The development status of Ming's semiconductor industry is the direction that Zhu Jingyuan pays direct attention to.
Judy Plutonium was testing personal computers and trying to independently develop online games.
Zhu Jingyuan is in his office, receiving and reviewing reports on related industries from time to time.
There are wafer production plants, photolithography machine production plants, semiconductor chip production plants...
There are also microprocessor design companies, accounting chip design companies, miniaturized data warehouse design companies...
As well as data warehouse production plants, special display equipment plants, supporting external facilities plants, etc...
Major factories for the semiconductor and microchip industries, as well as supporting factories for microchip computers, have been constructed in the past few years.
In the past two years, we have been continuously optimizing the process and successively producing products that meet the design goals.
Zhu Jingyuan believes that there are usually two most important driving forces for how to quickly implement and upgrade a technology, or an industry.
One is sufficient financial and resource support and hard demands, which usually come from the national court, military and scientific research institutions.
The other is a relatively sufficient market competition environment, usually extensive market demand and competition environment.
Moreover, the role of the former is mainly reflected in the development and research of key problems, while the main role of the latter is reflected in the process of promotion and popularization.
Zhu Jingyuan remembered that in many popular science and even examination questions in his previous life, the answer to the question "the world's first microprocessor" was usually considered to be Intel 4004.
But this is actually a wrong answer, or an imprecise question and answer.
The 4004 in 1971 was actually the first "commercial" microprocessor, that is, a microprocessor publicly sold on the civilian market.
If you want to examine this knowledge point, you should also ask this question to be accurate.
The real first practical microprocessor chip was actually the chip for the central air data computer on the F14 fighter jet.
The F14 fighter jet was developed in 1967 and first flew in 1970. It was obviously completed earlier than the 4004.
At the same time, the earliest microchip production went from a laboratory state to mass production.
The microchips in the laboratory can be said to be "rubbed by hand" to a certain extent.
Due to the natural structural defects of early contact lithography machines, the chip yield rate at that time was only a pitiful 10%.
Moreover, during the production process, a large amount of photolithography masks will be consumed.
This results in the price of the produced chips being extremely high, usually starting at two to three hundred dollars.
The U.S. Air Force is developing and popularizing missile systems in this era. The missile seekers use a large number of microchips, and the key is that they are all disposable.
So the U.S. Air Force paid for people to study and improve the chip production process, and developed projection lithography technology.
It solves the biggest pain point of stepper lithography machines and increases the chip yield rate to more than 70%.
At the same time, the consumption of photolithography masks is reduced several times.
Correspondingly, the final production cost of chips of the same scale has also dropped directly from two to three hundred US dollars to 20 to 30 US dollars.
With such low cost, microchips have the opportunity to be popularized in the civilian market.
The Ming court now has very similar needs.
The war between Europe and Spain stopped, the Ming Dynasty seemed to have truly unified the world, and Zhu Jingyuan also began large-scale disarmament.
But Zhu Jingyuan did not dismantle the army, nor did he stop the development of new weapons and equipment.
All four armies of the Ming Dynasty are fully installing and upgrading missile systems, and the demand for microchips is also soaring rapidly and comprehensively.
The Ordnance Department of the Ming Dynasty is following the instructions of the Ming Emperor and based on the actual needs of the Ming Air Force and Navy, starting to develop third-generation fighter jets similar to the F14.
This fighter will be equipped with specialized computers and early phased array radio detection equipment.
The large number of new technologies piled up on new achievements means that a large number of semiconductor chips are needed.
The soon-to-be-launched geosynchronous communication satellite with a practical frame will be equipped with supporting communication and control equipment for the launch vehicle.
There is also a need to form semiconductor microchips that are powerful enough, have low enough power consumption, and are low enough in weight.
Yingtian Microchip's hand-rubbed 83 chips, as well as a small amount of hand-rubbed 162 chips, have been cooperating with relevant departments to conduct corresponding tests.
The 162 chip will be the computer core of a new generation of aircraft, combat vehicles and battleships.
