Steal the enemy's base at the start and build a technological empire.

Chapter 242 Qilu Microelectronics Center

At 8:15 a.m., a black Audi drove into the Qilu Software Park in Jinan High-tech Industrial Development Zone. The car stopped in front of a newly built five-story gray-white building in the park. The building was square with large windows, and several white communication antennas stood on the roof. Two signs hung at the entrance: the one on the left read "Qilu Microelectronics Research Center," and the one on the right read "Spark Technology Integrated Circuit Design Center."

Ling Yun pushed open the car door, and a cold January wind swept over him in Jinan. He wrapped his black down jacket tighter and looked up at the new building.

Zhao Hu got out of the driver's seat, carrying a black briefcase.

"Mr. Ling, shall we go straight in?" Zhao Hu asked.

"Mm." Ling Yun nodded.

The two entered the building. The lobby on the first floor was spacious, the terrazzo floor freshly waxed and gleaming. The reception desk was empty, and project information boards hung on the wall, but they hadn't been covered with glass yet. The text on the boards was printed and pasted on, some edges already peeling off.

A young man, about twenty-five or twenty-six years old and wearing blue overalls, was squatting in the corner debugging a network switch. Hearing footsteps, he turned around and looked over.

"Who are you looking for?" The young man stood up, holding a screwdriver in his hand.

"Find Mr. Ni Guangnan," Ling Yun said.

The young man looked Ling Yun up and down, then glanced at Zhao Hu: "Do you have an appointment? President Ni is having a meeting on the fourth floor."

"I have an appointment. My surname is Ling."

The young man's eyes lit up: "President Ling? President Ni instructed me to do that. Please wait a moment, I'll make a call." He quickly walked to the front desk, picked up the landline, and dialed a number.

While waiting, Lingyun walked to the display board. The board was titled "Schematic Diagram of the Integrated Circuit Industry Chain," and it depicted a flowchart from silicon materials to packaging and testing, with each step marked by a box and connected by arrows. Some boxes had red checkmarks, some had yellow circles, and some were blank.

"Who made this drawing?" Lingyun asked.

"I did it." The young man hung up the phone and walked over. "President Ni asked me to do it. He said it was to make everyone clear about our position in the whole chain. The red checkmarks are areas that the center already has research directions for, the yellow circles are areas that are currently under investigation, and the blank spaces are areas that haven't been addressed yet."

Lingyun examined the documents closely. The items marked with red checkmarks were: chip design (front-end), logic simulation, and test vector generation. The items circled in yellow were: layout design (back-end) and process simulation. The blank areas were: silicon materials, wafer fabrication, lithography systems, etching, thin film deposition, ion implantation, cleaning and inspection, packaging and testing, and EDA tools—almost the entire manufacturing process was blank.

"There are so many blank spaces," Ling Yun said.

"Yeah." The young man scratched his head. "President Ni said that we can do the design, but the manufacturing... the gap is too big. The best lithography machine in China is still the 0.8-micron one in Shanghai. Imported ones can reach 0.35 microns, but they won't sell them to us."

Hurried footsteps echoed from the stairwell. Ni Guangnan came down from the second floor, without a coat, wearing a gray sweater with the sleeves rolled up to his elbows, and holding a notebook in his hand.

"President Ling! Why didn't you come up right away when you arrived?" Ni Guangnan had a smile on his face, but his eye bags were deep and his hair had turned quite a bit whiter.

"Just came in, let me take a look at the display boards you designed." Ling Yun shook hands with him. Ni Guangnan's hands were dry and calloused.

"Xiao Zhang, go pour President Ling a cup of tea," Ni Guangnan said to the young man, then turned to Ling Yun, "Come on, let's go upstairs first, I'll show you around."

The elevator wasn't in use yet, so they took the stairs. In some places, the paint on the stairwell walls wasn't applied evenly, revealing the underlying cement.

"The building was specially approved by the development zone and is rent-free," Ni Guangnan said as he walked. "We moved in last November, and the equipment has been arriving one after another. The first to third floors are offices and laboratories, the fourth floor is a conference room and library, and the fifth floor is a clean room under construction."

"Where are the personnel?" Ling Yun asked.

"Seventy-three people." Ni Guangnan listed them off as if they were old friends. "Thirty-two in the design group, eighteen in the process group, twelve in the testing group, eight in the software tools group, and three in administration and logistics. In the design group, twelve of them are experienced people that I recruited from several old units such as the Institute of Computing Technology and the Ministry of Electronics Industry. The rest are all master's and doctoral graduates in the last two years. Young people are energetic."

The second floor is an open office area. Seven or eight rows of workstations were full of people. The computers were all Spark brand, and the monitors were CRT spherical screens. The workstation partitions were covered with blueprints and sticky notes, and some had national and world maps hanging on them, with several places circled in red: Silicon Valley in the United States, Hsinchu in Taiwan, and Tsukuba in Japan.

The air was filled with the smells of coffee, instant noodles, and solder.

Ni Guangnan clapped his hands: "Everyone, stop for a moment, let me introduce someone."

