Chapter 40: Chip
At this moment, Tom, who had just acquired a new Clone body and had a greatly abundant share of consciousness links, was flush with funds. He immediately deployed ten thousand Clones into chip research and development, striving to achieve automation breakthroughs in the shortest possible time.
Thus, these ten thousand Clones were divided into several large teams: one team researched capacitors and resistors, another researched transistors, one researched materials, one researched chemical processing, and another researched chip structure, meaning what kind of patterns the transistors should be assembled into.
These were all hardware components; the last group of Clones went to research software.
Tom aimed to develop a programming language that matched his existing manufacturing capabilities.
After all, hardware alone without software wouldn’t work. With versatile, customizable software, these chips could adapt to numerous different industrial scenarios.
In the massive laboratory, tens of thousands of Clones were busy, still following the previous research model: if one Clone made progress, it would immediately be synchronized to all other Clones.
Under these circumstances, the technological research for these primitive, simple chips progressed rapidly.
Soon, the first batch of capacitors and resistors were manufactured in the laboratory.
They were about five millimeters long and two millimeters in diameter, as small as grains of rice.
The Clones carefully removed them, installed them on equipment, measured their performance little by little, and then continuously adjusted the manufacturing process, constantly optimizing.
After about a month, the first batch of independent components that met Tom’s requirements were produced.
Thus, in one room, the final assembly work finally began.
Dozens of Clones lined up, each wearing magnifying glasses, holding tweezers in one hand and a soldering iron in the other, meticulously soldering these rice-grain-sized parts onto the boards one by one, then using hair-thin wires to connect these small components according to the predetermined structure, bit by bit.
This was an extremely difficult task.
These Clones not only needed to keep their bodies tense and their arm movements extremely precise—a little too much solder could cause a short circuit, a little too little could result in a loose connection—but also needed to maintain high concentration.
Each circuit board required soldering over a thousand rice-grain-sized components, and different components also needed to be interconnected.
Which component was soldered where, and which component needed to be connected to which other component—not one could be wrong, for if one was, the chip would not function.
Therefore, Tom had to allocate an additional 100 Clones’ brainpower, dedicating all of it to this task, which prevented the Clones responsible for soldering from becoming dizzy or disoriented.
After a full day of work, the first batch of dozens of "chips" was completed.
Compared to the first-generation chips produced in human history, the ones Tom was now manufacturing were undoubtedly much more advanced.
At the very least, they didn’t use paper tape and magnetic tape as storage media; instead, they used something called a "magnetic drum" to store data.
This device was essentially a cylindrical metal rod with some magnetic material on it, and binary data was stored as magnetized points on the surface of this metal rod.
This way, even if the chip lost power, the data could remain stored on it for a long time. And once powered on, the chip could re-read the data from it.
Such a metal rod could store approximately 1KB of data. For the current stage, it was sufficient.
After completing the manufacturing of this first batch of 30 "chips" and burning the original programs onto the metal rods, Tom immediately directed the Clones to take these chips to a metal casting production line.
This was a screw production line. Previously, this production line required 15 Clones to be on duty at all times to ensure its stable operation.
One Clone was responsible for feeding materials, another for adjusting the conveyor belt speed, and yet another for sorting different specifications of screws, separating them into two different processes.
Now, Tom installed these 30 "chips" at different positions along this production line.
One chip was responsible for counting how many screws were transported per minute on the conveyor belt; after counting, it would read the current conveyor belt speed, and through internal program calculations, it could determine whether the conveyor belt was too fast or too slow, and automatically issue commands to adjust its speed.
Thus, the Clone who used to stand there all day, specifically responsible for adjusting the conveyor belt speed, could now be reassigned to other posts.
Another chip could read the dashboard readings, know the current temperature of the forging furnace, and based on this, automatically adjust the speed of the fuel conveyor belt, increasing or decreasing it.
Therefore, the Clone previously responsible for monitoring the forging furnace and adding fuel could also be reassigned.
Yet another chip could read the readings of a small weighing instrument, thereby automatically identifying the specification of the screw that passed by a moment ago, and then decide which subsequent process it should be transferred to.
Thus, the Clone previously responsible for sorting screws could also be reassigned.
After installing these dozens of "chips," the production line was restarted.
Tom then saw that this production line, which previously required 15 Clones to operate, now only needed 4 Clones to start running, and its work efficiency was even higher than before!
After all, even if Clones worked at full capacity, they still needed to sleep, eat, and rest. But chips were different; as long as they had power and weren’t broken, they could work until the end of time and the universe!
The first automated line modification project was a great success.
Feeling invigorated, Tom immediately made a decision.
"We need to mechanize and scale up the production of capacitors, resistors, transistors, magnetic drums, connecting wires, and circuit boards, and then mechanically and on a large scale assemble them and install them in every base, every factory, and every production line!"
Thus, the ten thousand Clones who were originally responsible for researching chip technology immediately switched production, becoming the workers of Tom’s first chip factory.
After more than two months, several production lines were built by the Clones, and a continuous stream of components flowed out, finally entering the last production line for packaging.
Here, they would be enclosed in an iron casing, and argon gas would be injected inside for dust, shock, and rust protection, greatly extending their working life.
The most common chip, with dimensions of 10 * 8 * 3CM, could perform the most basic tasks, such as reading measurements and simple calculations.
However, in addition to these, Tom also manufactured larger chips.