Chapter 116 - How Far Should We Look?
Around two-thirty in the afternoon, Su Yuanshan received a call from the front desk saying that Engineer Zheng and a group of leaders had arrived.
Feeling drowsy just moments ago, Su Yuanshan instantly became alert.
A group of leaders?
Su Yuanshan immediately stood up, straightened his appearance, and strode out of his office.
His office was the fourth one from the entrance, and since the entire floor was designed to maximize space, as soon as Su Yuanshan stepped out, he saw Zheng Zhenchuan, who was acting as the "host," introducing the guests at the front desk.
Passing by Chen Jing's office, Su Yuanshan pushed open the glass door with his shoulder. "Sister Jing, we have guests."
"Hmm?" Chen Jing was slightly startled by Su Yuanshan's gesture, but quickly got up and asked as she walked out, "What kind of guests?"
"From the Chinese Academy of Sciences."
"Got it, I'll go greet them," Chen Jing immediately understood Su Yuanshan's intention. With Su Xinghe absent, she was the highest-ranking leader here, and her appearance would reflect the proper level of reception.
As he passed by Qin Weimin's office, Su Yuanshan also called him out.
Meanwhile, Zheng Zhenchuan spotted Su Yuanshan and greeted him with a cheerful smile.
"Uncle Zheng, you're pulling a surprise inspection on us, huh?" Su Yuanshan joked from a distance, deliberately falling half a step behind Chen Jing to show proper courtesy.
"No, no, just here to casually discuss something.
Hello, General Manager Chen," Zheng Zhenchuan responded.
"Hello, Engineer Zheng," Chen Jing replied warmly, then glanced toward the three people emerging from the lounge, instantly realizing why Zheng Zhenchuan had organized this "surprise attack."
Of the three, she didn't recognize two of them, but she certainly knew Zhou Boguang — an old friend of Yuanchip.
"Hello, Director Zhou," Chen Jing greeted him.
"Hello, General Manager Chen. Hello, Xiaoshan, Weimin," Zhou Boguang said cheerfully, introducing the others.
"This is Zhao Kaidong, an optics expert from Changchun Institute of Optics, and this is Xie Kaiyun, Deputy Director of the Semiconductor Institute of the Chinese Academy of Sciences."
"Welcome, welcome.
It's an honor to have you all inspect our work," Chen Jing said warmly, shaking hands with each of them.
After inviting the group into a reception room converted from the old finance office, Chen Jing politely excused herself.
"Uncle Zhou, Uncle Zheng, let me guess — you're here for a surprise inspection to catch us off guard in front of the leaders," Su Yuanshan joked casually, relying on his close relationship with Zhou and Zheng and his own youthful spirit.
Zhao Kaidong and Xie Kaiyun both chuckled without minding.
After a few pleasantries, Zheng Zhenchuan quickly got to the point.
As Su Yuanshan had expected, Zheng was here to discuss the future direction of the lithography machine project.
Moreover, the three accompanying him — Zhou, Zhao, and Xie — were members of the current inspection team.
Judging by the composition of the group, Su Yuanshan immediately understood why, in his past life, Chengguang Institute's lithography machine had passed acceptance tests even without Yuanchip's help — when two out of three expert team leaders were "relatives" of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, how could it possibly fail?
"We four came mainly to hear Yuanchip's view on the development of domestic lithography machines," Zheng Zhenchuan said with a smile.
"After all, Yuanchip is now the leader of the domestic semiconductor industry.
Dr. Qin, I heard your CPUs are even being exported to the West?"
Qin Weimin chuckled, "Export might be an exaggeration.
We're more focused on design services.
Recently, we just signed two small orders with Western companies."
"That still makes you the star of China's CPU industry," Zhou said.
"Uncle Zheng, you're flattering us too much," Su Yuanshan said modestly.
"We're just a little bolder, a little faster, and maybe looking a bit further ahead than most."
His humility made the four bigshots smile.
