Chapter 117: The Spark Of Wisdom From China’s Scientists
Because this would be equivalent to telling her that the computer she led her colleagues to make was completely meaningless.
However, everyone quickly realized something was wrong.
Because this thing couldn’t be made by China at all in the current situation.
They were all frontline experts in China’s semiconductor and computer fields; China couldn’t possibly bypass them to make this thing.
As for importing from the Soviet Union or other countries, that was also unlikely.
Because of Lin Ran last year, China could still contact external academic journals at this time, even more openly than before.
In the previous years, they completely relied on Soviet journals, which was equivalent to the Soviet Union chewing through Western academic journals first and then sharing them with China.
The most classic case of this should be Lysenko.
Because of Lysenko’s existence, Soviet academic journals at that time wouldn’t publish content on Mendel genetics and modern biology research at all; papers opposing Lysenko could hardly be published.
Journals like “Soviet Journal of Botany” and “Advances in Agricultural Science” from the late 1940s to early 1950s almost only published articles supporting Lysenko’s theory.
Isaac Agapov tried to publish an article refuting Lysenko in the “Journal of Genetics,” but it was rejected by the editorial department.
This also affected China, and it wasn’t until 60 years later that China’s journals like “Acta Genetica Sinica” (founded in 1978, but its predecessor research had resumed in the 1960s) began to publish papers based on gene theory.
In the past two years, although the Russians no longer provided academic journals, everyone could access frontline academic journals from Europe and America.
Even if it was four or five months or even half a year later than the publication date when they got them.
But they hadn’t fallen behind international frontline research results.
It was really hard to imagine what computer could have such power.
And its size was even only as big as a card.
Dean Qian sighed: “If it weren’t for this, I wouldn’t have made you leave Yanjing on New Year’s Day and travel thousands of miles to the southwest frontier.
When I saw it, I was as shocked as you, even more shocked than you.
But this is the fact; it was right in front of me.
The world is materialistic. No matter how bizarre it is or how it exceeds my understanding, it exists in reality, so we must accept its existence.
And make use of it.
Usage manuals will be provided to you later; you can thoroughly test its performance to verify what I said.
Everyone, we don’t have much time.
I can’t explain to you where this thing comes from, but I can tell you that we definitely don’t have the only one; other countries have it too.
Whether it’s its application or its replication, we must hurry to figure it out thoroughly.”
Xia Peisu raised her hand: “Can you let me make a judgment on it first?”
She really couldn’t hold back anymore.
Dean Qian nodded: “You can only look for now; you can’t touch it with your hands.
I want to tell you all that it is even more important than our lives.
Do you understand?”
Everyone felt a heavy sense of mission in their hearts, especially after hearing that other countries also had this thing.
Although they didn’t know how great a price the country had paid to obtain this little thing called Raspberry Pi.
But just imagining it, they knew it must have cost a huge price, sacrificing countless secret comrades.
Honestly, everyone’s imagination was quite impressive.
Dean Qian and the first batch of people who contacted the Raspberry Pi imagined that America definitely had Raspberry Pi, and maybe the Soviet Union did too.
They felt an extreme sense of crisis.
And the Chinese scientists brought here were imagining how awesome this thing was, so it must not have been easy for China to get it.
Everyone had already thought of the countless benevolent people and heroes in modern Chinese history who sacrificed their lives to pass on valuable information.
And this computer called Raspberry Pi was obviously far more valuable than any information they could imagine.
The corresponding price was definitely beyond what they could guess.
After thinking of this, everyone’s complaints about being forcibly arranged to work here almost vanished in an instant.
Xia Peisu got very close and observed the entire process of the Raspberry Pi from powering on to running, and then Dean Qian operating it with the teletypewriter.
She said: “Dean Qian, I guess this is a computer built based on transistors, or perhaps built with other components I don’t know about.
But at least it’s not a vacuum tube.
Because I didn’t touch it, I won’t talk about size and weight; just its boot speed and heat generation alone couldn’t be a vacuum tube.
On one hand, the power equipment here shows it uses a 12V lead-acid battery plus voltage regulator, powered by 5V DC power.
Vacuum tubes require at least 100V or higher high-voltage power supply; taking the 107 I participated in as an example, its power consumption is as high as kilowatts.
