Scholar’s Advanced Technological System

Director Li wasn’t kidding with him.

This old man came to his house the next morning.

Lu Zhou stood at his doorstep and saw Director Li holding a plastic bag in his hand. He paused for a second before asking, “You didn’t bring me breakfast all the way from Beijing, right?”

“Of course not, I’m not flying with this. It’s still hot! I saw a street food place near the neighborhood, so I bought some…” Director Li walked into the house and put on a pair of slippers. He then looked at the fireplace in the living room and said, “Oh, new furniture?”

Lu Zhou: “You came here to talk about my furniture?”

“Of course not.” Director Li smiled. He then put on a serious expression and said, “I read the report on the carbon-based chip. The team led by Professor Wu Tianqun successfully created a hundred-thousand-carbon-nanotube transistor chip… Is that true?”

“When have I ever joked about this stuff?” Lu Zhou smiled and looked at the takeaway bag. “I’m pretty hungry, let’s eat while we talk.”

“Oh, sure, let’s eat!”

Director Li knew that Lu Zhou hadn’t eaten yet, so he bought two servings of soup dumplings and an extra bowl of noodles.

A bowl of soup dumplings, a cup of soy milk, and a bowl of noodles. For most average adults, that was quite a lot of food.

Director Li watched Lu Zhou almost finish eating his bowl of noodles and dumplings. He then asked with his eyes widened, “Why are you eating so much?”

Lu Zhou smiled awkwardly and said, “I’ve been overworking myself recently. I don’t normally eat this much.”

Director Li said, “Should I call my driver and ask him to get more food?”

“No, thanks.” Lu Zhou wiped his mouth with a tissue and said, “I only need to be half full, let’s talk business.”

Director Li looked at the two empty bowls and thought.

Only half full…

Sigh, it must be good to be young.

They were planning on eating while talking, but Lu Zhou ate too fast, so now, Director Li was the only one eating while Lu Zhou was the one talking.

After hearing some questions from Director Li, Lu Zhou immediately realized how serious the Communist Party of China viewed this “scientific breakthrough”.

It seemed like this was on their top priority list.

Lu Zhou went into his study room and brought back a scientific calculator.

As Director Li looked at the ordinary calculator that was used by high school students across the country, he didn’t know what Lu Zhou wanted to do.

Lu Zhou saw the confusion in Director Li’s eyes, so he began explaining.

“The processor in this is a carbon-based chip.”

Director Li’s face changed, and he looked at the calculator in shock.

It was almost like the calculator had turned into gold.

Or something even more valuable than gold…

Lu Zhou looked at Director Li and spoke.

“The chip is here, but the technology is not mature yet, so we used an experimental chip… It’s called the X-1 chip, with around 150nm in processor size. There are only a couple hundred thousand carbon nano transistors in it. It’s very hard to take this to market. The only up-side is that the carbon-based semiconductor can be prepared by the same chemical process as the SG-1 superconducting material, which is the ‘chemical vapor deposition + etching’ method. We are the world leaders in this method.”

Lu Zhou paused for a second before adding, “To my knowledge, most of the world’s SG-1 superconducting material is exported by China.”

Director Li gestured with his hand and spoke with excitement.

“Don’t worry about taking it to market! As long as you can make the product, we’ll take it to market!”

No market demand?

Maybe?

But China could artificially create demand!

Since this thing had a chance to overtake the semiconductor field, Director Li was going to write a report to the relevant state departments. He would arrange for the carbon-based chip scientific calculators to be mandatory in all high schools.

There was no way there wouldn’t be enough demand for this technology in the trillion-dollar tech industry.

After all, this was Academician Lu’s invention!

As Director Li carefully held the calculator in his hand, he looked at it like it was a precious piece of antique. After a while, he took a deep breath and looked at Lu Zhou.

“Can I have this?”

Lu Zhou smiled and said, “Sure, I have more. But I advise you to be careful, and make sure others don’t get their hands on it.”

Director Li carefully put away the calculator. He had a serious look on his face as he exclaimed, “Don’t worry, I’ll protect it with my life!”

That’s not necessary, it’s just a calculator…

It doesn’t matter too much since it’s almost impossible to reverse engineer.

Seeing how excited Director Li was, Lu Zhou didn’t know what to say.

Lu Zhou: “Right now, our research team is working on 75nm transistors, and we’ve made good progress. If we can achieve more than 30 million transistors per square millimeter and decrease the transistor size to 15nm, carbon-based chips will be superior to silicon-based chips. Achieving the same amount of performance in silicon-based chips would take more than 100 million transistors per square millimeter…”

After hearing Lu Zhou’s explanation, Director Li nodded and spoke seriously.

“Actually, after we received your report, we had a meeting in Beijing. We invited some academicians from the Institute of Semiconductors at the Chinese Academy of Sciences to evaluate your report. We understood the theoretical side of your report, but we weren’t sure how close you guys were from making a real carbon-based chip. Even the academicians couldn’t make a conclusion.”

Lu Zhou smiled and said, “What about now?”

“After seeing this thing in my hand, I understand now.”

Director Li tapped on the calculator and continued in a solemn tone, “Actually, there’s another reason why I came to Jinling…”