But they also quickly realized that Su Yuanshan wasn't just being modest — he meant it.
The first two sentences were famous slogans already spreading across China.
But the last line — about "looking a bit further ahead" — that was Su Yuanshan's true belief.
Deputy Director Xie Kaiyun, acting as the leader of the inspection team, stared intently at Su Yuanshan.
"Xiaoshan, when it comes to lithography machines, how far do you think we should look?"
Su Yuanshan laced his fingers together and smiled quietly.
"Although i-line UV (ultraviolet laser) is currently mainstream," he said,
"based on what we know, light sources have already entered the DUV (deep ultraviolet) domain.
Breakthroughs at 248 nm using KrF are underway, and research into 193 nm ArF light sources has already begun."
"At the very least, we need to move into the ultraviolet domain," Su Yuanshan said calmly.
"i-line UV combined with high-precision workpiece stages can still meet memory and low-end chip needs for quite a long time.
And these market demands will be long-lasting."
Having been reborn for so long, Su Yuanshan understood much more deeply why the semiconductor industry had evolved the way it had.
Over a decade ago, Wang Shouwu had famously said at a national science conference:
"The total annual output of all China's semiconductor factories combined is only a tenth of what a 2,000-person company in Japan produces in a single month."
Such a suffocating gap naturally led to China's semiconductor policy focusing heavily on expanding production capacity.
Of course, the spirit of self-reliance was deeply rooted in the Chinese soul.
And during that period, domestic efforts at independent research and development never stopped.
But the results, born from tremendous national effort, often couldn't be widely applied.
Take this lithography machine for example:
It was already 1992, yet even with imported parts — including motors — and a team of fifty highly educated engineers working nonstop for months, they could only achieve about 35% yield at the 2-micron node.
Even so, this machine still represented the most advanced level of technology in the country at the time — and deserved a gold medal for the achievement.
Su Yuanshan continued, "Since there will be long-term demand, we must set our sights much further.
We must grit our teeth and aim for the demands of the next several years — or even the next decade or more."
Seeing the four leaders deep in thought, Su Yuanshan smiled faintly and added,
"I wonder, are you familiar with the wireless communications sector?"
The four looked at each other, and after a moment, Xie Kaiyun nodded, "Go on."
"Currently, the big brother phones — analog networks — dominate in China.
And it's only this year that we have a domestically made big brother phone passing acceptance tests, right?"
Xie, being the Deputy Director of the Semiconductor Institute, naturally had accurate information.
He nodded, "That's right."
"Deputy Director Xie, if we treat analog networks as the first generation, then GSM represents the second generation," Su Yuanshan said.
"GSM... the standard proposed by the European Telecommunications Standards Institute?" Xie asked.
"Yes. Overseas, companies like Siemens, Motorola, and Ericsson are all working on it."
Xie raised his eyebrows, "And you too?"
Su Yuanshan nodded. "Yes, though we're behind.
They'll probably have commercial products within six months.
At best, we'll need about a year."
The four exchanged glances in surprise.
After a few seconds, Xie smiled and said,
"That's still impressive.
I hear the Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications also has plans, but they're still undecided on the standard."
Su Yuanshan smiled lightly, "It's no big deal.
What I really want to say is this—"
He paused, looking around the room, his eyes sparkling.
"Technologically speaking, even though we're one or two years behind on GSM, our research is already stepping into the third generation.
Our technical planning extends to the fourth generation, and in the long term, we're even preparing for the fifth generation!"
"If we talk about transmission speeds," he said,
"second generation is 9.6 Kbps, third generation should reach about 5 Mbps, fourth generation would aim for 100 Mbps, and fifth generation... straight into the gigabit era!"
Listening to these near-futuristic numbers, Xie Kaiyun felt a little dazed.
"We might miss the second generation, and even the third generation.
But fourth generation and fifth generation — we will definitely catch up," Su Yuanshan said firmly.
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