The chip required for the missile's seeker is a specially developed low-cost mass-produced chip based on the 83 chip.
Because the missile seeker is really a one-time suicide part...
On the basis of such actual needs, Zhu Jingyuan used his original semiconductor knowledge to guide the Ministry of Industry to formulate the layout of the semiconductor industry.
Starting in the second half of the 15th year of Ankang, it has taken more than five years to gradually complete the current semiconductor industry chain.
On March 15, the sixth year of the Era, Sikong Wanglai, who was in charge of industry in the Jiuqingzhong of the Ming Dynasty, came to Zhu Jingyuan's office specifically.
Report on the stage results of Daming Semiconductor Industry Construction.
Report the initial completion of testing of microchip computers, and ask for instructions on whether to begin the formal deployment of microchip computers and the Internet.
After Zhu Jingyuan read Wang Lai's simple report, he asked him to organize a centralized report and reward party.
It was held directly in the Daming Shejiku of His Highness Fengtian.
The main equipment, main finished products and related technical documents of the entire semiconductor industry are all officially deposited in the Daming Sheji Treasury.
Wang Lai didn't dare to neglect and went back to organize immediately.
After twenty days of non-stop preparation, the time was finally scheduled for April 5th.
Sikong Wanglai himself, as well as the relevant departments of the Ministry of Industry and the Ministry of Ordnance, the main personnel of the relevant factories and design firms were all on the spot.
Wang Lai also arranged for a group of grassroots officials and craftsmen with special contributions or talents to participate.
There is obviously no big problem with this arrangement.
Zhudi Pu, who was training at Yingtian Microchip, was also given the opportunity to participate in the reporting ceremony.
At nine o'clock in the morning on April 5th, the door of Shejiku opened.
Ceremonial staff from the Ministry of Industry and the Ministry of Etiquette co-hosted the ceremony, and the relevant equipment and technical documents of the semiconductor industry were sent to the State Treasury in sequence according to the process.
During this process, Wang Lai and representatives from corresponding agencies jointly introduced the situation to Ming Emperor Zhu Jingyuan.
The first thing to be put into storage is the foundation of the semiconductor industry chain, silicon crystals and supporting production equipment and technical documents.
Silicon wafer factories must first refine silicon crystal pillars that meet purity standards.
The crystal pillars are then cut into thin silicon wafers, and the surface must be polished as smooth and smooth as possible to meet the needs of high-precision photolithography.
The factory specially developed passivation grinding fluid for this purpose, and designed special high-precision motors and grinding equipment.
After creating wafers with flatness that meets the standard, the factory's subsequent task is to increase the size of a single wafer and reduce the overall unit cost of the wafer.
The products sent to the Sheji warehouse today include the initially completed 80mm wafers and the 120mm wafers that have just recently completed trial production.
After silicon crystal, it is the most critical tool in the entire industry chain - photolithography machine and supporting equipment.
Zhu Jingyuan has memories of his previous life and is very sensitive to the photolithography machine industry, so he has paid special attention to it.
The production industry of high-precision photolithography machines in the 21st century was of course one of the most cutting-edge technology industries in the world at that time.
But lithography machines also have levels and different types of uses.
Only a small number of them are the most cutting-edge lithography machines and are used in the top semiconductor industry.
Used to produce the latest mobile phone SOCs, the latest generation of computer processors, and high-end GPU chips, etc.
Most photolithography machines actually produce low-process chips.
Such as router chips, various smart home appliance chips, sound decoding chips, car computer chips, flash memory chips, etc.
The latter is even the main force, and its product output is much higher than the former.
Photolithography factories that are catching up with the most advanced technology will spend a lot of money to purchase the latest photolithography machines for the latest process implementation and improvement.
A photolithography factory with mature technology only needs to continue to receive orders and produce.
AMD's original lithography factory, GlobalFoundries, was about to close down because there was no profit when it was producing processing and graphics cards for AMD.
After leaving AMD and working full-time in chip foundry, my life has become more and more prosperous.
The main reason is that there is no need to invest money in research and development.
