185: Pioneers

"Congratulations to the Host for reaching a milestone event in intelligent digital mobile device terminals, opening up a brand-new path in the display and design of intelligent digital mobile communication device terminals. Achievement unlocked: Pioneer."

@Full of Stars Rushing Towards You, quoting this reader's comment.

After the press conference ended, Chen Chen handed the media meet-and-greet over to Lu Weiqi, while he himself returned home to patiently wait and see if Xiao Ai had any rewards for him.

It wasn't until the evening that Xiao Ai's system voice finally appeared in Chen Chen's mind.

"Achievement?"

"Title?"

"Pioneer?"

Chen Chen carefully pondered the key information in Xiao Ai's brief words. The Full-Screen Display design was indeed designed by Red Star under his guidance; it was no exaggeration to say it was the world's first true Full-Screen Display.

Since a Full-Screen Display could earn this title, what about future Scroll Screens? Or Foldable Screens?

Would they all have some kind of title or reward?

"Xiao Ai."

"I am here."

"Is there no reward just for the title?"

"Reward: 120W charging technology."

"Detected that the Host has already surpassed 120W charging, reward is being replaced..."

"Replacement complete."

"Reward: 15W wireless charging technology."

"Reward: 232-layer 3D NAND technology and production process data."

"Reward: 18-inch wafer technology and production process data."

"Reward: Micro-pump cooling technology."

A big gift package!

It really was a big gift package!

Chen Chen was ecstatic. The rewards this time were undeniably generous. Not to mention the others, just the 18-inch wafer technology and process alone were enough.

One had to know that the current highest-end wafer production technology was only 12 inches.

In fact, China's current yield rate for 12-inch wafer production was pitifully low.

As everyone knew, the larger the wafer area, the more chips could be "grown" on a single wafer. Wouldn't manufacturers be able to save a large portion of production costs by using larger wafers?

It wasn't that manufacturers hadn't considered this, but wafers had a characteristic: the further from the center, the more likely defects were to appear.

As the wafer expanded outward from the center, the number of defects would also increase.

Therefore, under normal circumstances, chip manufacturers would not blindly expand wafer sizes when their technology was not mature enough.

But China was different. In the next ten years, the chips China used the most, had the largest domestic scale, and imported the most were still some 14nm or even 28nm chips.

Take cars, for example; they used 28nm process chips. It could be summed up in one word: cheap and high-volume, with a mature and stable process. These were the chips China imported the most.

Huaxin International would be able to mass-produce 28nm chips in two years. If they also had enough 18-inch wafer supplies, Chen Chen didn't even dare to imagine how spectacular that scene would be.

As for the current 12-inch mainstream process manufacturers, their transition costs were too high. Therefore, whether it was GlobalFoundries or Samsung, they all faced the problem of insufficient return on investment. But for China, which was basically investing from scratch, this wasn't a problem.

With this set of technology, they could start by developing 18-inch wafers and supporting facilities.

Low chip yield? It didn't matter; their wafers were big enough, and the raw materials (wafers) for making chips were plentiful enough. They could just produce as much as they wanted.

Anyway, once China had a breakthrough in anything, they could just wait for cabbage-like prices. By then, China's high-cost-performance wafers and chips would ruthlessly tear a chunk of meat from the mouths of Japan, the Korean peninsula, and the USA.

However, this kind of thing involved investments of tens or hundreds of billions of dollars. Relying on Red Star alone probably wouldn't work; they would need to bring in some manufacturers or have state-owned enterprises come forward to invest together. Otherwise, by the time their own factory was built, it might not necessarily be "Red" (owned by Red Star) anymore.

This reward was truly a surprise that exceeded Chen Chen's imagination. By investing in wafers, and then getting the lithography machine and supporting facilities up and running, what was there to fear from the USA blocking China's chips?

As for the others, like the reward of 232-layer 3D NAND technology and production process data, Chen Chen didn't quite understand what kind of technology that was yet and planned to ask Dr. Lu tomorrow.

The remaining things, like the 15W wireless charging and micro-pump liquid cooling, would have been pretty awesome rewards if it weren't for the 18-inch wafer process and technology. But compared to the 18-inch wafers, they were dispensable and not worth much.

"Do you wish to claim the rewards?"

Chen Chen took out a 500GB hard drive. "Claim 15W wireless charging technology."

Unexpectedly, Xiao Ai did not start the transfer. About a second later, Xiao Ai's emotionless mechanical voice appeared in Chen Chen's mind: "Storage medium space insufficient, please replace the storage medium."

Chen Chen was dumbfounded. A 500GB hard drive wasn't enough to store this single 15W wireless charging technology?

Damn it, Red Star's wireless charging was already at 30W. He hadn't even bothered to claim the 15W one, and now it was telling him storage was insufficient?

He swapped in a 1TB hard drive. After the transfer, Chen Chen immediately connected it to his computer, ready to see what on earth this was that couldn't even fit in 500GB.

After a rough look, Chen Chen was dumbfounded.

It really was 15W wireless charging.

It really was wireless charging.

The problem was, Chen Chen had truly never seen wireless charging that could work from 20 meters away!

No wonder Xiao Ai had replaced the 120W wired charging reward with 15W wireless charging. This was *truly* wireless charging.

In Chen Chen's mind, he already envisioned placing one of these wireless chargers at home. Then, all the small Red Star smart devices at home, like door and window sensors, video doorbells, smart locks, curtain motors, window closing motors, and so on, wouldn't need to worry about charging at all.

With the long battery life of the Yangtze River Battery combined with this long-distance wireless charging, as long as consumers bought the device and brought it home, they would basically never need to charge these devices for the rest of their lives.

Currently, many of Red Star's small smart devices still used button batteries. If they used Yangtze River Battery, they would need to add extra charging ports, and the battery life would be shorter than button batteries. For devices like water leak sensors, which were fully sealed, reserving a charging port would destroy their integrity, so they still used button batteries.

However, all of this would have to wait until he fully grasped this technology and created a prototype to verify its feasibility.

He hit the jackpot; he really hit the jackpot.

The rewards for this achievement were simply incredibly awesome!