Tech Giants: Starting from Bankrupt Companies

111: Chapter 111 A Spark from a Spark Can Start a WildfireNovember 5th, 3:00 AM, Shenzhen Pingshan District ’flint one Factory’.

The lights in the cleanroom were as bright as day, but the atmosphere was as oppressive as the silence before a storm.

Li Weimin stood before the control console, hands braced against the edge, his knuckles white from the pressure.

He hadn’t closed his eyes for thirty-six consecutive hours; his sclera were bloodshot, and his eyeballs looked like two charcoal fires burning in deep wells.

The large screen opposite the console displayed real-time data streams, with green characters cascading down like a waterfall.

Zhang Wei sat in the operator’s chair, his fingers hovering above the keyboard, trembling slightly.

This former senior director who had survived the most rigorous technical tests at Intel now had palms slick with sweat.

There were over twenty other engineers in the workshop, all wearing white anti-static cleanroom suits, masks, and hoods, with only their eyes visible.

In those eyes lay the same tension, anticipation, and a hint of irrepressible fear.

Fear of failure, and even more, fear of letting others down.

The electronic clock on the wall jumped: 03:01.

’Begin,’ Li Weimin’s voice was as hoarse as sandpaper rubbing together.

Zhang Wei pressed the Enter key, and the test program started.

This was the second tape-out.

When the first one failed, the yield was 0.7%, almost a total wipeout.

In the ten days that followed, the entire team worked like mad—analyzing contamination sources, adjusting photoresist formulas, optimizing process flows, and retraining operators.

Li Weimin had lost weight, and Zhang Wei’s hair had turned gray in patches.

Now, it was time to verify the results.

Step one: Wafer visual inspection.

A robotic arm picked up a fresh wafer and fed it into a high-power microscope.

The image was magnified onto the screen—on the dark gray silicon wafer, dense circuit patterns were neatly arranged, like a miniature urban planning map.

’Surface is clean, no abnormal spots,’ the young female engineer in charge of visual inspection said, her voice trembling but her report clear. ’The first wafer is qualified.’

A slight sigh of relief echoed in the workshop.

Step two: Electrical testing.

The probe station lowered, and tiny probes made contact with the test points on the wafer.

Data began to jump: threshold voltage, leakage current, transconductance... all parameters were within the green zone.

’Transistor threshold voltage fluctuation is less than 5%,’ the test engineer’s voice rose a notch. ’Qualified!’

Step three: Functional testing.

This was the real test.

The test machine loaded the preset program into the chip, checking if the hundreds of millions of transistors could work together to execute the correct logic operations.

The progress bar on the screen began to move:

chip 1-100 testing...

Yield: 47%

Someone in the workshop clenched their fists.

chip 101-500 testing...

Yield: 52%

Someone started praying softly.

chip 501-1000 testing...

The progress bar crept slowly upward: 53%... 54%... 55%...

Finally, it settled at: 56.3%.

Time froze at that moment.

Three seconds of absolute silence swallowed all sound like a vacuum.

Then, the first sob broke the silence.

It was the young female engineer from visual inspection; she crouched on the floor, her shoulders shaking violently.

Then came the second, the third... The young engineers threw off their dust caps; some wept loudly, some looked up and roared, some embraced tightly.

Zhang Wei stood up from the operator’s chair, his body swaying slightly.

He walked toward Li Weimin, his steps unsteady, like a drunkard.

Reaching the old man, he opened his arms and hugged Li Weimin tightly.

’Old Li... we did it... we did it...’ Zhang Wei’s voice choked, tears streaming down his cheeks and dripping onto Li Weimin’s lab coat.

Seventy-two-year-old Li Weimin stood there, letting Zhang Wei hold him.

The old man’s body trembled slightly; after a long while, he finally raised his hand and gently patted Zhang Wei’s back.

’Good...’ he said only one word, his voice very soft, as if afraid to wake from a beautiful dream, ’Good...’

Then he cried too.

Turbid tears welled up from his deep-set eyes, flowing down his wrinkled cheeks.

This old Academician who had witnessed the birth of the Huaxia semiconductor industry from nothing had seen too many failures, too many disappointments, and too much helplessness of ’wait another ten years’.

And today, he had finally waited for it.