"Acta Physica Sinica" is a half-monthly journal sponsored by the Xia Guo Physical Society. It is also the oldest and most influential physics comprehensive academic journal in Xia Guo. It is also the only Chinese physics academic journal included in SCI. In recent years, it has mainly focused on physics.

achievements in cutting-edge fields.

Therefore, it is not surprising that this paper titled "Research on Sub-60 Device Simulation Based on the Physical Mechanism of Cold Source Transistors" appeared in Acta Physica Sinica. What really caught Qin Ke's attention was that the first unit of the corresponding author was actually "Qing Dynasty"

"Beijing Integrated Circuit and Chip Joint R&D Innovation Center".

This "Qingbei Integrated Circuit and Chip Joint R&D Innovation Center" should be a new institution established in early January this year. It is composed of a large number of expert professors and more than a hundred outstanding graduate students and doctoral students from Qingmu University and Beiyan University. It also hired front-line

There are many experienced engineers from major chip manufacturers, and their main research direction is chip R&D and manufacturing.

If Qin Ke remembers correctly, his former high school physics teacher, Xu Qingyan, now associate professor of the Department of Physics at Qingmu University, serves as the deputy director of this R&D Innovation Center.

Qin Ke was looking at the issue of the journal in early April, which means that this paper was submitted at least in early March or even in late February.

The new institution has produced scientific research results less than two months after its establishment? Is this too fast?

Qin Ke looked carefully at the author column and did not find Xu Qingyan's name. There were two corresponding authors. After checking online, he found that they were both from Yanda University. One was Yao Wencheng, the director of the Innovation Center, and the other was Fang Shiji, the deputy director.

There are also three people working on this project, all of whom are doctoral students at Yanda.

Xu Qingyan, as the deputy director of this innovation center, did not sign this paper?

You must know that Xu Qingyan is a disciple of Academician Jiang Weixian, and his best fields are physical materials and semiconductors.

Qin Ke took a closer look at the paper and found that it was a typical old medicine in a new bottle. The core content was the sub-60 device "Dirac cold source transistor" developed by Yanda more than four years ago.

The "Dirac cold source transistor" is a sub-60 ultra-low power transistor developed by the Yanda research team. It can break the Boltzmann limit and better solve the problem of sharp increase in power consumption when the integration level of digital circuits increases. It can be regarded as

It is a relatively outstanding scientific research achievement of carbon-based digital integrated circuits in China in recent years. But this was the latest technology four years ago, and Qin Ke also has relevant literature in the basic knowledge of chips obtained through the system.

Now look at this article "Simulation Research on Sub-60 Devices Based on the Physical Mechanism of Cold Source Transistors". The "Dirac Cold Source Transistor" has been improved to a certain extent. The power consumption has been reduced by about 5%, and the lowest sub-threshold swing has been reached. But

That's all, there aren't many new highlights.

No wonder Xu Qingyan is not included in the list of authors. With Xu Qingyan’s integrity and scientific research achievements that he has not contributed to, he would never agree to have his name signed.

Qin Ke then checked the electronic version through the official website of "Acta Physica Sinica" and determined that this paper was the first scientific research result published by the "Qingbei Integrated Circuit and Chip Joint R&D Innovation Center" this year.

Qin Ke estimates that the "Qingbei Integrated Circuit and Chip Joint R&D Innovation Center" is anxious to produce a result to prove its value?

Or is there some inside story?

Qin Ke shook his head. He couldn't care about these things. It's just that he always respected Xu Qingyan and was interested in chip production, so he paid more attention to this R&D innovation center.

"What's wrong?" Ning Qingyun next to her had just finished the homework assigned by Professor Tian Jianlan. When she saw Qin Ke looking at the webpage with a strange expression, she couldn't help but ask with concern.

"It's okay, it's okay. I just think I haven't seen Teacher Xu Qingyan much recently."

"Teacher Xu? Didn't Teacher Jiang mention last time that Teacher Xu went to work in some kind of chip R&D innovation center?"

"It seems that his personality is more suitable for scientific research. I hope he can flourish in his new position. Okay, have you finished Professor Tian's homework? Then let's continue to complete the academic report for the Scientific Breakthrough Award."

Qin Ke kissed the girl's tender face and reopened the half-written report on the proof of Polignac's conjecture.

