Chapter 300 Chip Trial Production and Tape-out (3/4)

The day before the trial production, Ye Zishu went to the chip production factory to check, mainly to see if the chip production line they built was different from the data.

He inspected every link of the chip production line very carefully, and if there was any discrepancy, he communicated with the chief engineer of the production line to discuss whether it was reasonable to do so.

Sometimes he also needs to demonstrate in the virtual laboratory to see if there is any problem. Before he came to inspect the chip production line, he had already built a complete set of chip production experiment platform in the virtual laboratory.

So you only need to make changes to the modified part, and you can check whether the experimental results are ideal at any time. If it is better than the technical information he gave before, of course he has no opinion.

If there may be hidden dangers or changes that have little effect, he will directly point them out to see if they can be rectified quickly. These are small parts.

Most of the work was done according to the technical information he gave. After all, without any previous experience, it is impossible to make major changes in his technical solutions. The R\u0026D center does not have this strength.

I spent the whole day in the chip production factory. When the last inspection was completed, it was already 8 o'clock in the evening, and Ye Zishu took off his dustproof clothing and walked out of the chip production factory.

After a day's inspection, there are generally no major problems. Even if there are minor changes, it will not have a big impact on the overall production, and even some minor changes can slightly improve production efficiency.

After coming out, Wu Chaoqiang and Ren Zhengfei, who were following him, looked at him with a very clear meaning. They just wanted to ask him if there was any problem with the chip production line.

It is the first time for everyone to build a chip production line. Although there is no logical problem, it is inevitable that they will feel uneasy. The most knowledgeable ones are right in front of them.

"The entire production line not only complies with the plan provided by the design data, but also makes good modifications to some small places, and all the data fully meet the standards." Ye Zishu said.

Hearing what Ye Zishu said, the two of them finally let go of their uneasy hearts, and smiled on their faces. As long as there is no problem with the production line, the rest of the matter will be much easier.

In the trial production tomorrow, as long as there is no problem in the chip design, there should be no major problems in the tape-out. Of course, if there is an operation error, it is another matter.

In terms of operation, the possibility of mistakes is relatively low, and the automation degree of the entire production line is very high, the purpose is to reduce possible mistakes caused by operations.

When Leaf Book first designed the production line,

Considering that the personnel in the chip production line may be unfamiliar or insufficient, try to use a highly automated design solution.

Therefore, the current chip production line basically does not require human intervention in production, and all processes are carried out by a background control system. The reason for the arrangement of online personnel is mainly to avoid unexpected situations.

After all, any automation or control system may have problems. Even Ye Zishu cannot guarantee that there will be no problems 100%, which does not conform to objective laws.

As long as this chip production line is fully qualified, a new chip production line can be built later, which is much faster than building the first chip factory.

As a production-test-package integrated chip factory, even a production line still occupies a huge area, and can complete the production task of 6,000 wafers per day.

This efficiency has basically reached the highest efficiency of ASML's DUV lithography machine in the previous life. If it is used to produce mobile phone chips, it can produce more than 4 million chips per day.

The chip architecture and design provided by Leaf Book are far ahead of the current chip architecture, so there are more choices when designing.

So he made the low-end computer CPU chip much smaller than Intel's chip, so that the number of chips cut out from each wafer will be much larger, which can effectively reduce the cost of the chip.

Even for high-end chips, the chip area is smaller than that of Intel. These measures can effectively reduce costs and increase the profit margin of chips while ensuring the advantages of chip performance.

Early the next morning, Ye Zishu, Wu Chaoqiang, Ren Zhengfei, and a group of senior R\u0026D personnel all came to the chip production factory. Today is the day of trial production, and it is also the day of chip tape-out of Qinglong Technology Company.

Since this is a trial production, Xuanwu Technology Company did not ask Qinglong Technology Company for the tape-out fee. If it fails, the cost can only be borne by itself.

A group of people entered the factory wearing dust-proof clothing, and Ye Zishu went directly to the main console to import various communication chip designs designed by Qinglong Technology Company into the system.

Then arrange the chip production plan. After the arrangement, the main console can automatically switch the chip manufacturing tasks according to the plan, so that the chip production can be seamlessly connected.

After finishing these, Ye Zishu came to the production workshop, joined Ren Zhengfei and the others, and told Wu Chaoqiang that the trial production of chips would officially start at 9:00 am.

At present, employees in various positions are on standby. Although there are not many things they can do, a tense atmosphere still pervades the factory.

This is my country's first advanced chip manufacturing plant and an important milestone in the development of my country's chips. Anyone with a little common sense knows how significant this trial production is.

But Ye Zishu was not too nervous, because he simulated many times in the virtual library, and the results were very satisfactory. Not only did he not fail, but the good product rate was as high as 98%, close to 99%.

Such a yield rate is enough to hang many chip manufacturing production lines. To improve the yield rate, in addition to advanced equipment, reducing the interference of foreign objects is also the top priority.

The time quietly came to nine o'clock in the morning, and various equipment on the production line entered the working state one after another from the standby state.

When all the machines are in working condition, the worker puts the wafer into the wet cleaning equipment and starts to automatically use various reagents to ensure that the surface of the wafer is free of any impurities.

After this link, the wafer is automatically sent to the photolithography link. During this process, the wafer is not touched by any equipment, and the wafer is placed in the magnetic levitation tray.

Then photolithography is carried out in a suspended state. The photolithography speed of a wafer only takes 12 seconds, which is very fast. After the photolithography is completed, it is automatically sent to the ion implantation equipment.

Followed by dry etching, wet etching, plasma cleaning, heat treatment (including rapid annealing, annealing, thermal oxidation), chemical vapor deposition, physical vapor deposition, molecular beam epitaxy, electroplating treatment, chemical/mechanical surface treatment.

At this point, it can be regarded as touching all the links before the wafer test. After the wafer test, it enters the wafer polishing process, and then it can leave the factory.

Although the steps are simple to say, it is by no means a day to complete all the steps for a wafer, and it usually takes about 30 days.

The chip production line designed by Ye Zishu still needs 20 days due to the optimization of the process flow and the high degree of automation of various equipment.

Therefore, during tape-out, Leaf Book arranges to manufacture only 10 wafers for each type of communication chip, and then automatically switches to the manufacture of the next chip.

In this way, after 20 days, you can know the tape-out results of various chips. Passing the tape-out means that the chip design has no problems and can enter the formal production stage.

At the same time, the yield rate of the chip production line can also be obtained, but he has already done the test in the virtual laboratory, so he is not very worried about it.

After staying in the chip production factory for another day, after coming out, Ye Zishu said to Wu Chaoqiang: "At present, the operation is very good. If you keep watching, I won't waste any more time here."

Ye Zishu's time is precious, it is impossible to spend 20 days here waiting for the results, it is completely unnecessary, so I plan to fly back to the capital directly tomorrow.

Ren Zhengfei on the side also said: "I will go back with you tomorrow, and I will trouble Mr. Wu and the engineers here."