Chapter 877 The hope of carbon-based chip breakthrough
In the office, Xu Chuan quickly dialed Zheng Hai's phone number after hanging up the call with Zhao Guanggui.
"Zheng Hai, help me arrange a flight back to Jinling."
On the other side of the phone, Zheng Hai's calm voice came: "What time? Is it urgent?"
Xu Chuan thought for a while and said: "The sooner the better, there is a research over there that I need to go and check out."
It was already mid-January in the Gregorian calendar, and in about ten days, it would be New Year's Eve and the Spring Festival. Originally, he planned to stay at CRHPC for a few days, and then go directly home to celebrate the New Year.
But now it seems that he has to go back to Xinghai Research Institute again.
This new discovery may have a major impact on research in the field of carbon-based chips and even bring about key breakthroughs.
So he had to go back and see what was going on.
Hearing this, Zheng Hai on the other side of the phone suddenly showed a solemn expression on his face. This was the first time Xu Chuan said this, which shows the importance of what happened in Jinling.
Of course, what he never expected was that Xu Chuan wanted to rush there as soon as possible in order to find out the situation before returning to his hometown to celebrate the New Year.
However, the naturally ordered carbon nanotubes were indeed important and worthy of him rushing back as quickly as possible.
"Okay, I'll arrange it right away. Is there anything else?" After a quick response, Zheng Hai asked additionally.
"No more, that's it."
Zheng Hai nodded and said: "Okay, I will contact you as soon as possible after the arrangements are made. Just wait for me downstairs."
"OK."
Xu Chuan responded and hung up the phone.
Zheng Hai was very confident in his work, at least within the scope of his work, he had never been disappointed.
Opposite me, Lin Feng looked a little curious and asked, "At this time, do you want to go back to Jinling? The Chinese New Year will be here soon."
"Um."
Xu Chuan responded, stood up and walked to his desk. While packing his things, he said: "There are some urgent matters over there, so I have to go there."
Lin Feng nodded and did not continue to ask.
No one is a fool who can accept the invitation from the organization to come back from the United States. Don't inquire about those who shouldn't.
Especially the young junior brother standing in front of him. Many times the things he comes into contact with are state secrets, and they are of the highest level.
In fact, even if Xu Chuan was willing to tell him, he didn't really want to hear it.
Sometimes, the more you know, the more painful it becomes.
Being omniscient and omnipotent is not a blessing, but a punishment.
...
Not long after packing up, the experimental data from Xinghai Research Institute was sent over.
Xu Chuan clicked on the email, entered the password to open the file inside, and started browsing.
This new type of material has not yet been named. It was collected from the impact wall of the Yaochi crater by the Lunar Outpost Scientific Research Station when it was conducting research on the back of the moon half a month ago.
It is the twelfth new material discovered by humans on the moon so far.
The so-called new materials, simply put, are new substances that are not found on the earth.
As they explored the moon, more and more new materials were discovered.
And because of the special environment on the moon, there are many substances of great research value in both the soil on the lunar surface and the lunar rocks.
Such as Parsad stone.
This is the second new lunar substance discovered during the United States' lunar exploration. It is a very rare natural mineral and one of the minerals on the moon. It has extremely strong radiation resistance.
Or Spethite, whose high-performance optical waveguide properties have extremely high research value in fields such as optical sensors and optical fiber transmission equipment.
There is also Chang'e stone. The lunar soil containing Chang'e stone often contains extremely valuable rare earth materials.
And now the new material they discovered in Yaochi Crater is the same.
Its naturally produced neat and hierarchically ordered carbon nanotubes have great research value.
Its core is undoubtedly to guide the research direction of carbon-based chips and carbon-based transistors!
You must know that the development of the chip field is not only an area that China has always dreamed of, but also the core focus of Western countries led by the United States.
In this field, relying on their advantages over the past few decades, Qualcomm, Apple, MediaTek and other companies have built a huge protective wall around chips through technology and patents, blocking other countries and companies from the door.
Not only that, in conjunction with photolithography machines, wafers, EDA and other fields, these countries and companies have established a complete set of standards around silicon-based chips.
This is the most terrifying place.
Because technology will become outdated and patents will expire, but standards are something that can continue forever.
Technology patentization, patent standardization, and standard globalization are the main forms of competition in the global market today.
