……

The war has begun!

Just one day before the opening of the Zheru Spring Developer Conference, the Wall Street Journal reported on the fierce competition in the computer industry at this stage. Pen @ fun @ pavilion wWw. ｂｉｑUｇE。 ｉｎｆｏ

The authoritative media certainly won't gossip — the Wall Street Journal cites credible intelligence from anonymous sources pointing directly at the PC Alliance, or more accurately, the Fangyuan PC Alliance, which held a meeting in Cupertino to contain the NC on the occasion of the Zheru Spring Developers Conference, which brought together industry insiders.

What's more, the "Wall Street Journal" further broke the news with full confidence that the price of the two mainstream CPU models of Fangyuan's personal computers, Zheru Holder-PC_166MHz and Intel Pentium-MMX_133MHz, will usher in a dive, which will drive the price of Fangyuan's personal computers to drop significantly.

Specifically, in the second half of this year, a Fangyuan personal computer with a CPU running at a frequency of more than 100MHz, a memory of 16MB, and a hard disk of 500MB or 1GB can be bought for $1,000.

To this end, the Wall Street Journal visited the computer sales outlets of various brands as quickly as possible, and confirmed the fact that users who buy products now have received a price difference compensation coupon valid until the end of this year, so as to ensure that they have no worries about the future - if the price of the purchased product, or the product of the same specification, is reduced in price during the year, then it can be compensated accordingly, or converted to a discount for the purchase of other products.

There is no doubt that the PC has declared war on the NC.

You must know that in the past, the two sides were only fighting with each other, spitting, and debating which was better or worse;

The Wall Street Journal also conducted a preliminary survey of users who were interested in buying a computer, and the results showed that if you can buy a good performance personal computer for $1,000, then you will not consider the $800 NC. After all, the latter, which does not have a hard disk and is only equivalent to a network terminal, cannot expect to perform in entertainment such as playing games and watching movies, so it is better to spend a few hundred dollars more to buy a full-featured former.

In the conclusion, the "Wall Street Journal" analysis - Fangyuan personal computer due to the previous strait crisis caused by the price increase factor has basically disappeared, coupled with the industry's conscious initiative to reduce prices, the two aspects together to force, the second half of this year will definitely be stimulated to usher in a wave of sales; the fledgling NC is facing a very grim situation.

As the so-called fire at the city gate, it affected the fish in the pond - NC is not so good, the unlucky Apple computer, first wanted to cry without tears in the quagmire of collapse and fell into a few points.

Larry Ellison, the creator of the NC who was pointed at by the spear, fiercely accused him of unfair competition under absolute monopoly!

……

Under the attack of the NC Alliance Conference and the Java Alliance Conference, the Zheru Spring Developer Conference was grandly opened.

In his speech, Tang Huan responded to the current market struggle, "Our competitive environment is as free as ever, otherwise, how did NC jump out?"

"With the popularization of the 0.35 micron semiconductor process, technological progress has prompted the price of chips to drop, and personal computers are close behind - very naturally, this is free ~ competition!"

"Just look at the warm welcome from users, and you can see how happy and trendy this is!"

"I want to emphasize once again that all of this is a natural result of technological progress and a fair push. ”

This year's Zheru Spring Developer Conference will continue to uphold the spirit of diligent pursuit of technology and present the latest research results of cutting-edge and extraordinary significance. ”

"I think that's why you chose to participate in the Zheru Spring Developer Conference. ”

"Again, I'm proud to say that you're going to make it worth!"

"For example, on my personal agenda, I will be presenting two very important topics, namely copper interconnect, a manufacturing technology that can further increase the operating frequency of microprocessors, and WiFi, a new standard for wireless LANs. ”

……

Scheming is a must, but not all of the competition, otherwise it will be difficult to convince the public – and in the IT field, technological leadership is an indisputable winning formula.

Naturally, the technical gold content of this year's Zheru Spring Developer Conference is not comparable to the NC Alliance Conference and the Java Alliance Conference.

Take copper interconnection as an example, this idea has been there for a long time, but due to the difficulty of implementation, the industry is generally not optimistic about its prospects, and now, Tang IT has studied it clearly.

The so-called copper interconnect, in a simple description, is that in a very large-scale integrated circuit such as a microprocessor, the "wires" connecting countless transistors were originally aluminum, and now they are replaced by copper.

Moore's Law, "The number of circuits integrated into an integrated circuit chip doubles every 18 months", is the roadmap for the semiconductor industry. And for more than 30 years, it has been a miracle hit.

In this ongoing process, the semiconductor industry's approach to keeping up with the pace of development is simple and crude, that is, it seeks to reduce the size of the components on the integrated circuit in order to increase the number of transistors that can be accommodated, thereby increasing the speed of the chip.

To put it bluntly, the "knife" used to carve the "flower" on the "radish" is becoming more and more exquisite, and the knife work is becoming more and more sophisticated, and the carving is becoming more and more detailed.

Today, the semiconductor process, the knife used to carve turnips, is becoming 0.35 microns, and Zheru is about to invest 0.25 microns and lay out 0.18 microns.

Microprocessors, including Zheru's Holder, Intel's Pentium, IBM's Power, Sun Microsystems' SPARC, DEC's Alpha, MIPS Technology's MIPS, etc., are actively adopting the 0.35 micron process to successfully cross the landmark threshold of 100MHz.

However, there is a limit to this most direct method - at least it is foreseeable that when the process reaches a stage more precise than 0.18 microns, the difficulty will be extremely magnified.

In this case, in addition to focusing on the "carving knife" of the external element of the manufacturing process, the upgrading of the semiconductor industry has also begun to make efforts to make a fuss about the internal element of "radish".

