these components, we can avoid being strangled by others in the future. We will carry out independent maintenance of domestic 90nm lithography machines." Chen Shude said excitedly. He didn't dare to talk about upgrading directly to 65nm. After all, this would cost more money.

"No problem on my end. We can still fund this research." Ren Dian nodded. "In fact, I hope you can do research on replacements for these key devices. I don't know what the situation is in China. Anyway, from what people say, outsiders can actually lock onto our industrial computers through some channels."

The autonomy and control that Ren Zhong emphasized is exactly the pain in the hearts of semiconductor people.

As we all know, the startup of top-level DUV machines must be supervised, making the products processed on the production line transparent to certain people, thereby monitoring the production behavior of these OEM companies.

"Mr. Ren, we have been working on this. Our progress was relatively slow because we were constrained by many aspects, including copyright, funding, and talent. If we are only researching and accumulating technology and are not in a hurry to achieve commercial returns, then we can conduct alternative research on this equipment."

Hearing that Ren Zhong was willing to transfer money, Chen Shude said excitedly.

Ren Zhong's words hit him right in the lungs.

"Yes, Mr. Ren, if there is sufficient funding for research in this area, we can fully understand and replace this production line equipment in a few years at most." Sun Shanhe next to him also became excited.

These researchers are of course very interested in researching the core technologies and equipment in the chip industry, because it is easy to produce results.

Although these are not worth mentioning compared with ASML equipment, there are still a large number of them in China. Although we have made breakthroughs in lithography machines, after more than ten years of continuous investment, the strongest one has reached the 7nm level, but it has not been long since we independently developed this process.

Although Chen Shude and his colleagues also participated in some research, they never made a complete machine, and the major achievements were all from others. Even an academician was produced. Although Chen Shude and Sun Shanhe are also senior experts in this industry, they are still a little far from being academicians.

For people like them, if they can freely choose their research direction, they would certainly prefer to choose the host of the lithography machine for their research.

It is not particularly difficult for them to research and evolve to 65nm using the current equipment, and the domestic supporting facilities can now support it.

What is important is that after fully understanding the mainframe of the lithography machine, we can switch to the immersion technology route, and then evolve from the technical nodes of 45nm, 35nm, and 28nm. After all, with the development of lithography technology to the present, the relevant immersion principles and basic technical processes have more or less spread out. If Professor Chen and Professor Sun, with sufficient investment, study and realize the key technology of using water to replace air, they can achieve the two key technical nodes of 14nm/10nm and stand at the forefront of domestic process research.

They were excited just thinking about all this.

(End of this chapter)