Back in 1978, I was admitted to Northwestern Polytechnical University.

Chapter 264 David's Men Come to the Door
On the fifth day of the Lunar New Year, Qin Liang returned to Northwestern Polytechnical University. After all, the development of Eastern chips was an urgent matter. However... as soon as he entered the gates of Northwestern Polytechnical University, he was greeted by an uninvited guest.

"Mr. Qin, the aircraft you designed for us has serious defects!"

Qin Liang looked at the several angry-looking David men with surprise on his face: "What's wrong?"

"Our Lion fighter jet has already begun test flights!" Harari's face was extremely serious. "Then, we discovered that this aircraft cannot fly at supersonic speeds. When approaching high subsonic speeds, the drag increases sharply! We tested the aircraft in a wind tunnel in the United States, and we found that the shock waves from the air intake and the shock waves generated by the canards were interfering with each other..."

"Huh? Is there such a thing?"

Qin Liang feigned surprise: "How could this happen?"

"The problem lies entirely with the shape of your design! Therefore, Northwestern Polytechnical University needs to take responsibility and revise the design to solve this problem!"

Qin Liang's face showed helplessness: "Well, if we were still in a close working relationship like before, then since the problem was in the design, we would of course take responsibility. However... as you know, you were involved in espionage during our cooperation, which almost caused a major leak. Therefore, our previous cooperation is now null and void."

"That's a design flaw on your part, and you must take responsibility!"

“Mr. Harari, if this is your attitude, then I can only say that there is no need for us to communicate anymore. Please take the relevant materials to the Chang'an Court to sue us and demand that we continue to perform the contract. As long as the court makes a judgment, we will abide by it.”

What a joke!
Is there any chance of success if we sue in the Chang'an Court? Harari's face darkened: "Why don't you let us sue you in our David Court?"

"The dispute arose here, so of course we should file a lawsuit here. Isn't that international practice? Your David Court doesn't have the authority to enforce the judgment against Northwestern Polytechnical University."

Harari clenched his fist: "So, you're planning to renege on your debt?"

“Mr. Harari, I’ll repeat myself: the termination of the cooperation was your responsibility, and whatever problems have arisen now are also caused by you. What kind of thought process do you David people have? When problems arise, you never reflect on your own actions, but only know how to blame others?”

“We Davidians did nothing wrong!” Harari said. “You took our money, so you have to give us a good plan! Although there were some unpleasant incidents, you still took our money!”

"Everyone, go ahead and file a lawsuit." After saying that, Qin Liang looked at the security guard at the gate: "These people are deliberately causing trouble. They are not people that Northwestern Polytechnical University welcomes. Be careful not to let them into the school."

"Yes."

"Wait, Mr. Qin, please wait!" Roots said anxiously.

"Mr. Roots, is there anything else?"

"Our Lion fighter jet project is currently facing a major problem, and we hope you can help us resolve it. We are here with sincere intentions..."

"I'm sorry, Mr. Rhodes, our cooperation has ended, so it's impossible for you to ask us to help improve the design for free."

"Of course it's not free, we're willing to... pay for it!"

Now, we can't dwell on the previous contract issues anymore. We still need to find a way to solve the problem. Problems that can be solved with money aren't really problems!
“Mr. Roots, making changes won’t be cheap.”

Rhodes forced a smile: "Money is not a problem!"

"Okay, then let's make it fifty million US dollars."

"What? When you designed it for us, the design fee was only forty million US dollars. Now, just for the changes, it costs fifty million US dollars? Aren't you outrageous?" Harari couldn't help but speak up again.

Qin Liang sighed.

"The problem of the shock waves from the canard and the air intake interacting with each other is a major aerodynamic issue! We need to re-examine the wind tunnel and find a solution. After the redesign, the overall design of the aircraft will have to be completely overhauled. In short, it's almost like a redesign. Considering inflation, raising the price from 40 million to 50 million is a normal procedure."

Qin Liang looked at the other party and said, "If you think it's too expensive, you can go find Americans!"

If the Americans could solve this, they wouldn't have come!
The American aerospace industry has never mass-produced a canard-layout fighter jet! They simply don't have the technological reserves. Asking them to help solve the problem would cost more than $50 million!
Therefore, they had no choice but to seek help from the East. The price of fifty million US dollars... sounds high, but in fact, it is lower than the offer from the United States!

"Does this R&D funding include the writing of flight control programs?"

"Of course not! We can give you the wind tunnel data, and you can write your own system based on that data. Moreover, the flight control system will need to be adjusted based on the test flight data..."

Seeing that the other party was still reluctant, Qin Liang could only tell them frankly: "To be honest, we in the East do not have a mature fly-by-wire aircraft yet. We are still exploring and moving forward on our own. So... if you insist that we help you write the flight control program, that's fine, but we have to sign a disclaimer. If a major accident occurs due to a defect in the flight control system, we will not be held responsible."

The other party stopped talking.

Fly-by-wire flight controllers are not so easy to master.