With the help of standards as a carrier and the use of patents as a weapon, companies and countries can stand at the top of the market and continuously reap the benefits of other countries or companies.
Didn't you see, in the field of chips, China's annual import volume is calculated in units of "hundred million". Both the number of chips and the overall cost are extremely huge.
For example, in 2022, the total amount of chip imports will exceed 2.3 trillion yuan, which is approximately 460 billion yuan based on an exchange rate of five to one.
Although the figure in 2023 has dropped slightly, it is still as high as 211 billion RMB, close to 450 billion yuan.
Overall, this amount is almost the same as the total amount of crude oil imported by China before the realization of controllable nuclear fusion technology.
It can be seen that the amount of money spent on this every year is a huge amount.
It’s not that Hua has never thought about self-research, and has been doing related things, but this kind of technology that has completely formed a monopoly system cannot be so easy to break through.
And even if you make research progress on silicon-based chips, it will be extremely difficult to break the standards and monopolies established by Western countries for this purpose.
If you really want to break through in the chip field, the only way is to find another way and change the track.
This chapter is not over yet, please click on the next page to continue reading! Carbon-based chips are one of the fields chosen by China and are also the focus of R&D and investment.
However, in an industry like chips, which is known as the "food of modern industry" and the shining pearl in the semiconductor field, it is extremely difficult to achieve overtaking in corners.
Even though a lot of manpower and material resources and various supporting policies have been invested, the current carbon-based chips are still in the laboratory research and development stage.
Although many laboratories and research institutions have made some carbon-based chips, the number of integrated carbon-based transistors, operating efficiency, calculation accuracy and other aspects are far from being comparable to silicon-based chips.
If Xu Chuan remembers correctly, the information he is paying attention to, the one with the best progress should be the laboratory products made by the research team led by Professor Zhang Zhiyong of the School of Electronics of Peking University.
A tensor processor chip integrating 3,000 carbon-based transistors and a 3-micron process technology node.
But there is still a long way to go before commercialization.
If the development of 'five nanometer' level carbon-based chips can be regarded as climbing Mount Everest, the current domestic development in the field of carbon-based chips has just entered Tibet, and it can even be said that it has not even reached the foot of Mount Everest.
.
It's very simple, because the technology in all aspects is immature.
Especially the number of carbon-based transistors is the problem within the problem.
As we all know, the core of modern industrial chips lies in the number of transistors.
This is the most basic and core.
The more transistors, the stronger its performance, and silicon-based chips are often integrated with transistors in units of "billion".
Taking Intel's 10nm process chip as an example, its transistor density is about 100 million to 100.8 million transistors per square millimeter.
Carbon-based chips currently have 3,000 transistors, which are not even a fraction of those of silicon-based chips. This shows the huge gap between the two.
The core problem why carbon-based chips are so difficult to break through is how to accurately and stably arrange and control carbon materials such as 'carbon nanotube arrays' or 'graphene' to form an integrated array of carbon-based transistors.
This is the biggest problem in the production and preparation of carbon-based chips, and there is no excellent solution so far.
Researchers in the laboratory can integrate carbon nanotransistors on chips through expensive and complicated production processes, but industrial production is not possible.
Efficient, low-cost, and large-scale industrial production are one of the core factors to ensure the commercialization of carbon-based chips.
This is why Xu Chuan attaches so much importance to the naturally ordered carbon nanotubes found in the Yaochi crater on the moon.
By analyzing the formation reasons of this new substance, they may be able to find a way to stably sort carbon nanotubes on carbon-based chips!
.......
In the office, Xu Chuan looked through the experimental data sent by Xinghai Research Institute.
About half an hour later, the phone on the table vibrated again.
"Professor, the nearest flight is ready. I'm waiting for you downstairs in Bagua Tower."
"Okay, I'll go down now."
With that said, Xu Chuan hung up the phone, put the phone back into his pocket, closed the laptop and stuffed it into his backpack, picked it up and walked outside.
Downstairs, Zheng Hai had already driven his car outside the building.
After getting in the car, just when Xu Chuan thought they were going directly to Huanghua Airport, the car turned around and came to the other side of the CRHPC base.
"Huh? Aren't you going to the airport?"
Looking at the car driving in the base, which was obviously not heading for the exit, Xu Chuan asked curiously.