Additionally, the underlying operating logic of vacuum tubes is closely related to their temperature.
The physical basis of vacuum tubes comes from the Richardson-Dushman equation, where the relationship between thermionic emission current density J and temperature T is: J = A T² e^(-φ / kT). Its underlying operating logic relies on thermionic emission, heating the cathode to give electrons enough energy to escape the surface.
That is to say, the higher the temperature, the more electrons are emitted, and the greater the current. If the temperature is insufficient, the number of emitted electrons decreases, and the vacuum tube cannot work normally.
So vacuum tubes need preheating; from startup to waiting for the filament to heat the cathode to working temperature, it takes at least several seconds.
So its components should not be vacuum tubes.”
After Xia Peisu finished speaking, Dean Qian inwardly sighed with emotion: professionals are professionals; just one look and they knew it wasn’t a vacuum tube. Still, China’s most professional group of people had to be gathered together to possibly figure it out.
He inwardly sighed again: if there was a choice, he really didn’t want to bring everyone away from Yanjing to this godforsaken place.
Among the semiconductor experts present, there were those who returned to China because of him, like Wu Xijiu.
Not only did they come here themselves, but their wives and children had to come too.
Dean Qian thought to himself that the best he could do was strive for better treatment for them.
Xia Peisu continued: “But it’s not necessarily so.
As a creation far beyond my imagination.
Vacuum tubes are not impossible.
After all, vacuum tubes don’t only have thermionic emission; there are also field emission and photoemission.
The former refers to electrons escaping from the material surface through quantum tunneling under a strong electric field, without needing to heat the cathode to high temperature. Its theoretical basis was proposed by Fowler-Nordheim in the 1920s, mainly relying on electron tunneling behavior under high electric fields.
This doesn’t require temperature, but in our current understanding, field emission requires ultra-high voltage, at least thousands of volts, even tens of thousands of volts to generate a strong electric field at the tip cathode for electron tunneling emission.
Which doesn’t match this situation either.
Additionally, field emission electron flow is hard to precisely control like the grid in thermionic tubes.
Not very likely either.”
Don’t say that Chinese scientists at that time didn’t know about field emission.
X-rays are developed based on field emission principles; by 1961, cold cathode X-ray tubes were already practical in medicine and industry, and in 1958, the Chinese Academy of Sciences Institute of Physics had begun researching X-ray tubes.
Actually, in the early years, China had been tracking, even chasing, many frontier technology fields.
Xia Peisu continued: “The other is photoemission, where photons excite electrons on the material surface to overcome the work function and escape.
This relies on Einstein’s photoelectric effect theory, but it requires external illumination on the cathode. Also not very fitting.
But the reason I say vacuum tube possibilities can’t be ruled out is because it’s too advanced, advanced beyond our current cognition. What if it’s a type of vacuum tube we don’t know about, and we waste time due to misjudgment? That would be too bad.
For us, time is life.”
Wu Xijiu added: “From what we see now, at least it’s not any type of vacuum tube we know of.
Another direction is transistors; from power consumption, it looks more like transistors.
When I was studying in America in 1955, I saw the TRADIC computer in academic journals, similar to this one: small size, low power consumption, low operating voltage, and no preheating needed.
Of course, the small size I mean is compared to vacuum tube computers; from taking up an entire warehouse in the past, shrunk to one room.
Including TRADIC’s internal circuitry diagram is very similar to this.”
TRADIC, Transistorized Airborne Digital Computer, the first all-transistor computer developed by Bell Labs for the U.S. Air Force, development started in 1951 and completed in 1954.
By the way, although this equipment was made for the Air Force, it wasn’t hidden; on March 14, 1955, Bell Labs officially announced TRADIC as the “first all-transistor computer” via press release, with photos, as shown above.
Including Popular Electronics’ June 1955 issue also reported on TRADIC, calling it a “supercomputer.”
Wu Xijiu studying at MIT at the time not knowing about TRADIC would be abnormal.
“But it’s still unreasonable; although transistors can be further miniaturized, to this extent still exceeds my imagination.”
Transistors were invented by Bell Labs in 1947 and entered practical use in the 1950s.
The TRADIC computer used about 700 transistors.