The sound of typing stopped, and people looked up.

"This is Mr. Ling Yun, the founder of Spark Technology, and also the investor and strategic advisor of our center." Ni Guangnan raised his voice, "Mr. Ling has come to see everyone today."

Sparse applause. Most people looked on with curiosity, while some younger employees showed excitement and whispered among themselves.

"You all go about your business, I just came to check in." Ling Yun waved his hand. "President Ni, let's continue."

Ni Guangnan led him through the office area to a row of laboratories enclosed by glass partitions. The first laboratory door was labeled "Logic Design Verification".

Pushing open the door, I saw six people surrounding a workstation. The workstation screen displayed complex circuit diagrams, with intersecting colored lines.

"This is a CPU prototype design verification using a 1-micron process," Ni Guangnan said, pointing to the screen. "We defined our own instruction set; it's concise but sufficient. The goal is to make embedded control chips, such as smart meters and industrial controllers."

A middle-aged man with glasses and gray hair stood up: "Engineer Ni."

"Old Li, tell President Ling about the progress."

Old Li adjusted his glasses, walked to the whiteboard, picked up a pen, and said, "Mr. Ling, our current design is based on a forward process, from the architecture to the register-transfer level code, and then to logic synthesis. We have completed the design of the arithmetic logic unit and the control unit, and are currently doing timing verification. The main bottleneck is the EDA tool—the Synopsys we are using is an educational version, which has limited functionality, and the version is two years old."

"Piracy?" Ling Yun asked.

"Um..." Old Li was a little embarrassed, "The original is too expensive, a set costs hundreds of thousands of dollars. We're using the school's license."

"Will it work?"

"The basic functions are available, but the simulation speed is slow, and it cannot perform physical design for advanced processes," Lao Li said. "Layout design is still mostly done manually, with a low degree of automation."

Ling Yun nodded without saying anything.

The next lab is for "process simulation." It contains several small pieces of equipment: a box furnace, a sputtering station, and a microscope.

A young female engineer is examining a silicon wafer under a microscope. The wafer is only the size of a fingernail and has fine patterns on its surface.

"Xiao Zhou, show this to President Ling," Ni Guangnan said.

Xiao Zhou looked up, her face slightly flushed: "Hello, President Ling." She took the silicon wafer out of the microscope, carefully placed it in a plastic tray, and handed it to Ling Yun.

The silicon wafer gleamed with a metallic sheen under the light, its surface marked with regular lines and some burrs along the edges.

"This is a 0.5-micron linewidth test pattern we made under laboratory conditions," Xiao Zhou explained. "We used UV contact lithography, and the mask was written directly with a laser. The linewidth is not uniform, but the pattern is still visible."

"What is the yield rate?" Lingyun asked.

"Very low... less than 5%." Xiao Zhou's voice lowered. "It's mainly due to insufficient photolithography alignment precision and the uniformity of the photoresist. The photoresist we're using is domestically produced, and its performance is unstable."

"Where's the equipment?"

"The lithography machine is an old model from the Shanghai Optical Instrument Factory, which has been modified. The reactive ion etching station used for etching is second-hand, an obsolete piece of equipment bought from South Korea." Xiao Zhou paused for a moment, "General Manager Ni said that once the cleanroom on the fifth floor is built, we'll move it in and try it out."

Lingyun put the silicon wafer back on the tray: "Thank you for your hard work."

Xiao Zhou nodded vigorously.

The third floor is the testing area. There are several oscilloscopes, logic analyzers, and probe stations. A young engineer is using a probe to insert into a packaged chip, and waveforms are jumping on the oscilloscope screen.

"This is the testing group," Ni Guangnan said. "The chips we designed have been fabricated and brought back are here for functional and performance testing. Right now... they haven't been fabricated yet."

"Why?" Ling Yun asked.

"The cost of tape-out is too high." Ni Guangnan smiled wryly. "Even if we find a small factory in Taiwan to use the 0.8-micron process, it will cost tens of thousands of US dollars for one tape-out. We don't have that much money, and the design is not fully mature, so we dare not tape out."

"Can't I do it myself?"

"No," Ni Guangnan shook his head. "We don't have a single piece of equipment for photolithography, etching, ion implantation... There are no domestic production lines capable of manufacturing processes below 0.8 micrometers. Shanghai Huahong has just been built, using Japanese technology and equipment, and it hasn't started mass production yet."

"Understood," Ling Yun said.

After the tour, Ni Guangnan led Ling Yun up to the fourth floor. Slogans were posted on the walls of the stairwell: "Self-reliance and hard work" and "Create China's chip".

The conference room on the fourth floor is large and can seat fifty people. A projection screen hangs on the wall, and blueprints, data manuals, and copies of English technical papers are scattered on the long table.

Ni Guangnan poured Ling Yun a cup of tea; it was jasmine tea, and its aroma was enticing.

"Sit down, Mr. Ling." Ni Guangnan pulled up a chair and sat down, taking out his notebook. "Let me give you a brief overview of the situation first."