Under the leadership of Dr. Yu, everyone walked to the tour passage of the clean room. When passing by the door of the clean room, Zhang Lexing found a Westerner in a suit and leather shoes standing at the door, with a serious expression and a wary gaze.

"Dr. Yu, the security guards in the factory are very tight, and there are still people standing here." Zhang Lexing said with a little surprise.

"No," Dr. Yu whispered to Zhang Lexing, "This is not our own security, he is one of the personnel stationed by the Federal Technology Regulatory Commission of the United States, saying that it is to prevent the leakage of key technologies." Since we started to do research on MIPSCPU, there was only one person at first, mainly in the Microelectronics Research Institute, and then with the development of the factory, the number of personnel began to increase. Especially after we cooperated with Sony last year, they sent two groups of people at once, one group was on the chip factory, and the other group was on the side of the Microelectronics Research Institute. Not only did we requisition two offices as command centers, but we also set up satellite antennas for communications, and the formation was so big that even our company's own people could not enter some places. ”

Unexpectedly, the hand of technological control has reached Hong Kong, and it seems that it will not be easy for some technologies to be transferred to the mainland in the future. Thinking of this, Zhang Lexing asked angrily: "Did they give money to the place where we were requisitioned?" ”

Dr. Yu said with some tears and laughter: "They did give the rent, but sometimes their inspections affected our work a little. ”

Zhang Lexing smiled, "Dr. Yu, don't worry too much, they won't stay here forever, and in a few years, this place may not be the place they want to come to." ”

Dr. Yu sighed and led the group on. After turning a corner, the group came to the visit channel next to the clean room, and through the thick glass, Zhang Lexing saw that the staff in the clean room were working quietly in dust-free clothes.

Dr. Yu seemed to have forgotten the unhappiness just now, and began to introduce the situation in the clean room.

"Now the clean rooms in the factory have been updated and managed to reach the level of Class 4 or above. According to the technical requirements, the staff inside have all started using the one-piece dust suit you see now, and they all have hoods, special cloth shoes, high boots, and gloves.

In order to prevent indoor turbulence and dust, we also have special operating regulations, which require indoor staff to work quietly and attentively, not to place items above the work area, try to avoid unnecessary actions (actions outside the operation), try to avoid private conversations (conversations unrelated to the operation), etc. So now you see them moving around very little when they're working, and they rarely talk to each other in general.

In addition, the water used in the room is specially treated and processed by ion exchange resin treatment, which removes anions and cations from the water, resulting in ultrapure water with a resistivity of 18 trillion ohms......"

Walking through the clean room, the group continued along the tour passage, and Dr. Yu went on to introduce other aspects of the chip factory.

"This chip factory was first built to produce game console function enhancement chips, and the circuit integration is not too high, and the process requirements for the production line are relatively simple. However, the construction and management process during that period of time has accumulated considerable experience for our team, after several years of development, now we have gradually entered the CPU (central processing unit) design, production and other aspects, the original game console function enhancement chip production line has been transferred to the mainland Shenzhen side of production.

Since 89 years, we have gradually established our own CPU design team based on the Institute of Microelectronics, and successfully developed an improved CPU (R-3000A) of MIPSR-3000. At the beginning of '91, we built our own CPU chip packaging and testing factory. After signing a cooperation agreement with Sony last year, with its support, we began to prepare for the construction of an 8-inch wafer factory with a complete process, including not only a chip production plant with a complete chip production process including wafer manufacturing, wafer probing, packaging and testing, but also a wafer production plant for rod manufacturing and wafer manufacturing, which is expected to be completed and put into operation in mid-1994......"

Speaking of which, Dr. Yu led everyone to a nearby tall building. From the roof of the building, Zhang Lexing can clearly overlook the panoramic view of the entire factory.

Dr. Yu pointed to the busy construction site in the distance and said: "The wafer manufacturing and wafer probing workshop that has begun to be capped over there is not yet capped next to it, and it is expected to enter the trial production stage by the end of next year, and all of them will be completed and put into operation in the middle of next year." According to the plan, the wafer output will reach 5000~6000 pieces per month after production, and with the improvement of production process and the strengthening of management in the future, there is still room for further improvement in output. In the future, our CPU production is mainly to meet the purchase order of game console processors signed with Sony, and we predict that the annual output of CPUs is 1.2 million, and the current planned wafer production is enough to meet the needs. ”

Looking at the construction site in the distance, Zhang Lexing couldn't help but feel a little proud in his heart, after so many years, he finally has his own CPU production base, although it can't be compared with Intel, a general-purpose CPU production factory, but it can be regarded as laying a good foundation for his future host plan.