"We're going, but we're not going by car. We'll take another faster means of transportation." Zheng Haitou didn't respond and drove calmly.
After a while, in a corner of the base, through the car window, Xu Chuan saw a dark green-painted helicopter parked steadily in the open space, with the propeller on top rotating at a neither fast nor slow speed.
.
"Helicopter?"
Looking at the 'vehicle' in front of him, Xu Chuan was stunned for a moment and looked at Zheng Hai.
Zheng Hai scratched his head and said with a smile: "Um, didn't you say the faster the better? This one is faster."
Xu Chuan: "..."
Although he said the sooner the better, but there is no need to dispatch a helicopter, right?
"Professor, you shouldn't get sick from helicopters, right?"
Helping to pick up the backpack from the car, Zheng Hai smiled sheepishly and asked.
At this point, he probably realized that he had misunderstood Xu Chuan's meaning. However, the meaning on the phone sounded very serious, and anyone else would have misunderstood it, so he urgently dispatched a helicopter from the armed police.
The plane is coming.
After all, no matter how fast you drive, it's not as fast as this, right?
Glancing at the roaring helicopter, Xu Chuan shrugged and said, "I don't know, I haven't been in a helicopter yet."
He has flown on airplanes many times, including on space shuttles, but he has never done anything like helicopters before. This is his first time.
"Try then?"
Zheng Hai smiled and continued: "There is already a direct flight to Jinling waiting for us at Huanghua Airport. It has been arranged. This is the fastest way to get to Jinling."
"Okay."
Xu Chuan breathed a sigh of relief and walked towards the helicopter. He had already come and could not go back again. He had never been on it anyway, so he just thought he was experiencing a new life.
With the help of a nearby assistant and a security guard who was following him, Xu Chuan also boarded the helicopter after half-bending to avoid the strong wind from the propeller above his head.
"Professor, it will be noisy during the flight. It is recommended to wear earmuffs."
In the cabin, the accompanying assistant Tang Sijia handed over a pair of black earmuffs. Xu Chuan nodded, took them and put them on his ears.
Fasten your seat belt, and after Zheng Hai checked it, the propellers roared like lightning and the helicopter gradually moved away from the ground.
Although the quality of the earmuffs is very good and cuts out most of the noise, the feeling of a helicopter taking off is really impressive.
This chapter is not over yet, please click on the next page to continue reading the exciting content! Although the pilot was trying his best to maintain a stable flying attitude, for Xu Chuan, the tension still outweighed the novelty and excitement.
Especially when taking off, the completely different ways of helicopters and fixed-wing aircraft made him almost feel like he had returned to the moment of the crash before his rebirth.
Because the nose of the former is pushed down to a certain extent when taking off, which means it is diving, while the fixed-wing aircraft raises its head upward.
This moment of weightlessness made him subconsciously grasp the seat belt tied to his body, and his face almost turned pale.
Fortunately, after reacting, this strange feeling disappeared.
"Professor, are you okay?"
Noticing the discomfort on his expression, Tang Sijia on the side asked: "Are you afraid of heights? Or do you feel uncomfortable somewhere? Do you need airsickness medicine?"
Xu Chuan took a deep breath and calmed down, shook his head and said: "It's okay, no need, I'm just a little uncomfortable when taking off."
Tang Sijia: "If you feel uncomfortable at all, please tell me. Your health is part of my responsibility."
"Yes, I will." Xu Chuan nodded, looking through the glass window to the scenery outside, admiring the scenery outside.
He is not afraid of heights, but the way the helicopter takes off is really unfriendly to a mentally disturbed person like him.
But it was only for a period of time after takeoff, and it was fine after that. Apart from some noise and turbulence, there were no other problems.
As for the speed, I have to say it is indeed quite fast.
From Taohualing, the headquarters of CRHPC, to Huanghua International Airport, it is more than 40 kilometers away and it takes about ten minutes to get there.
Moreover, he drove directly onto the internal runway of the airport and parked not far away from where he was waiting for the flight to Jinling. He just got off and boarded the plane directly.
Convenience is indeed very convenient, but if Xu Chuan is given another chance to choose, he will definitely regret agreeing to take a helicopter ride.
For him, this should be the first and last time he rides on this thing.
If given a choice, he would rather sit on three bungalows than this one again.