In the past, the method of doing this was also very straightforward, that is, mainly to increase the size of the wafer - since the early 1990s, under the leadership of Zheru, the semiconductor industry has introduced the manufacturing technology of 200 millimeters, or 8-inch wafers.

Obviously, the increase in the size of the wafer diameter has greatly increased the number of transistors that can be accommodated, but the bottleneck encountered in the process of improving the "turnip" is more difficult to break.

Therefore, the semiconductor industry must change the "extensive" development model and instead spend efforts on "refinement".

The introduction of copper interconnection technology is equivalent to working locally, improving the taste of radish and improving the tolerance of carving knife carving.

To explain in professional terms, because the resistivity of copper is about 1.7 nanoohm and the resistivity of aluminum is about 2.8 nanoohm meters, the conductivity of copper is much higher than that of aluminum, so the use of copper interconnection in VLSI can reduce the thickness of the interconnection layer and reduce the distributed capacitance between the interconnection layers, so that it is possible for the microprocessor to further increase the operating frequency.

At the same time, as the density of integrated circuits increases further, the phenomenon of electron migration becomes impossible to ignore, and in this regard, copper also has a strong superiority over aluminum. Gain, the melting point of copper is about 1084 degrees Celsius, and the melting point of aluminum is about 660 degrees Celsius, and copper is relatively less prone to electron migration.

To cite more specific data, copper conducts electricity about 40 percent more than aluminum, allowing microprocessors to run at about 15 percent more frequently, and at the same time, copper is more durable than aluminum, making integrated circuits smaller and about 100 times more reliable.

Of course, nothing is perfect – compared to traditional aluminum interconnects, copper interconnects have advantages such as low resistivity and good resistance to electron migration, but they also come with new problems.

For example, groove defects, bubble defects, metal loss, etc.

It is these various technical difficulties that most people in the industry believe that although the limitations of traditional aluminum interconnects in chips are very obvious, it is impossible for copper interconnects to replace them.

Others are worried that under the high investment, they will not be able to get a return, but Tang Huan will not doubt this qualitative change process of "from 0 to 1" - copper interconnection is the only way and the road to success, so he went to the front again.

Relying on innovation in the field of new materials, copper interconnection technology is here as promised!

Through the improvement of the new process, the copper interconnection layer in the integrated circuit can accommodate six stages.

The existing production conditions of the semiconductor factory, including the manufacturing process, remain unchanged, and the introduction of copper interconnect technology is enough to enable the current high-end microprocessors to operate at a frequency of 300MHz from the 200MHz range.

And this is also a knife used to kill chickens, and the copper interconnection technology must at least cooperate with a more advanced process than the 0.18 micron process, so as not to be overused.

Tang IT said impassionedly: "Zheru has brought 1GB capacity to 3.5-inch ordinary personal computer hard disk through the successful research and development of magnetoresistive and giant magnetoresistive applications, so that ordinary users have a more relaxed and free~ local storage space, and copper interconnection technology will definitely make the microprocessor run at a frequency of 1GHz at the dawn of the new millennium." ”

"Ladies and gentlemen, there is still a long way to go ahead for the PC, and what we have to do is to continuously enhance it, and its cost will naturally continue to decline as technology progresses. ”

"I'm here to make another positive judgment - at least in the next ten years, PCs will not only not die, but will grow stronger, and those products that go against the trend will only be reduced to useless electronic waste!"

Those NC camp "spies" who had to pinch their noses and come to inquire about intelligence, after listening to the last words of Mr. the richest man, their faces all changed, and their uneasiness was difficult to suppress.

……

The traditional mainstream media has long been watching Zheru's every move at the Spring Developer Conference - that night, CNN reported on Zheru's copper interconnect technology.

Industry experts among the guests commented: "Copper interconnect technology can put new products, including Holder microprocessors, three years ahead of competitors, and it will take ten years for other companies in the semiconductor industry to keep up with the technology platform that Jeru has created through research in the field of copper interconnect." ”

The moderator then asked, "What you just said about the impact of copper interconnect technology on the industry, but what about us ordinary users?"

"The use of copper interconnect technology in the manufacture of semiconductor chips means that laptops require less battery power and Internet servers can provide faster page downloads – all in all, the computers, cameras, phones, and other electronic devices we come into contact with every day can be smaller, faster, and cheaper," said industry experts. ”

The host turned the topic to the very gossip NC and PC controversy from the outside world, "Someone once joked that when Don spared no effort to promote the development of the Internet, he definitely didn't expect that Larry Ellison would take advantage of the wave of the Internet to launch NC, and he was ambushed because of it. ”

Zheru's grand introduction of the research and development results of copper interconnection at this time does not imply that Tang has been provoked, so through this move, he demonstrated to the NC camp, and at the same time gave PC a shot in the arm to prove that its prospects are still very bright. ”

The industry expert laughed, "I think that if you don't consider the issue of face, Tang's heart should be very calm." ”

"According to market data, the number of personal computers in the United States at this stage, conservatively estimated, exceeds 100 million, which is also a major basis for the explosive growth of the Internet today. ”

In contrast, although Larry Ellison has repeatedly claimed that the first step in his plan is to sell 1 million NCs, the industrial park on the Asian treasure island already has such capacity. ”

"But the pace of NC advancement, including the other two major NC manufacturers, IBM and Sun Microsystems, has not been as brisk as expected. ”

"It's clear that NC isn't so easy to replicate the miracle of the early 1980s, when new computer platforms were first introduced. ”

"After all, the personal computer platform, which has been developed for more than ten years, has condensed a lot of work results, and it is not something that can be parted with a simple sentence. ”

"The launch of copper interconnect technology should be Tang from a high level to help PCs consolidate their position. Didn't he mention that he also had to host a wireless LAN theme called 'WiFi', which should be a shout-out for breadth. ”