In 1958, Texas Instruments and Fairchild Semiconductor separately invented the integrated circuit, integrating multiple transistors onto a single chip.
But even Fairchild’s founder Robert thought that integrating thousands of transistors in the future would be the limit.
Never imagining integration to the nanometer level.
Not to mention that at this time, China’s understanding of transistors was still at the unstable millimeter level.
“Cough cough, sorry, let me say a couple things.” Xie Xide raised her hand: “I think we can’t waste time; we must dare to make judgments, cough cough.”
Xie Xide is a PhD from Massachusetts Institute of Technology, also Fudan’s first female president, long engaged in theoretical research on surface physics and semiconductor physics, loaned to Yanjing University in 1956 to help establish the semiconductor professional group, and returned to Shanghai in 1958.
She arrived even a bit earlier than Yanjing’s experts, and despite physical discomfort, still chose to bring her whole family to work in Panzhihua.
She said: “From a theoretical perspective, it should be transistors.
Based on quantum mechanics, silicon’s bandgap is 1.12 eV and lattice constant is 0.543 nm; both have been precisely measured.
The core of transistors is the PN junction, controlling electron and hole movement through doping.
The mathematical model of the PN junction describes carrier diffusion and drift. Solid-state physics research shows that material physical properties may change with reduced dimensions.
Research on thin films and microparticles has involved micron-scale effects. Heisenberg uncertainty principle and wave-particle duality indicate that electrons exhibit wave behavior at small scales, and quantum tunneling effects appear at the nanometer level.
That is, silicon crystal’s lattice constant is about 0.543 nanometers, interatomic spacing between 0.2-0.3 nanometers. Theoretically, the minimum transistor size could approach a few lattice units, i.e., nanometer level.
A 10-nanometer structure can contain 18-20 silicon atoms.
And carrier movement: average free path of electrons and holes in silicon is about 10-100 nanometers.
If transistor size shrinks to this range, carriers can still effectively transmit signals, theoretically supporting nanometer-level operation.
PN junction depletion region width decreases with increasing doping concentration. Solid-state physics indicates that through high doping and strong electric fields, the depletion region can shrink to nanometer level, maintaining switch function.
Electron de Broglie wavelength at room temperature is about 10 to 50 nanometers. When device size approaches this scale, quantum effects significantly influence electron behavior.
This suggests transistors may operate at nanometer level, but also face interference. The existence of Raspberry Pi makes me realize that transistors can operate at nanometer level.
Additionally, solid-state physics research shows that as size decreases, surface atom proportion increases, providing theoretical basis for miniaturization.
That is to say, if manufacturing process breaks micron limits, transistor size can approach lattice scale.
I read Feynman’s book last year; in “There’s Plenty of Room at the Bottom,” he proposed that laws of physics allow operating devices at atomic scales.
It mentioned the possibility of building circuits with atoms, which fits the nanometer-level transistor concept.
Do you understand? Although we don’t know how it was manufactured or how the manufacturing process breakthrough was achieved, I think it’s transistors.
This is the inspiration theoretical physics gives me.
For this equipment, I believe America has it, the Soviet Union has it; we are probably the last to get it. If we want to catch up with them, whether replication or at least achieving micron-level transistors, we must quickly determine the direction.
Based on my professional judgment, it is nanometer-level transistors; we must follow the path of transistor integration and miniaturization.
We don’t have time to explore multiple technical routes, nor resources to advance multiple routes simultaneously.
We seem like many people here now, but if dispersed, we’ll just waste the precious time window in vain.
I think it is transistors! And nanometer-level transistors stacked in this small device in a way I can’t imagine.”
If Lin Ran could hear the guesses of China’s scientists at this moment, he would definitely laugh heartily with relief.
Still three chapters of 10,000 words offered; I say a couple things: sorry for any detail errors or such, because I can’t know everything, I isn’t a know-it-all; please forgive any detail issues.
Additionally, I will definitely write this story with enough novelty, interest, and no IQ drop; China at that time had many excellent native scientists. I will base it on actual situations without turning it into mindless shock text, not making them mere background; their efforts are indispensable factors in this spacetime’s China rise.
Finally, begging for monthly tickets! Wuu wuu wuu~
