Chapter 257 Flawless Architecture (1/2)
Mid-December.
The ”Household Computer” R&D center at Su Hing City achieved a breakthrough.
”Mr. Chen, the first batch of prototypes have been produced. Its operations are very smooth. We have achieved success in both the hardware and software system!” Hu Teng Jiao who was in charge of the project said excitedly in the phone call.
”Prototypes are out?”
Chen Jin was slightly surprised. The ”Household Computer” project that had been going on for two years had finally came up with substantial results.
...
The following day.
To show that they attach great importance to this project, Chen Jin's real self along with a few executive members drove to Su Hing City and inspected the research center.
He sent his greetings to nearly 2,000 software and hardware developers in the research center.
Seeing their boss in person, the developers were every excited. They shook hands with him, took photos with him, and there was even a female staff that asked for a hug from him.
”Great job everyone, you've done well.”
Chen Jin constantly waved his hand. The scene was filled with acute enthusiasm.
...
Inside the product testing room.
Chen Jin saw two prototypes placed on a long table.
One of them was a household desktop. It had a rectangular CPU and a 19-inch LCD display, not much of a difference with ordinary household computers. The other one was a laptop. Because it was a test prototype, its appearance was also rectangular, and its thickness was comparable to the ThinkPad.
Project leader Hu Teng Jiao did not immediately boot the computers. On contrary, he asked someone to bring in two chips.
The computer CPU chips!
One of them had physical dimensions of 4x4-centimeter cube, half the size of a palm. It was four times the size of regular Intel CPU's… this was the CPU for the desktop. The other chip was 2.5x2.5-centimeter cube… this was the CPU for the laptop.
”These two CPU's were produced using Zhong Xin International's 28 nm process technology. It was two to three generations behind Intel's most advanced 10 nm process technology… however, the production of Intel's 10nm is severely scarce. As of now, they are mainly still making 14 nm CPU's.”
The difficulty to make computer CPU's were much higher than making the Soc on mobile phones. The surface area of computer CPU's was a few times larger. The number of transistors was also multiplied several times and even to as many as ten billion times.
While using the same process technology, the larger the area, the lower the conformity rate, and the higher the cost price. Hence, Intel's 10 nm CPU only realized mass production on 20X0 after being held back for three to four years.
CPU's made using Zhong Xin International's 28 nm process technology was certainly worst. The performance gap can only be compensated by increasing the area of the wafer and the number of transistors.
Fortunately, after Chen Jin helped solve the problem of the lithography lens, the Super high-resolution lithography machine that would soon be launched by Shangwei Microelectrics could be used in manufacturing the 10 nm computer CPU, assuring optimal conformity rate… it could almost tie with Intel's most advanced CPU.
In addition, the size of the CPU here was several times larger, and it would be completely unnecessary to worry about it having underwhelming performance.
More importantly, the CPU, named as the 'Azure Generation' used the more common X86 and MIPS for its physical architecture, which both had a huge competitive advantage.
Engineer Liang Yongpin who was responsible for the CPU architecture introduced”
”Mr. Chen, the CPU architecture Intel and AMD are using as for now is mostly the X86 architecture which occupy the absolute mainstream in the market.”