The lithography machine industry was not so sophisticated from the beginning.
When the industry was just starting out, there were no particularly high barriers to entry.
After all, when the accuracy is low, a lot of things are easy to say.
The 8086 is a three-micron chip. You can even see the circuits with a microscope, and you can directly draw and imitate them by hand.
As long as you spend money and effort, you can slowly rub it out by hand.
However, this model is limited to laboratory conditions. Real hand rubbing is not only extremely inefficient, but the key is that the speed and yield are not guaranteed at all.
Zhu Jingyuan did similar things in his previous life in the local area in the 1970s.
If you want to be truly practical, you must take the path of standardization and batch production, and you must have supporting industrial and technical systems to produce usable lithography machines.
Then the process of hand-carving seals by old masters was transformed into mechanized automatic printing in the industrial era.
This process was later abandoned for some reasons.
The Ming Dynasty of this world has initially completed this process in the past five years.
First make early contact lithography equipment that is relatively easy to implement.
Although the chip yield rate of contact lithography is low and the unit cost is high, experimental chips can be produced as quickly as possible, which facilitates design and improvement.
Then while testing and improving the chip design, we continue to develop a formal projection lithography machine.
It was not until the fifth year of Da Gong's reign that Daming's projection lithography machine was finally finalized, and it can now achieve a production process of two to four microns.
One-micron production processes will be gradually realized in the next few years.
In the history of Zhu Jingyuan's previous life, the Intel 8086 processor in the 1970s used a three-micron production process.
The Intel 80386 and 80486 processors in the mid-to-late 1980s both used a one-micron process.
The working state of a photolithography machine is similar to that of a printing machine.
Only with the photolithography machine can we build the real core of the industrial chain-semiconductor chip factory.
Therefore, after two generations of lithography machines, what was reported to be archived in the Sheji Library was a batch of produced chips and the corresponding design files.
The most important product of course is the microprocessor chip.
The 83-type processor uses a four-micron process, and the 162-type processor uses a two-micron process.
The overall performance of the 162 slightly exceeds that of the Intel 8086.
Of course, there is basically no architectural similarity between the two processors.
Zhu Jingyuan has never seen the design drawings of the 8086, and does not remember the design details of the second processor.
Sixteen-two is something developed by Ming craftsmen themselves.
In addition, the underlying logic of Ming's computers is very different from computers in previous generations.
Therefore, according to Zhu Jingyuan's typical processor classification standards in his previous life, the 162 processor cannot even be simply classified into a certain system.
It is significantly different from the complex instruction set of the Intel 86 series, and it cannot be regarded as a simplified instruction set of the RISC system.
Overall, it looks more like a blend of characteristics from both directions.
Of course, this is the result of Zhu Jingyuan looking at this new treatment from the perspective of his previous life and the standards of his previous life.
Microprocessors in this world have just been formed, and the applications of microprocessors have not yet been spread.
There is currently no public opinion that can convince everyone on how the instruction set of a microprocessor should be designed.
There is also no habit of distinguishing between processor instruction set types in a sophisticated and streamlined way.
However, in Zhu Jingyuan's memory, it seems that different instruction sets have learned from each other in terms of the development of processor instruction sets that he knows about.
Intel and AMD both theoretically have complex instruction sets, but they began to draw on RISC ideas very early.
The ARM system, which should theoretically be a simple instruction set, has become more and more complex as market demand has become more and more complex.
ARM's instruction standard length may no longer be maintained.
Ming Dynasty is now function-oriented and does not clearly pursue the limit in a certain direction. It is trying to build its own instruction set system, but it seems that it has reached the same goal.
Therefore, Zhu Jingyuan did not directly interfere in processor development.
The chips put into the warehouse after the microprocessors are accounting chips using the same process, which is the DRAM memory that Zhu Jingyuan was familiar with in his previous life.
At the current stage of computer development, accounting chips are far more important than in later generations.
Intel actually started out as a memory company.
The factory responsible for the production of accounting chips in Daming completed the mass production of 66,536-word accounting chips in the fifth year of the Grand Duke.