The world's first aircraft to use fly-by-wire control was the F-16, which crashed during test flights due to flight control defects! The second was the Mirage 2000, whose prototype was also crashed by the French! Then came the Swedish Gripen, which crashed badly and was eventually forced to ask the United States for help in debugging its flight control.

As for the Russians... they crashed several Su-27s, leading to the famous saying: "Good planes are made by crashing!"

Now, the Davidians want our help to write the flight control program. Of course, we can, but don't blame us if it crashes!
The group of Davids fell silent, exchanging glances. They knew that what Qin Liang said was indeed true! So…

“Then let’s modify the shape for us first. We can talk about the flight control later. Shouldn’t we go in and have a proper talk?” Roots said.

Everyone was waiting for Qin Liang at the main entrance. Now that they have reached a preliminary agreement on cooperation, let's go inside, find a meeting room, and sit down for a proper discussion.

"Well, how about we find a restaurant nearby and talk over a meal?"

What does this mean?
Harari, being the most perceptive, quickly realized something: "You won't even let us through the gates of Northwestern Polytechnical University?"

"Cough cough cough." Qin Liang said, "Well, don't get me wrong, I'm really hungry."

"Hmph, so does that mean we won't be allowed in for the rest of the cooperation either?"

"Ahem, everyone, Northwestern Polytechnical University has a lot of projects right now, so, so, so the internal space is a bit tight, there's no room for other projects. If you want to stay and do some research together, that's fine too, we'll find a place outside..."

This means they won't be allowed to enter Northwestern Polytechnical University!

Harari's face darkened further: "Mr. Rhodes, let's go. Even if it costs more money, we'd rather not put up with this!"

"Great, goodbye!"

Qin Liang turned and left without hesitation, as if he had no intention of taking the job at all.

His statement left several of the Davids completely bewildered.

Squid are always arrogant and self-centered. In reality, if you just put yourself in their shoes, you'll understand that if there were a group of people doing espionage in your company, you'd either kill them or expel them and never see them again.

Now, they're coming to cause trouble again. Of course, the other party is ignoring them. To cooperate, they'll definitely have to spend money, and they also need to take preventative measures to prevent the same thing from happening again.

If we want to cooperate, we have to accept the conditions: we have to find a place near Northwestern Polytechnical University to conduct research. It is absolutely impossible for the Davids to enter Northwestern Polytechnical University again. We will guard against them as if they were thieves.

Such humiliation... they were unwilling to endure, but...

They are not afraid to spend money, but they cannot afford to delay!
Whether it's the US or Europe, taking over this project rashly would require a lot of time; they would first need to thoroughly understand the canard layout of the fighter jet! Even if the Americans have researched it, they haven't perfected it yet. The French are also working on it, but they've only just started and their progress isn't as fast as the East's.

Moreover, these people are absolutely ruthless when it comes to money; after all, rivals are enemies... With that in mind, Rhodes did not hesitate.

"Wait, Mr. Qin, we can agree to all your requests, but please also agree to ours!"

"any request?"

"Get the plane fixed within three months."

"Impossible, at least a year!"

"why?"

"We're too busy! We're severely understaffed!"

"Then it'll be six months. We can't delay any longer!"

"We'll do our best, but the contract has to be for another year!"

At that moment, Roots really wanted to turn around and leave, but... he held back.

"Okay, so when shall we sign the contract?"

"Duoduo, we have a customer!"

Yang Duo'er then got out of the car, a smile on her face: "Everyone, let's find a place to talk in detail."

Although there was a delay at the gate, securing $50 million in R&D funding is still quite good! This gives the chip equipment company its initial investment.

Department Building, Conference Room.

"Great! That's fantastic!" Engineer Ni exclaimed excitedly after listening to Qin Liang's introduction. "I've heard about the lithography machine from Tsinghua University. After it was used in Factory 109, the yield rate immediately increased by 27%! Moreover, the 1.5-micron process technology can reduce chip heat generation and increase performance! This is definitely our best choice! It just so happens that our Loongson chip has entered the detailed R&D stage. Once the new equipment is installed, our Loongson chip can officially begin tape-out!"

"So fast?" Qin Liang was also taken aback.

"Yes, if we had used the x86 architecture directly, our research and development would have been much faster. Starting from scratch is what caused the delay."

When talking about this, Engineer Ni was full of excitement.

"If we use a 1.5-micron process, our processor can reach a starting frequency of 20 MHz, integrate 280,000 transistors, be a 32-bit processor, and greatly increase the memory space it can access. Its overall performance will be more than 20 times that of the 8086 processor..."

Qin Liang nodded. He didn't understand the specific technology, but the Loongson processor that Ni and his team were working on was indeed quite powerful. It far surpassed the 286 processor and could directly rival the 386 processor that was first released in 85.

To develop this processor, almost all the elites in the Eastern chip industry gathered at the Department of Mathematics of Northwestern Polytechnical University, and a huge amount of money was spent. It can be said that all the profits earned from producing the 8086 microcomputer were poured into it!
"Good, not bad!" Qin Liang nodded in satisfaction: "Engineer Ni, you've worked hard."