Ning Qingyun pursed her bright red lips, and a slight smile appeared at the corner of her mouth: "Okay."

…

At the same time, in the office of the Qingbei Integrated Circuit and Chip Joint R&D Innovation Center, Xu Qingyan was flipping through a difficult-to-understand chip design software development progress report, his brows furrowed, and he had no intention of showing off his skills.

It has been almost four months since he came to this R&D and innovation center, but Xu Qingyan feels like he is stuck in a quagmire. The more he struggles, the more powerless he becomes.

The R&D Innovation Center has a chief director and two deputy directors.

Director Yao Wencheng is an authority on chip materials at Yanda. The "Dirac cold source transistor" developed by the team he led that year was hailed as "a new hope for carbon-based ultra-low power consumption CMOS integrated circuits", so he is naturally in charge of "

A research group working on "changing the process and materials of chip manufacturing".

The other deputy director, Fang Shiji, is also a professor at Yanda and has a good relationship with Yao Wencheng. He first chose the research group in charge of "chip architecture and precision optics", so he left behind the most troublesome and difficult to produce results.

Xu Qingyan is responsible for the research group in the direction of "chip design software and microelectronics processing".

Microelectronics processing is okay. Xu Qingyan is an expert in semiconductors and is somewhat involved in microelectronics processing. But in terms of chip design software, he is a complete newcomer. He is not good at informatics and software engineering. It is really difficult for him to get ahead.

You can become familiar with it by studying hard day and night.

Unfortunately, he had no way to protest against this division of labor.

Although he has made great achievements in physical materials science, and more than ten years ago, he became the youngest deputy director of a national key laboratory at the age of less than 30, but later he was framed by a villain for plagiarizing his paper.

He was expelled and had to work as a physics teacher at Yingyuan Private High School, missing the golden ten years. Now even if he is invited back by Qingmu University, he works in a key institution such as "Qingbei Integrated Circuit and Chip Joint R&D Innovation Center"

Among the scientific research institutions, he represents Qingmu University as the deputy director. In terms of reputation and achievements in physical materials science in the past ten years, he cannot compare with Yao Wencheng.

Moreover, although the R&D Innovation Center is a cooperative institution between Qingmu and Yanda, and nominally "cooperates sincerely to gather the scientific research strength of the two universities to solve key problems of domestic chips," the overt and covert conflicts between the two schools have been deeply rooted for many years. See Xu Qingyan working day and night

In order to get the first scientific research results, Yao Wencheng and Fang Shiji actually took out their old results, packaged them up and published them in Acta Physica Sinica based on their connections. This trend made Xu Qingyan feel helpless...

He also wanted to publish scientific research results as soon as possible, but it was because of Teacher Jiang's trust and to solve the country's problem of being stuck in chips, not to outdo Yanda or whoever was ahead.

This kind of inexplicable competition among people with different opinions is the main reason why Xu Qingyan feels exhausted both physically and mentally.

He put down the report in his hand and vigorously rubbed his sore eyes that were bloodshot from staying up late.

"If this continues, we won't be able to produce a qualified chip design software in ten years..." Xu Qingyan murmured in a dry and hoarse voice.

The so-called chip design software, also known as "ware", translates to electronic design automation software. It is a design software that uses computers to complete the entire process of integrated circuit chip design, wiring, verification and simulation.

It is called the "mother of chips" and is the most indispensable and important part in chip IC design.

Currently, hics, the world's three largest EDA software manufacturers, are all American companies. Their EDA occupies 99% of Xia Guo's market share. Domestic EDA only has less than 1% share, and they cannot design high-end high-performance chips. They can only use In mid-to-low-end scenarios such as microcontrollers and control chips.

What Xu Qingyan needs to do now is to design a full-process EDA that has completely independent intellectual property rights and can be used for high-end chip design. The requirement above is that it must be able to design at least 7nm high-performance chips.

The resources in his hands include more than 20 senior software development engineers, independent EDA software codes provided free of charge by Huaban, and a large number of tests from several major domestic chip manufacturers for simulation environments.

However, Huaban's EDA only has an imperfect main framework, engineering library, component library, interface library, and the important PDK has not yet been completed.

In particular, the mainstream technical architecture has established numerous patent barriers. Intel's instruction set cannot be used without authorization. It can only use the instruction set written by Huaban to establish and improve a new software main framework.

