Simulation: Great Power Technology

The chip project team obtained enough lenses without any accident. In order to hide people's eyes and ears, some of these lenses were sent to Guizhou, and some of them were left in the research institute in Shencheng, and then transferred to Miyagi County in the Shiwanda Mountain through official channels.

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

The modular construction of the plant is progressing very fast. Under the amazing efficiency of the infrastructure maniac and the saturated construction regardless of cost, the entire plant was even completed two days ahead of schedule, and then the pre-loading of equipment was completed within three days. The "Xinghuo" factory After completion, it will soon enter the most critical assembly link of the lithography machine.

In this session, Ye Zhou must be present.

Although the assembly-related documents provided by the hard disk have been completely completed, various problems that may occur in the process cannot be ruled out. Therefore, the perceptual cognition that Ye Zhou directly absorbs from the simulator is particularly important. If necessary, He can get started directly, directly debug related equipment, and solve problems on the spot.

Because the project is still in progress, Chen Hao's defense level for Ye Zhou has not been lowered, which also allowed Ye Zhou to experience the treatment of a 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 long-ready transfer took Ye Zhou directly to the newly built factory near the Zhengshan Hydropower Station in Miyagi County.

This is a factory that is controlled at the level of confidentiality of a military base, so all the people involved in the construction are under closed management. They may not know what they are building, but everyone knows that it is very important.

Ye Zhou spent eighteen days in this factory.

The assembly work is actually not creative. 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 table every day, and read every operation report that comes up. If any point is found that is inconsistent with the process, all the work of the day will be rolled back.

Ye Zhou has once again become the most stressed person in the factory. His words can decide whether everyone's work should be restarted.

Logically speaking, lithography machine assembly is a continuous work, each step has a strong connection with the previous one, any problem in the middle will lead to the collapse of the whole - that will lead to The entire lithography machine was scrapped.

But fortunately, the lithography machine drawings that Ye Zhou obtained from the simulator were designed with strong robustness. The original 100,000 parts were increased to 120,000, of which 20,000 were redundant parts for The remaining 100,000 functional parts are divided into more than 400 independent modules, and each assembly is carried out for only one independent module, so operation errors will only affect one of the modules.

This is very friendly to engineers who are assembling ultra-precision lithography machines for the first time. After all, they have only been in contact with the assembly of lithography machines above 20nm before, so they need to get started directly with this sub-nanometer level lithography machine , is really a little powerless.

With robustness comes the cost of trial and error.

Trial and error is not terrible, the standard assembly process of asml is only 12 days, but it is based on a strict 8-hour work schedule.

And now these people in the mountains have 24 hours a day.

On September 3, at 11:00 am, the "Zhiwei" No. 1 lithography machine completed the assembly of all modules and entered the final power-on simulation stage.

The Zhengshan Hydropower Station, which was originally used to supply power to the county, has long since been disconnected from the power grid, and has switched to independent power supply to the Xinghuo Factory. This county-level hydropower station with an installed capacity of 500,000 kw will completely become a subsidiary of the Xinghuo Factory from this day on. More than 4 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity are supplied to the factory -- enough electricity to last a whole year for the residents of a small island province in the southeast.

However, such a power supply is still insignificant in the face of 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 7 Zhiwei lithography machines working at the same time. To further expand, the power grid of the entire county must be transformed.

However, this is clearly not an issue to consider now.

The future is still long, and they still have time.

Ye Zhou took a deep breath of the fresh air in the mountains. He walked out of the monitoring room. A lot of technicians had gathered outside the door. Their work had been completed. Now they can 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 at the moment. This part is handled by an engineer specially dispatched from Sandouping, so you can rest assured. In fact, there is nothing to worry about when the power-on simulation is turned on. There is absolutely no problem with the operation of the machine. Whether it will work or not, we will have to wait for two days to actually start etching."

"It's also...how about the silicon wafers, are they all qualified?"

"Asmt has passed all the tests, the purity is 6 9s, basically no problem, this piece of our domestic technology is very advanced, you can rest assured."

"Hey, the more you talk about being at ease, the more worried I get. This month I feel like I'm dreaming, I'm afraid I'll wake up from a dream anytime."

"Don't talk about you, I feel the same... A month ago, I was struggling even at the 20nm level. Now I'm going to go to Yanami. I don't dare to do it in my dreams."

"This test shouldn't be on Yanami, right? Hey, Liu Chen, what's your plan?"

"The plan is to go to 5nm. 3nm depends on the situation and then decides whether to measure it or not. The main reason is that the drawings of 3nm are relatively new and have not been fully understood."

"7nm is also fine. If it can be done, it can also solve the urgent need."

"Let's not talk about 7nm. In fact, if the 10nm level can produce stable output, it is already very strong. Forget it, I have to go to bed for a while. I haven't slept for two days, and I feel unbearable."

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

"What are you staring at? It's like you can help now."

"If I can't help, I have to watch it. It's cool to see this thing. Besides, it's not really nothing to do. Don't you have to move materials later? I'll help too."

"Forget it, I'm not going to sleep anymore, I have to go and see how the photoresist is ready..."

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

Even if the chips made two days later are 100% waste, 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 made.

He walked out of the core area of ​​the factory building and walked towards the hydropower station. The guard at the door recognized his face and gave him a standard military salute. Ye Zhou was stunned, not knowing how to respond.

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

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