Chapter 71: 45 Nanometre
Because it was experimental, not too many of this new generation of Clones were cultivated; there were only 1,000 of them.
After switching bodies again, testing the quality of each Clone, and finding the one with the highest quality, Tom’s maximum consciousness count saw another small increase, reaching 5,002,264.
Tom was filled with joy.
"This was just an experiment; there will be more refined optimizations and improvements later. It is estimated that once the technology is truly mature, my maximum consciousness connections can increase further, probably to around 5.1 million.
For now, it’s enough!"
At this moment, the Clones that had been produced in advance, having been idle for anywhere from a month to three or four years, finally found their purpose.
Numerous new bases and factories emerged like mushrooms after rain on Loshen Star. From the poles to the equator, valleys, mountains, and plains, wherever there was value on Loshen Star, Clones would appear.
With a maximum consciousness connection count of 5 million, accounting for rest, illness, and daily wear and tear, the number of regularly used Clones reached 10 million.
Ten million Clones were already sufficient to begin a comprehensive, planet-wide development of Loshen Star.
Under a more abundant supply of resources and manpower, Tom embarked on larger-scale technological research and development.
Tom did not let go of any aspect involved in the modern industrial system or modern scientific system, whether at the theoretical or application level. He assigned a greater or lesser number of Clones to research all of them.
Furthermore, under Tom’s special ability, the research in every aspect and every branch was integrated into the whole.
Perhaps a highly specialized research advancement concerning topology within the mathematical system brought a breakthrough to a seemingly unrelated study of insulators in the field of chemistry;
Or a tiny breakthrough in materials science led to huge progress in optical physics.
Industry barriers? Knowledge barriers? They did not exist.
Thus, Tom’s overall technological progress once again showed a rapid advancement.
After several years of this, Tom gradually became aware of a problem.
The resources on Loshen Star seemed to be insufficient.
Thousands of initial mining sites had already been abandoned due to resource depletion. To extract resources, newly built mines had to develop underground, sometimes even drilling wells thousands of meters deep to barely extract any resources.
Even the surface of Loshen Star was no longer its previous dark red, but had turned light red.
This was because too much tolin had been scraped away by Tom as if he were scraping the earth.
But even so, resource supply still began to become somewhat strained.
After all, it was just a dwarf planet, with a surface area only a few tens of times smaller than Earth’s, and a mass only about one six-hundredth of Earth’s.
Tom had always been relatively conservative in his use of resources.
After all, these Clones had no entertainment needs; as long as they were fed, that was enough.
However, even for scientific research alone, the energy and resources required were enormous.
Often, to verify the reliability and efficiency of a process, Tom would build a large factory, consuming billions of kilowatt-hours of electricity and large amounts of water, chemical raw materials, etc., to operate it;
To develop a new type of propulsion material, Tom frequently conducted large-scale propulsion tests, consuming an unknown amount of methane and oxygen.
Not to mention, sometimes when tackling a key technology, Tom would disregard costs, directly mobilizing hundreds or thousands of factories to participate, and tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of Clones to join in, consuming even more astonishing resources.
"Technological research and development cannot stop, nor can it slow down. In the future, it even needs to accelerate again.
In that case, developing God-Enemy Star is inevitable.
However, large-scale development of God-Enemy Star still requires several prerequisite technologies.
First, more efficient propulsion technology. Second, more advanced intelligent AI and chip technology. Third, basic electromagnetic launch technology.
So, next, the priority will be to tackle these three technologies!"
Tom made up his mind. Consequently, with the commencement of the research on these three technologies, the rate of resource consumption on Loshen Star not only did not decrease but increased further.
In the chip factory built by Tom, using the already mature near-ultraviolet lithography technology, the Clones went through a series of processes, finally placing the wafers into the lithography machine for exposure.
The light source it used had a wavelength of approximately 400 nanometers. Using this technology, Tom could mass-produce 800-nanometer process chips.
Although 800-nanometer chips were still too outdated compared to the human era, they were, after all, true nanoscale chips, representing a huge improvement compared to before.
Chips of this process played a huge role in Tom’s technological development. They not only improved the automation level of all factories but also enabled the construction of supercomputers, which played a significant role in scientific computing.
But now, 800-nanometer chips could no longer meet Tom’s demands.
Developing God-Enemy Star would inevitably require a certain level of AI technology and more powerful computing power.
To this end, Tom built a larger and technologically more advanced base outside the original chip technology research base, comprehensively commencing research on the next-generation lithography machines and chip technology.
After two years of research, the new generation of lithography machines was finally manufactured. With Tom’s slightly excited mood, the trial production of the new generation of chips began.
Highly purified silicon wafers were fed into the lithography machine. After the photoresist coating was applied, the lithography machine, using a higher frequency deep ultraviolet light source, exposed them with ultraviolet light with a wavelength of approximately 200 nanometers.
According to the previously completed chip design, countless tiny circuits appeared on this small chip.
After subsequent processes such as doping, cleaning, etching, and packaging, a small chip finally appeared before Tom.
This chip was exactly the same size as the chips manufactured with the old process.
But Tom knew that this chip integrated 1 billion transistors. In contrast, chips manufactured using the 800-nanometer process previously only had about 3.2 million transistors.
That was an increase of over 300 times!
Although the increase in transistor count does not directly equate to performance improvement, a rough estimate suggests that the performance improvement is at least over a hundredfold!
Moreover, its reliability, power consumption, and heat generation also saw significant improvements.
Looking at this small chip, Tom was filled with joy.
"Although 45-nanometre process chips are not too advanced, at least they have touched the threshold of AI technology, and AI technology can be developed based on them!"