The 10,000th Rebirth

Chen Luo smiled slightly, took out the two drawings calmly, and handed them to Liu Bosheng.

Liu Bosheng took the two drawings with doubt and curiosity. When he opened the drawings, his body froze and his pupils shrank instantly, as if he saw something extremely shocking.

"This, this is a photolithography machine!?"

Liu Bosheng himself has two doctoral degrees, both in the fields of industry and design, so he can have so many invention patents and can expand Hengbang Industry bit by bit.

He just took a quick look at the design drawing drawn by Chen Luo and the second wafer design drawing, and he immediately understood what it was.

Hearing Liu Bosheng's exclamation, Liu Jingcai was also stunned. Although he studied business administration, he ran an industrial company and was naturally familiar with photolithography machines.

Speaking of photolithography machines, we have to mention wafers.

Wafers have a huge impact on the world and have become the infrastructure of global science and technology.

It can be said that whether it is now or in the future in 2019, to some extent, human life is surrounded by wafers.

From electronic watches on wrists to computers and mobile phones around us, to core control chips for cars, high-speed trains, airplanes, and even aircraft carriers.

Without chips, it can be said that the whole world may stop.

After decades of independent research and development in China, many industries have achieved complete independence, but the lifeblood of the chip industry is still in the hands of the United States.

Domestic chip products are not selling well and are developing slowly.

Therefore, the United States has imposed sanctions on Chinese companies and restricted the use of chips by Chinese companies, which has dealt a serious blow to Chinese companies, especially high-tech industries.

Many uninformed people can't understand why the country attaches so much importance to a small chip, and why it has been working on it for decades, but it is still being strangled by others.

This is because the chip industry has a characteristic, which is that it is very difficult.

Although the chip is only the size of a fingernail, it is backed by decades of technological accumulation and industrial upgrading.

It is no exaggeration to say that the difficulty of independently manufacturing chips is higher than that of making atomic bombs.

Its manufacturing process is currently the most sophisticated and complex industrial technology of mankind, without a doubt.

This is not just referring to 2008, even in 2019.

For the wafer industry itself, there is an important link that restricts its development, which is equivalent to the life gate, that is, the "photolithography machine" drawn by Chen Luo.

Because the photolithography machine is the tool for manufacturing wafers, and it is also the most critical place that restricts my country's wafer technology.

Whether it is the upstream design of wafers or the downstream wafer packaging and testing, it is very difficult, and there are almost monopolistic players in every link.

However, these things burn money and time, but at least they can be burned out, such as Huawei and Ziguang have burned out the upstream wafer design.

However, the difficulty of the photolithography machine is very high. It is known as the jewel in the crown of the world's semiconductor industry and represents the highest wisdom of modern human industry today.

To be more precise, behind the photolithography machine is actually the top industrial crystallization of the entire West.

So when Liu Bosheng and his son found that it was a design drawing of a photolithography machine, their shock can be imagined.

But when Liu Bosheng saw the wafer drawing that Chen Luo had drawn, he was even more dumbfounded. He said in disbelief, "Mr. Chen, this is the design drawing of a 32-nanometer wafer?"

Chen Luo smiled and applauded, praising, "Grandpa Liu has a sharp eye. Yes, this is the design drawing of a 32-nanometer wafer."

Many people in the Liu family didn't understand what Chen Luo meant, but Liu Bosheng and his son, as well as several people who knew wafer technology, were stunned and speechless.

In 2008, the world had just entered a new era of 45-nanometer wafers.

At this time, the industry unanimously believed that 45 nanometers would be a hurdle for the industry. According to Moore's Law, it would take at least 18 months to break through 45 nanometers and implement mass production.

Many large companies in the industry withdrew from the development of 45 nanometers and below because they could not afford the high R\u0026D costs, and instead cooperated with TSMC.

Now Chen Luo has taken out a design drawing of a 32-nanometer wafer. As long as he can verify that this wafer is real, it means that he is one era ahead of the most advanced wafers of this era, which has epoch-making significance for today's wafer industry.

Liu Bosheng was so shocked at this time. Liu Jingcai had said that Chen Luo was an expert in genetics and biomedicine, and had superb medical skills, which had been verified by the longevity pill.

But Chen Luo could design wafers, and even the most important photolithography machine in the wafer industry. Who was he?

"Mr. Liu, since you know the significance of this wafer, you should understand that even if I sell this 32-nanometer wafer design to Intel, I can buy your Hengbang Industry."

Chen Luo said lightly, shocking everyone in the Liu family, because most of them couldn't imagine that the thin drawing in Chen Luo's hand could buy the entire Hengbang Industry?

What a joke?

But after Liu Bosheng and Liu Jingcai were stunned for a moment, they knew that Chen Luo was not joking.

Nowadays, the process research and development costs of nano-chips are increasing year by year. The smaller the chip, the higher the investment cost. Take the 45-nanometer chip as an example. Intel's R\u0026D expenditure has reached US$5 billion to US$10 billion.

If Chen Luo sells the 32-nanometer technology to Intel right now, and makes the other party lead all the wafer industry companies in the world by an era, the other party will probably agree without even thinking about it.

After all, this can save almost two years of research and development time, allowing the product to be quickly launched and occupy the market, which will bring profits far exceeding 10 billion US dollars.

What's more, Chen Luo has a design drawing of a lithography machine here. How expensive this thing is can be judged from its title of "money printing machine license".

Today, the overlord in the field of lithography machines is ASML of the Netherlands, which almost monopolizes 80% of the global lithography machine market. A lithography machine starts at 100 million US dollars.

And once it is manufactured, it is quickly sold out, often pre-ordered, and the most advanced ones even have restrictions, such as a ban on sales to China.

With these two technologies in hand, Chen Luo doesn't have to sell to foreign companies at all, and can even negotiate directly with the country.

If Chen Luo's design drawing is a high-end lithography machine, it is not a problem to spend tens of billions to buy it.

Because the aerospace, military, national information security and other applications that the country is vigorously developing all require a large number of imported wafers, which are related to national security and strategic positioning.

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Author's words:

There will be more knowledge points in these chapters, mainly because this is a key link in climbing the technology tree in the future. It's enough to explain it here.