However, after listening to the annual output of CPUs introduced by Dr. Yu, combined with the memorable output of Sony PlayStation in his memory, Zhang Lexing couldn't help muttering a little in his heart: "Dr. Yu, they are still a little conservative, if they know that Sony will produce hundreds of millions of game consoles of this model in the future, and there will be at least 40 million or more according to the proportion of 40%, then they will definitely not be satisfied with the current annual production of only 1.2 million." It's a pity that I can't say it directly, it seems that I have to find a way to mention it in a roundabout way, so as not to watch the flatbread and not eat it when I get it, and be picked up cheaply by Sony. ”

After calculating for a while, Zhang Lexing said to Dr. Yu: "Well, this output is still a bit conservative now, I have communicated with Sony several times, according to the current market research report, the future game console market is unusually large, and it is possible to exceed 60 million units." And it's impossible to run out of stock for game consoles, which means that our R-3000A will definitely be in use with more than 60 million pieces. In the future, the average annual output of our factory will exceed 3 million, which is a huge gap from the current 1.2 million. If you can't meet your own wafer production, you can expand your own production while purchasing from other factories. Don't worry about the money you need to expand your production capacity, I've made ample preparations for you. ”

Dr. Yu and the other company executives all showed thoughtful expressions, although I don't know if others believe in the future predictions that Zhang Lexing said, but Dr. Yu should have no problem here, because Zhang Lexing's past performance has conquered him, and I believe that he will definitely seriously consider Zhang Lexing's suggestion.

Next, the group put on hard hats and inspected the production workshop under construction, learned about the actual situation from some middle-level and on-site staff of the company, and waited for the inspection to be almost time for dinner.

Dinner at Four Seasons Hotel Lung King Heen is not particularly luxurious, but the location is quite good, through the window in the private room, you can also directly look out on the Victoria Harbour not far away. The dishes have already been ordered, and they are all Longjingxuan's signature dishes such as: crab meat and tofu wings, roasted eel with osmanthus nectar sauce, fish maw button goose paw, steamed stargazer willow with bean crisp, etc., and then accompanied by some fresh vegetables, almond soup balls and dew. Zhang Lexing rarely eats Cantonese food, but this meal is quite satisfying, the fragrance of osmanthus and the fat fish achieve an excellent balance, the fish maw and goose paw are dense and rich but not sticky, and the careful blending of crab meat, tofu and shark fin shows the Cantonese cuisine skills of "seeing the truth in the light". At the end of the meal, the guests and hosts enjoyed themselves.

The next day, under the leadership of Dr. Yu, Zhang Lexing and others came to visit the Oriental Institute of Microelectronics. Dr. Yu stepped down as president of Dongfang Microelectronics Co., Ltd. last year to become the chairman of the company, and his daily work focus has shifted from the production management of the chip factory to the research institute.

In order to make full use of the professional and technical talents in Hong Kong, and thanks to Dr. Yu's personal connections, the Oriental Institute of Microelectronics has adopted the form of co-establishment with well-known universities in Hong Kong since its establishment, on the one hand, to recruit senior technical personnel from overseas, and on the other hand, to select young scholars with great potential from universities.

When Zhang Lexing and his entourage came to the Oriental Institute of Microelectronics, the research groups in the institute were busy with their own research work. In order not to affect their research process, we could only take a brief look at the research environment and equipment configuration in the institute, and then go to the conference room of the institute to listen to the work report of Ye Shengxin, deputy director.

"At the beginning of the establishment of the institute, the main research direction included some technologies related to microelectronics, such as: system and circuit design, device physics, process technology, material preparation, automatic testing and so on. After several years of development, some research that is closely related to specific production has been transferred to the chip factory, which mainly retains some relatively basic or more forward-looking research projects, such as: basic research on material physics, SOC (SystemonChip, system-on-chip) research and application, computer-aided design of integrated circuits, semiconductor processes, microelectronic thin films and their applications in solid-state devices, micro-electro-mechanical systems and integrated sensor research, etc.

…… We have achieved a lot of results in the above research projects......

To sum up, the development of the institute is very rapid and the technical reserve is very strong, which can provide strong support for the rapid development of the company in the microelectronics industry. Ye Shengxin closed his manuscript and completed the report.

Zhang Lexing is basically a layman in this aspect of microelectronics, and if he wants to discuss the technical details with these professionals, it is guaranteed that he will fall into the clouds. Fortunately, Zhang Lexing roughly remembers some of the development directions of microelectronics technology in the future, so that at least he can put forward some more reliable suggestions.

"I won't talk about anything else, our chip factory should have two development directions in the future, one is high-performance processors, and the other is embedded low-power processors. In terms of high-performance processors, performance can be improved by increasing the frequency of processor operations, but although this road will work quickly in the short term, sooner or later it will encounter bottlenecks in terms of integration and power consumption control. We should consider more options as early as possible, whether it can work on improving computing efficiency, or using multiple low-frequency processors to form a multi-core computing mode, and try to trade less power consumption for more efficient computing. The future application prospect of embedded low-power processor is very broad, can be widely used in a variety of consumer appliances, intelligent equipment, industrial control, etc., the United Kingdom established an ARM company two years ago, mainly to study this aspect of the processor, the Institute can consider technical exchanges or cooperative research with it in this regard. I hope that the Institute will consider my proposal without prejudice to the current research process. Zhang Lexing thought about it for a while and put forward some of his ideas.

Ye Shengxin took out a notebook and listened to it, and after writing, he said: "Well, we will arrange a small technical seminar in our institute, and I will take your suggestions to the meeting for discussion." But rest assured, we will organize the right team to conduct a research project like this that is related to the future development of the company. ”

……

After visiting the institute and listening to the report, Zhang Lexing and his entourage came to the Four Seasons Hotel Longjingxuan again. The places are similar, but the people who come are different, but the taste of the food is still very satisfying.

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