Great Power Technology

Chapter 70 Final Preparations
Unsurprisingly, the chip project team got enough lenses for use. In order to deceive people, some of these lenses were sent to Guizhou, and some were left at the research institute in Shencheng, and then transferred to Miyagi County in the Shiwanda Mountains through official channels.

Along with these lenses, Ye Zhou was also heading to Miyagi Prefecture.

The progress of the modular construction of the factory building is extremely fast. Under the amazing efficiency of the infrastructure madman and the saturated construction regardless of the cost, the entire factory building was even completed two days ahead of schedule, and then the pre-loading of the equipment was completed within 3 days. The "Xinghuo" factory After completion, it will soon enter the most critical assembly link of the lithography machine.

Ye Zhou had to be present at this link.

Although the assembly-related documents provided by the hard disk are complete, various problems that may occur during the process cannot be ruled out. Therefore, the perceptual knowledge that Ye Zhou directly absorbed from the simulator is particularly important. He can get started directly, directly debug related equipment, and solve problems on site.

Because the project is still in progress, Chen Hao's security level for Ye Zhou has not been lowered, which also allows Ye Zhou to experience the treatment of traveling on a special plane at a military airport for the first time.

The plane landed directly at an almost unknown airport near Miyagi Prefecture, and then the prepared transfer took Ye Zhou directly to the newly built factory near the Zhengshan Hydropower Station in Miyagi Prefecture.

This is a factory controlled at the confidentiality level of a military base, so all the personnel involved in the construction are under closed management. They may not know what they are building, but everyone knows that this thing is of great importance.

Ye Zhou spent eighteen days in this factory.

The assembly work is actually not creative, but all mechanical and step-by-step work. All he has to do is to stare at each set of data on the monitoring platform every day, and read every operation report sent up. If there is any discrepancy with the process, all the work of the day will be rolled back.

Once again, Ye Zhou became the most stressed person in the factory. With a single word from him, he could decide whether everyone's work should be restarted.

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

But fortunately, the lithography machine drawings obtained by Ye Zhou from the simulator have adopted a very robust design. The original 10 parts have been increased to 12, of which 10 are redundant parts for The remaining 400 functional parts are divided into more than 1 independent modules, and each assembly is only for one independent module, so an operation error will only affect one of the modules.

This is really friendly to engineers who are assembling ultra-precision lithography machines for the first time. After all, they have only been exposed to the assembly of lithography machines above 20nm at most before, and they want to get started directly with this sub-nanometer level lithography machine. , is really powerless.

With robustness comes trial and error costs.

Trial and error is not terrible. ASML's standard assembly process is only 12 days, but it is based on a strict 8-hour working system.

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

On September 9rd, at 3 am, "Zhiwei" No. 11 lithography machine completed the assembly of all modules and entered the final stage of power-on simulation.

The Zhengshan Hydropower Station, which was originally used to supply power to the county, has long since been disconnected from the grid, and has turned to supply independent power to the Xinghuo Factory. This county-level hydropower station with an installed capacity of 50 KW will completely become a subsidiary of the Xinghuo Factory from this day on. More than 40 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity are supplied to the factory-this kind of electricity is enough for the residents of a small southeastern island province to use for a whole year.

However, such a power supply is still insignificant in the face of the power consumption of sub-nanometer lithography machines.

According to Ye Zhou's estimation, the Xinghuo factory's power input can only support up to 7 Zhiwei lithography machines to work at the same time. To further expand, the power grid of the entire county must be transformed.

However, this is obviously not the issue to be considered 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 he could only wait for the lithography machine to complete the initial settings after the power was turned on.

"Is the power supply normal? Is anyone watching the indicators?"

"Yes, everything is normal at present. There are engineers specially dispatched from Sandouping to take care of this area. Don't worry. In fact, there is nothing to worry about when powering on and simulating. There is absolutely no problem with the operation of the machine. It depends. Whether it’s okay or not, we’ll have to wait for two days to actually start etching to find out.”

"It's true. How is the silicon wafer? Is the quality up to standard?"

"ASMT has passed all the tests, the purity is 6 out of 9, basically no problem, our domestic technology is very advanced, so you can rest assured."

"Hey, the more you say don't worry, the more worried I become. This month I feel like I'm dreaming, and I'm afraid I'll wake up from the dream sometime."

"Don't talk about you, I feel the same way. A month ago, even the 20nm level was struggling, and now it's suddenly going to be sub-nanometer. I dare not do it in my dreams."

"Shouldn't the test be on Yami this time? Hey, Liu Chen, what's your plan?"

"The plan is to go to 5nm. 3nm depends on the situation before deciding whether to test or not. The main reason is that the 3nm drawings are relatively new and have not been fully understood."

"7nm is also fine, if it can be made, it can also solve the urgent need."

"Don't talk about 7nm, in fact, if the 10nm level can produce stably, it is already very strong. Forget it, I have to go to sleep for a while. I haven't slept for two days, and I feel unbearable."

"Hurry up and go to sleep, I'll keep an eye on it for a while."

"What are you staring at? As if you can help now."

"If I can't help, I have to look at it. It's so fucking good to see. Besides, it's not that I have nothing to do. Don't I have to move materials later, and I will help."

"Forget it, I won't sleep anymore, I have to see how the photoresist is getting ready"

Ye Zhou didn't participate in their discussion. In fact, he wasn't as nervous as these engineers who couldn't see the overall situation, because he knew that they had succeeded when the chip project progressed to this point.

Even if 100% of the chips manufactured two days later are waste products, it will not affect the final outcome in the slightest.

The factory is here, and the lithography machine is here. Even if there are defects, it will only be a matter of time before a usable chip can be produced.

He walked out of the core area of ​​the factory building and walked towards the hydropower station. The sentry at the door recognized his face and saluted him with a standard military salute. Ye Zhou froze for a moment, not knowing how to respond.

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

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

(End of this chapter)