The data provided by domestic chip manufacturers only covers the 14nm process at most, which is still far behind the 7nm process. The data cannot be used in process simulation, let alone the most critical yield control in the later stage.

Even if Xu Qingyan wants to create a 14nm process level EDA first, it will be difficult.

Among all the difficult links, the most urgent one that needs to be solved is the algorithm problem.

EDA has very high requirements for algorithms. Without excellent algorithms added to the engineering library, it is like a soldier without weapons. No matter how strong you are in training, it will be useless. Currently, there are enough senior engineers in the EDA research group to write code. The level is first-rate, but the innovation ability in algorithm is disappointing.

"Algorithm, algorithm!" Xu Qingyan paced back and forth in the office in annoyance, constantly thinking about candidates who might solve this algorithm problem, and finally only one name remained.

He took a deep breath, picked up his cell phone, and dialed the number of his teacher, Academician Jiang Weixian.

"Teacher, I have a problem that I need to ask Qin Ke and Ning Qingyun for help. Is that okay?"

Jiang Weixian, who was on the other end of the phone, was silent for a long time after listening to his disciple's detailed explanation. He did not want Qin Ke and Qin Ke to fall into such a difficult and profound topic that required countless energy, especially in the field of informatics.

"I heard that they have recently submitted the final report on the Polignac conjecture project. There should be time. It's just a difficult problem in EDA algorithm. Qin Ke and Ning Qingyun may not be able to solve it..."

"Teacher, now we can only let Qin Ke and Ning Qingyun try it first. They have programmed the 'Ling Ning Operating System' with their own efforts. Now apart from them, I really can't think of a more suitable candidate.

"

Hearing Xu Qingyan's hoarse and dry voice, knowing that this disciple would never ask for help unless absolutely necessary, Academician Jiang Weixian finally sighed: "Ask them for their opinions, and their wishes will prevail."

."

"is teacher."

With Academician Jiang's consent, Xu Qingyan couldn't sit still in the office. He didn't even bother to eat lunch, so he hurriedly put on his coat and went straight to Qingmu University.

…

At around one o'clock at noon, after lunch, Qin Ke and Ning Qingyun walked hand in hand in the study room, then returned to their seats together to continue completing the Scientific Breakthrough Award report PPT.

As the autonomous learning progress of Weiguang's artificial intelligence continues to improve, PPT production is basically competent. Qin Ke and Ning Qingyun only need to simply modify and improve one or two, saving a lot of time.

"Done, it's done. Just wait for the time to attend the meeting. Give me a kiss." After Qin Ke stretched out his hand, he reached out to hug Ning Qingyun's slender waist. Suddenly there was a knock on the door of the study room.

Voice.

Ning Qingyun glared at Qin Ke with a red face, got up and ran to open the door as if running away, but unexpectedly found that it was teacher Xu Qingyan who came.

Qin Ke also thought it was such a coincidence that the two of them had mentioned Teacher Xu in the morning, and Teacher Xu actually came.

Could it be that Teacher Xu’s previous surname was Cao?

The two of them hurriedly said hello: "Teacher Xu."

Qin Ke's sharp eyes noticed that Xu Qingyan was still wearing the same Chinese tunic suit, with the style buttons neatly buttoned, and his hair combed meticulously, but his face, which was as cold as a rock, could not hide his tiredness, and his eyes were bloodshot, as if he had been up all night

Stayed up late.

Xu Qingyan asked: "I didn't disturb your lunch break, did I?"

Qin Ke knew that Xu Qingyan was not the kind of person who would drop by for a chat when nothing happened, so he smiled and said: "Qingyun and I don't have the habit of taking a lunch break. Teacher Xu, please come in and sit down. Do you want to see us if you have something to do?"

Xu Qingyan nodded towards the two of them, straightened his clothes again, and then walked in.

Qin pulled a chair and asked Xu Qingyan to sit down.

Xu Qingyan always spoke directly and without any pleasantries, so he asked: "Qin Ke, Ning Qingyun, I heard that you two have completed the Polignac conjecture project? Will you be free recently?"

Qin Ke and Xu Qingyan have a relationship between teachers and students, as well as brothers, and can be regarded as close people.
To be continued...