Converted according to base 1024, it is 64K.
However, in the previous life, a byte was eight bits, and in the Ming Dynasty, a hexagram was sixteen lines. This 64K is equivalent to 128K to some extent.
Behind the accounting chip is a miniaturized "data warehouse", which is a reduced mechanical hard drive.
Mechanical hard drives are basically purely mechanical structures and are products that require industrial production precision. Nowadays, Daming has an advantage in this regard.
Following Zhu Jingyuan's reminder, the Ministry of Industry designed a flying magnetic head based on the principle of an aircraft wing, which greatly reduced the size and weight of the hard drive per unit capacity.
The maximum capacity of the safe's nano-sized hard drive can already reach more than 120 million words, which is 128M.
However, the designed personal microchip small personal computer is limited in size and currently only houses a hard drive with 16.77 million words, which is equivalent to 16M.
Behind the hard drive are monitors, chassis, motherboards, keyboards, mice and other supporting equipment.
And they are combined to form an overall device, a microchip personal computer.
The introduction of minicomputers was handed over to Judy Plutonium by Wang Lai.
Inside the Shejiku, there is a hall dedicated to storing and displaying microchip computer equipment, next to the platform where computers are placed.
With a smile on his face, Zhu Jingyuan watched his son open the side panel of the case, and introduced the computer situation with some nervousness and some excitement.
Zhu Jingyuan gave a few simple tips or requirements for the design of this main chassis.
The finished chassis, or the mainframe appearance of this computer, is very similar to the larger full-tower chassis of later generations.
From the outside, it looks like an upright rectangular iron box.
However, the internal structure of this chassis is obviously different from Zhu Jingyuan's previous console.
A typical computer case in Zhu Jingyuan's previous life was originally designed to be placed lying down.
The motherboard inside the chassis lies on the bottom, and other functional boards are inserted vertically on the motherboard. The stress of the entire system is very stable.
At the same time, a huge picture tube monitor can be placed on the lying chassis.
But after the popularity of LCD monitors, no one can tolerate a lying chassis taking up huge desktop space alone.
Therefore, many manufacturers naturally stand up the chassis and place it on the edge of the table or under the table.
There was no problem with this approach at first. Early external devices such as graphics cards and radiators were relatively light in weight.
Even if it is hung sideways on the motherboard, it will not have any impact on the motherboard.
However, with the development of the times, the power of processors and graphics cards continues to soar, and the weight of radiators and graphics cards also continues to increase.
Later, there were even cases where the graphics card and radiator were larger than the motherboard.
As a result, the motherboard was bent by the graphics card and radiator.
There are also cases where the graphics card's own weight bends its own circuit board.
Because the stock of personal computers is too huge, the scale of related industries is also extremely large, involving countless accessories manufacturers.
The computer case structure that has been used for decades has never been updated.
Zhu Jingyuan anticipated this speechless result and asked for the chassis design to be established from the beginning.
At the same time, the motherboard is not allowed to stand up, and must continue to lie flat inside the chassis.
So the motherboard became narrow and long, and the inside of the chassis was designed in the form of a three-story building with upper, middle and lower floors.
The top layer is equipped with a motherboard that lies flat from front to back. On the motherboard, functional chips such as processors, accounting chips, and display chips and plug-in boards are installed vertically.
In the future, graphics cards will become larger, and processor radiators will become larger. Keeping the default vertical installation method can prevent them from deforming.
The middle layer is currently all the hard disk layer, which accounts for the largest proportion of the entire host's weight.
The lowest level is where the power supply and other functions are installed.
Because the current manufacturing technology of various parts is relatively low, especially the scale of hard drives is extremely large.
The height of the entire chassis reaches one meter, the front and rear width reaches 80 centimeters, and the overall lateral thickness is 32 centimeters.
This is much larger than Zhu Jingyuan’s previous full-tower chassis.
However, with the continuous improvement of technology, the size of this chassis should also be reduced simultaneously.
(End of chapter)
