115: Chapter 115 Market Bearish? Starcraft Reveals Its Ultimate Chip Killer!

Xingchen Technology Park, inside the precision machinery laboratory.

The air was filled with the scent of metal mixed with cutting fluid.

The constant temperature and humidity system hummed quietly.

Chen Shisan stood before a seven-axis linkage CNC machine tool.

The machine's robotic arm moved.

The spindle rotated at high speed.

It was performing precision machining on a piece of special glass.

That was the core base of the optical lens group.

On the console screen, a set of data flickered slightly.

[Machining tolerance: 0.1 μm]

This number is the limit of current human industrial manufacturing.

Chen Xu walked into the laboratory.

He made no sound with his footsteps.

Chen Shisan completed the final process.

The spindle stopped rotating.

He turned around and saw Chen Xu.

"Boss."

Chen Shisan took out the finished base and placed it into a specialized dust-free box.

He began his report.

"The dual-worktable system for the EUV lithography machine is assembled."

"Calibration of the laser interferometer is currently underway."

Chen Xu nodded.

He followed Chen Shisan through the laboratory and into the giant factory building behind it.

In the center of the factory, the skeleton of a machine had already taken shape.

It occupied more than one hundred square meters.

It was nearly five meters tall.

Thousands of cables of different colors extended from the cabinets, connecting to every subsystem of the machine.

The structure of this machine surpassed any known industrial equipment on Earth.

Chen Shisan walked to a console beside the skeleton.

He pointed to a module wrapped in silver thermal insulation material.

"The only difficulty at the moment."

"The extreme ultraviolet light source generator."

"High-power lasers bombard tin droplets to produce plasma, radiating extreme ultraviolet light with a 13.5-nanometer wavelength."

"We have achieved light source generation, but the power output is unstable, with a fluctuation rate exceeding five per thousand."

Chen Shisan pulled up a set of fluctuation curves.

The curves fluctuated violently.

This did not meet production requirements.

"At this fluctuation rate, we cannot guarantee the uniformity of wafer etching."

Chen Xu looked at the set of curves.

His brain was connected to the technology library.

Data streams of high-energy plasma physics flowed through his mind.

He found the problem.

"Reduce the diameter of the tin droplet generator nozzle by three percent."

"Increase the droplet injection frequency to fifty thousand times per second."

"Increase the laser pulse pretreatment energy by five point two percent."

Chen Xu gave three sets of correction parameters in succession.

In Chen Shisan's pupils, data streams calculated rapidly.

He did not ask questions.

He directly created a new simulation model on the console.

He entered the parameters provided by Chen Xu.

Run.

On the screen, a new power fluctuation curve was generated.

It was a nearly horizontal straight line.

The fluctuation rate was controlled within one ten-thousandth.

Chen Shisan stood straight.

He turned to look at Chen Xu.

"Boss."

"Everything is going smoothly."

"Sixty days."

"In sixty days, the first Xingchen EUV lithography machine will be finished."

...

Meanwhile.

Public opinion outside was fermenting in another direction.

The confrontation between Star Technology and the United States' sanctions had entered a new phase.

Everyone saw Star Technology's counterattack.

The appearance of the self-developed EDA software "Star Chart" had broken the software blockade.

But everyone also knew that this was just the first step.

From software to hardware, from design drawings to finished chips, there was a chasm.

Manufacturing.

Without high-end lithography machines, without advanced wafer fabs, all designs were just talk on paper.

Headlines in financial media began to feature pessimistic sentiments.

[Xingchen's swan song? "stellar" phone may become the last flagship.]

[Sources reveal: Star Technology's phone parts inventory is about to run out, production lines face shutdowns.]

[On second-hand platforms, the "stellar" phone has a 50% premium; scalpers are hyping the "out-of-print" concept.]

Market panic was ignited.

Xingchen phone users began to worry about subsequent system maintenance and after-sales service.

Potential consumers chose to wait and see.

The mobile phone was rendered with a tragic hue.

Headquarters building, top floor office.

Guan Yi walked in quickly.

She placed a report on Chen Xu's desk.

"Boss, public opinion is very unfavorable to us."

"Consultations for the mobile phone business have dropped by thirty percent, and some offline stores have seen order cancellations."

"Scalpers have hyped the price of a 'stellar' phone to twenty thousand yuan."

She could feel the chill transmitted by the market.

"We need to release information to the public to stabilize market confidence."

"Even if it's just announcing the R&D plan for the 'Kunlun' chip."

Chen Xu did not look at the report.

He stood up.

"Come with me."

He took Guan Yi and walked out of the office.

The two took a private elevator, not going downstairs, nor to the parking lot.

The elevator stopped at the floor where the software R&D center was located.

They walked through a long white corridor.

Chen Xu did not enter the server hall where Yan Yi was.

He took Guan Yi to a door on the other side of the corridor.

This was the viewing corridor for the precision machinery laboratory.

Thick soundproof glass completely separated the corridor from the giant factory below.

Guan Yi walked to the glass curtain wall.

She looked down.

She saw the massive machine currently under assembly.

She saw dozens of researchers busy around the machine.

She saw Chen Shisan performing final debugging in front of a module.

Guan Yi was not a technician.

But she could feel the power contained in that machine.

It was a kind of order.

A kind of precision.

A beauty that transcended all her past perceptions.

"This is..."

Guan Yi's voice carried uncertainty.

Chen Xu stood beside her.

His gaze also fell on the skeleton of the machine below.

"Guan Yi."

"Notify the construction department."

Chen Xu's voice was very calm.

"Immediately launch the construction plan for the highest-level dust-free wafer fab."

Guan Yi's body shook.

She turned her head abruptly, looking at Chen Xu.

Wafer fab.

These three words represented the pinnacle of the semiconductor industry pyramid.

It was the product of combining tens of billions in capital with top-tier technology.

She turned her head back to look at the precision machine below that she had never seen before.

A thought exploded in her mind.

She understood.

She understood everything.

All the anxiety, all the unease, at this moment, vanished like smoke.

Phone production line shutdown?

Market panic?

Scalper speculation?

These were no longer important.

When your opponents are still discussing how to buy flour.

You have already started growing wheat yourself.

This was no longer a competition on the same dimension.

Guan Yi looked at Chen Xu's profile.

This young man was rewriting the rules of the entire industry in a way she could not understand.

Chen Xu did not look at her.

His gaze passed through the glass, through that complex machine.

In his gaze, it was two months later.

It was that high-end chip, belonging to China itself, that was about to be etched.