“Doing what we love most is not hard at all,” Engineer Ni said. “Developing our own processor and avoiding being controlled by others is the most joyful thing. Once Loongson-1 is successfully taped out, our team hopes to use Loongson-1 as a basis to develop our own DSP chip and provide the military with real military chips.”

"Okay," Qin Liang nodded.

The Loongson-1 currently under development is a central processing unit, which includes an arithmetic logic unit (ALU) and a control unit. The former is responsible for data processing, while the latter is responsible for working in conjunction with other hardware devices to complete various complex computing tasks through a series of instructions.

DSP stands for Digital Signal Processor. It is specifically designed to process digital signals, optimizes operations such as multiplication and addition, and can process digital signals at high speed and in real time, making it suitable for specialized fields.

Currently, airborne radar and other equipment still use ordinary CPUs, which can perform calculations, but are not very professional. In later generations, these devices are equipped with DSPs, which are incredibly fast in performing Lorentz transformations specifically for pulse Doppler.

Qin Liang naturally had to support this plan.

"However... after developing the DSP chip, there are still some things we need to consider before proceeding..."

This is asking for directions, we understand!
"After that, we'll develop the Loongson 2. The performance of this central processing unit is still too poor. We need to upgrade it to 100 MHz, 200 MHz, and finally GHz."

Everyone's eyes widened. Wasn't this faster than current mainframe computers? 1 GHz meant a computing power of one billion operations per second!
Since its inception, the processor has been relentlessly pursuing higher frequencies, until it reached 5GHz, at which point the competition for higher frequencies became meaningless.

"Once we reach GHz, we start developing towards multi-core processors, which is like integrating several processors together to accelerate multitasking capabilities," Qin Liang continued. "In the future, processors can integrate ten, or even twenty, cores, each with a processing speed of over 3 GHz..."

No one dared to imagine how powerful that computer was...

Currently, a computer with a computing power of 10 billion operations per second is already the world's best. In the future, it will only be the computing power of a home computer. When AI is all the rage, personal computers will easily have tens of GFLOPS, which is hundreds of billions of floating-point operations per second.

"Besides processors, we also need to develop other products, such as memory chips, motherboard chips, and display chips. In the future, we will need dedicated display chips to provide 3D computing capabilities. In fact, the performance of display chips will be more important than the performance of central processing units in future computers."

Looking back, Huang, always dressed in a leather jacket, always appeared aloof and superior at every press conference. Meanwhile, Intel had fallen so low that it had to beg for financial support.

Ni Gong quickly jotted down Qin Liang's words. He was no longer confused about the future; they had a lot to do!
After Qin Liang finished speaking, the department head finally hesitated and asked, "Qin Liang, what you just said means that our mathematics department is going to build another chip factory?"

"Well..."

Thump, thump, thump... Footsteps sounded outside.

"Is Qin Liang there? There's a telegram from Factory 4433..."

After receiving the telegram, Qin Liang smiled and said, "Factory 4433 is really conscientious. They want to continue cooperating with us. Let's talk about chip processing when they arrive."

Northwestern Polytechnical University's chip design has already consumed the entire department's energy. If they were to set up a chip factory, they would be stretched thin. So, if Factory 4433 is committed to progress, it could be trained to become a qualified chip foundry!

The next day, the people from Factory 4433 came to Northwestern Polytechnical University. Upon entering the conference room, Li Guofu got straight to the point.

"We heard from the Air Force that they're going to order two lithography machines from Tsinghua University. We'll cover the cost, and the machines will be installed in our factory for an upgrade!"

Qin Liang smiled and said, "Director Li, this is not just about buying two lithography machines. It requires starting from the single crystal furnace, then slicing, washing and so on, before reaching the lithography machine. After the lithography machine comes the etching machine, then a series of processes, and finally packaging and testing. This requires building a completely new production line."

When people talk about chips, they always mention lithography machines because these machines have the highest technological content. At the same time, they also limit the improvement of the manufacturing process. In fact, chip production involves more than just lithography machines.

However... the East has all of these devices! Even photoresist was developed by the Institute of Chemical Engineering of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. Unfortunately, in the 1980s, during the trend of "it's better to buy than to make," domestically produced equipment was almost abandoned. Electronic factories preferred to spend high prices to purchase foreign junk rather than give a second glance to domestically produced equipment.

Li Guofu was stunned. They had only planned to replace the contact lithography machine in the factory with a projection lithography machine, and had no other plans. Qin Liang's words meant that it was already a new factory!

"The biggest problem with our Eastern chip manufacturing is the small-scale workshop production model. We should take this opportunity to transition directly to assembly line production, expand production scale, and improve product quality. I think we need to build at least a 6,000-square-meter cleanroom to meet the needs."

Six thousand square meters!

Li Guofu took a deep breath: "Qin Liang, we don't have a place this big in our remote mountain village."

"Let's take this opportunity to move out!"

　PS: Back then, all the manufacturers were small workshops like this.

　　
　
(End of this chapter)