Countercurrent 1982

Chapter 1513 Moore Miracle
Just when Duan Yun was planning to acquire a batch of state-owned enterprises with great fanfare in the next 2 to 3 years, good news came from the Tianyin R&D Center, that is, the one-micron NAND flash memory chip led by Huang Lingyi has begun to enter the market. testing phase.

Since the successful development of the NAND flash memory chip with a three-micron process on August 8 last year, Huang Lingyi's project team has been non-stop and immediately invested in the research and development of a one-micron NAND flash memory chip.

Generally speaking, according to estimates of Moore's Law, the number of transistors that can be accommodated on an integrated circuit will double approximately every 18 months. In other words, the performance of a processor can also double every two years.

Moore's Law is the experience of Moore, an insider, but it is not a law of natural science. It reveals the speed of information technology progress to a certain extent.

But in fact, Moore's Law is not a rigid law. It also needs to change according to the actual situation of the company and the market situation. For example, if you are in a leading chip research and development company, then strictly follow the research and development process. From the beginning of the design to the final packaging and testing, each step has a specified time node. After a comprehensive calculation, it happens to be about one and a half years. reduced to a year or even less.

Engineers in European and American countries rarely work overtime. They care more about enjoying life. Overtime culture is not prevalent in Europe and the United States, but in mainland China, 996 has gradually become a norm.

As a scientific research company with the best benefits for employees in mainland China, Tianyin Group's engineers hardly work less than 10 hours a day, and some employees even stay in the company for more than a week, and this situation has already begun become a common phenomenon.

In the final analysis, the main reason why these engineers work so hard is the high reward plan that Duan Yun made for them.

After the successful development of the first version of the NAND flash memory chip last time, Duan Yun rewarded the entire R&D project team with 1 yuan. In addition, because the task was completed more than 90 days ahead of schedule, according to the plan of rewarding 1 yuan a day in advance, Duan Yun These engineers were rewarded 90 yuan.

90 yuan is just a drop in the bucket for Tianyin Group, whose profit has exceeded 10 billion this year, but for these scientific research engineers, it is a very large bonus, enough for them to live a decent life.

In addition to high bonuses, people who have made outstanding contributions to the R&D team were also rewarded with cars and houses. Almost overnight, several outstanding engineers became rich men who everyone envied. Such exaggerated material rewards stimulate It touches the nerves of every engineer, and it is precisely because of this that in the research and development of the second-generation NAND flash memory chip, all engineers involved in this project are working hard.

It is now the beginning of May, and it has been 5 months since the last successful development of the first-generation NAND flash memory chip.

At the beginning, Duan Yun set a period of one and a half years for the R&D center, and rewarded 3 yuan one day in advance, which means that if the NAND flash memory chip made of one micron is successfully developed, the company will reward their entire R&D team with 900 million yuan. RMB, averagely distributed to each participating R&D engineer, at least 2 to 3 yuan per person, which is definitely a very considerable income.

On May 5th, the Youth Day, Tianyin Group's chip factory was brightly lit at night. After the first batch of sample chips were produced, they immediately entered the running test session.

"Let's get started!" Duan Yun said to Huang Lingyi after seeing that everyone was in place.

Subsequently, Huang Lingyi directed the staff to put the tested chip on the laboratory equipment.

The test items for storage chips mainly include data rate, energy consumption, and storage capacity, which are important technical standards for flash memory chips.

In fact, Duan Yun is not worried about the test results, because the current chip will run through the simulation system of EDA software before the official test, which means that before the official production of the chip sample, it can prevent design There will never be a state where the chip cannot run due to mistakes made on the computer.

Telling Group uses board-level testing for testing chips. This method is mainly used for functional testing. A "simulated" chip working environment is built using a pcd version plus a chip, and all interfaces of the chip are pulled out to test the function of the chip, or in the To see whether the chip can work normally in various harsh environments, the equipment that needs to be used is mainly instruments and meters, and the main thing that needs to be produced is the EVB evaluation board.

If there is no problem with the performance of the chip, then start the wafer CP test to test the yield of the chip.

The last stage is the reliability test, which is mainly to apply various harsh environments to the chip, such as ESD static electricity, which is to simulate the human body or simulate the industrial body to apply a large instantaneous voltage to the chip, and then accelerate the aging of the chip at high temperature to estimate the life of the chip.

Reliability testing takes a long time, and it will take at least 3 to 5 days for the whole process. Now Duan Yun mainly checks the results of board-level testing and wafer CP testing.

And tonight's test results did not disappoint Duan Yun. During the 40-minute test, all indicators of the second-generation NAND flash memory chip were very good, fully meeting the design requirements.

Although the final reliability test has not been completed, it has been basically successful at this point. If there is no problem with reliability, then the development of a NAND flash memory chip with a one-micron process is considered successful.

On the test bench, the lights of the Pcd version of the simulator flickered, and rows of parameters soon appeared on the monitor next to it. The numbers fluctuated slightly back and forth, indicating that everything was normal.

"No problem, it's done..." At this time, Huang Lingyi's expression was calm, but her heart was very excited, and the fingers controlling the data station trembled slightly.

"Congratulations!" At this moment, a smile appeared on the face of the phrase, and shook hands with several engineers participating in the test.

For a moment, there was warm applause in the laboratory, and everyone's face was filled with smiles. For this moment today, many people have paid a lot of effort, and they have also created a miracle, completely compressing Moore's Law. half time.

"Everyone go back tonight and have a good sleep. I will arrange a commendation meeting tomorrow afternoon, and I will honor everyone's promised bonuses on the spot." Duan Yun said something to everyone, then turned to look at Huang Lingyi, and said to her: " Your next task is to write a thesis, I will first apply for an international patent for this technology, and after the patent enters the review process, your article can be published..."

(End of this chapter)