Countercurrent 1982

Chapter 1210 Designing Software
In mid-October, the 10 Autumn Canton Fair came as scheduled. However, this time, Duan Yun did not personally lead the team to participate in the Canton Fair as in previous years. Instead, his wife Cheng Qingyan and Li Guosheng and Li Yun led the team to participate in the exhibition. The main products It is also a colorful Walkman for foreign trade.

At this time, Duan Yun plunged into the chip factory, and Huang Lingyi and other technicians made final adjustments to the production line and equipment.

With the successful installation of the last ring single crystal furnace of the complete production line imported from Toshiba, the entire Toshiba flash chip production line has been assembled in place, and the debugging of the equipment has reached the most critical stage.

Wearing a full set of dust-proof clothing and wrapping himself up tightly, in the 100-level dust-proof workshop, Duan Yun witnessed with his own eyes the first silicon crystal processed by a single crystal furnace with a purity of 1%.

The most common production process for high-purity single crystal semiconductor materials in this era is called the Chokraski process. The basic principle is to put a single crystal into the liquid of the same material, and slowly pull it up in a rotating manner. When pulled up, the solute will solidify along the solid-liquid interface, while the rotation will even out the temperature of the solute.

The workshop that produces silicon crystals has very high requirements on the factory building. Even a tiny bit of dust will greatly reduce the purity of silicon crystals. slack.

The employees working in the chip factory today are basically members of Wu Gang’s team trained from Japan. They are responsible for the core process of the entire chip production, and the employees of other relatively less important processes must also have a minimum education of high school Graduation, but also to go through a set of strict training before taking up the job.

At present, this production line can produce wafers with a diameter of 5 inches, which is already the most advanced wafer manufacturing process in the country. At the same time, Toshiba in Japan is preparing to start mass production of 8-inch wafers.

The larger the size of the silicon wafer, the more expensive it is, and the higher the production cost, but the number of additional chips that can be produced is several times higher. It is a very important step for the production of chips.

But it is not as long as the silicon wafer is made bigger, the cost can be quickly reduced. This involves the entire production process. Every time the silicon wafer is larger, many subsequent processes must be upgraded and improved, and the silicon wafer is well done. The bigger it is, the processing speed and cost will be several times or even ten times higher, so when the whole process is immature, it will only be counterproductive to rush this kind of independent research and development.

"Mr. Huang, to what extent has our NAND chip been involved?" Duan Yun asked Huang Lingyi beside him as he walked in the aisle of the workshop.

"Only 30% of the architecture work has been completed. Toshiba is unwilling to hand over their chip design software to us, so now I can only use the software that I used in the Chinese Academy of Sciences..." Huang Lingyi said.

"It seems that we need to recruit another batch of technical programmers..." Duan Yun pondered for a while, and then said: "Their chip design software is made after years of technology accumulation, and it will definitely not be easily handed over to us, so We still need to conduct research and development by ourselves, and I will recruit some programmers later to cooperate with you in the development of chip design software."

For a long time, there was a huge gap between the domestic chip industry and the international advanced technology at that time. A research report of the year listed several reasons.

The first one is that the introduction of various grades is "Wanguo brand". The circuit factory cannot produce the varieties that the complete machine factory wants. The circuit factory produces what the complete machine factory does not want. The circuit factory has not achieved market orientation.

The second point is to import a large amount of hardware in the import work, including various equipment and instruments, but not to pay attention to the introduction of software, related design technology and management. This is a fatal flaw that the introduction fails to play its due role.

The last point is that research and production are not closely integrated, and the internal operation mechanism of factories and institutes is not smooth.

As early as in his previous life, Duan Yun had already discovered this kind of problem when he was working in a state-owned enterprise, so when he founded the chip factory, he also made some targeted strategies.

This time, he imported the whole set of equipment and technology from Toshiba factory in Japan. All the equipment was directly disassembled, packaged and shipped to China from the old factory. The technology of all production links can be seamlessly linked, saving a lot of time and cost for improvement and debugging.

As for the import of software from Japan, Duan Yun also negotiated with the Japanese side before. The Japanese side only provided some flash chip design drawings and materials, as well as the equipment maintenance technology for the entire production line, and did not provide other software technologies. .

In fact, Japan's Toshiba's approach is not difficult to understand, because it is a joint venture in itself. The Chinese side provides funds, venues, personnel and markets, and the Japanese side provides production equipment and product technical support. This is written in the contract at the beginning. Chip development software Of course, Duan Yun would not provide many core secrets related to Toshiba's chip department. They rely on upstream technology and design to control this joint venture chip factory. Once Duan Yun is "disobedient", they can use technology at any time. Duan Yun was "stuck".

However, Duan Yun is obviously not willing to be a salted fish at the mercy of others. At the beginning, he asked Huang Lingyi to form a research and development team in order to obtain product design capabilities in the upstream of the chip industry.

As for the problem of the lack of close integration of scientific research and production in the state-owned chip factory, Duan Yun had already made arrangements in advance.

As early as when Tianyin Electronics Factory was established, all the core personnel of the product R&D center often stayed in the workshop. Problems with products and equipment would be discovered immediately, and then rectified on site. The efficiency was very high, and Duan Yun also gave these technical The personnel have some privileges, so that they can directly command the grassroots workers and management in the factory, and do not need to report to each other on some minor issues. Zhao Xuewu and others can directly direct the workers to deal with them.

After inspecting the chip workshop, Duan Yun, Huang Lingyi and others held a small meeting to discuss the next work plan.

"...The deadline I give you is mid-November. Our factory must produce the first batch of Flash chips. According to the information given by the Japanese side, this production line can produce 11 chips per day. However, considering that flash chips are a kind of The manufacturing process of new memory chips is very difficult, so my plan is that by the beginning of next year, our factory will have the capacity to produce 1 flash chips per day, do you have any opinions?" Duan Yun said.

(End of this chapter)