February 21, 2023 17:35 Guangdong On December 23, 1947, the first transistor was born at Bell Laboratories in the United States, marking the possibility of transistors replacing vacuum tubes. Starting from the mid-1950s, transistors gradually replaced vacuum tubes, eventually leading to the mass production of integrated circuits and microprocessors. In 1966, the United States Bell Laboratories used a relatively advanced silicon epitaxial planar process to produce the first widely recognized large-scale integrated circuit.

China began developing semiconductors in the mid-1950s. In 1956, the Chinese electronic industry was designated as a key development target, and the Institute of Computing Technology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences was established.

In 1965, China independently developed its first monolithic integrated circuit in Shanghai, ten years earlier than South Korea, showing rapid development.

However, for the next twenty or even thirty to forty years, China's chip industry remained stagnant, partly due to the circumstances of that time.

It wasn't until his appearance.

By the beginning of this century, the semiconductor industries in the United States, Europe, Japan, and other countries had matured significantly. The semiconductor industries in South Korea and Taiwan had also developed rapidly.

China had to spend a large amount of foreign exchange reserves every year to purchase chips from developed countries. To change this situation, the country began to increase its investment in the semiconductor industry and attract talents. It was at this time that he emerged. Let's see how he led China's chip "advance."

Chen Jin, a graduate of Tongji University in 1991, went to the United States for further studies in 1992. He obtained his master's and doctoral degrees in computer engineering from the University of Texas at Austin in 1994 and 1997, respectively. Specializing in research on ultra-large-scale integrated circuit design and testing, he had served as a senior director engineer and chip design manager at companies such as IBM and Motorola in the United States, leading the development of system chips and other projects. In January 1998, attracted by the policies of the domestic semiconductor industry, Chen Jin returned to China.

Twenty years ago, in an era where even college students were rare, a returnee like Chen Jin received significant attention from relevant units. In 2001, upon his return, Chen Jin went to Shanghai Jiao Tong University to teach and became the director of the chip research and development department and the chief designer of the "Hanxin" project.

Chen Jin could be said to be full of vigor and vitality at that time. At the beginning of the research and development, he set himself a four-year commitment: the first two years were to test his courage, the third year was to make a shocking breakthrough, and the fourth year was to embrace everything and go far. Unexpectedly, Chen Jin only took 16 months to "research and develop" the "Hanxin No. 1".

On that day 20 years ago, on February 16, 2003, the unveiling ceremony of "Hanxin No. 1" can be said to be very grand. The Shanghai Municipal Government Information Office presided over it in person, and the leaders of the Ministry of Information Industry, the deputy mayor of Shanghai, and the heads of the Shanghai Science and Technology Commission and the Education Commission all attended.

At the press conference, a judging expert group composed of well-known academicians such as Zou Shichang and Xu Juyan and the head of the "863 Program" integrated circuit special group, Yan Xiaolang, unanimously evaluated: Shanghai's "Hanxin No. 1" and its related design and application development platform have reached the international advanced level, which is an important milestone in the development history of China's chips.

At that time, the definition given for "Hanxin No. 1" was: it adopted the international advanced 0.18-micron semiconductor process design, with 2.5 million devices on a single integrated block the size of half a fingernail, and had a 32-bit arithmetic processing core, capable of 200 million calculations per second.

After the news of the successful development of "Hanxin No. 1" was announced, it can be said that the whole country was shocked, especially when the expert group at that time concluded that "Hanxin No. 1" surpassed Intel's products of the same period, it was even more surprising. This chip instantly became the pride of the whole country, and Chen Jin, the person in charge of the chip development plan, was also called a "national hero" by the major domestic media.

Chen Jin reached a peak in his life at this time. He was not only hired as a "Changjiang Scholar" by Shanghai Jiao Tong University, but also served as the dean of the School of Microelectronics, established Hanxin Limited Company, and continued to research chips with high research funds from the state.

Of course, there were also a few people who raised questions, "Is chip research really so easy?" "Can China's chips go from a blank slate to leading the world in less than two years?" "Intel took 40 years to get to this point. Can we really overtake them on the curve?"

Although there were doubts at that time, with the successive release of Hanxin No. 2, Hanxin No. 3, and Hanxin No. 4, this small number of voices also disappeared without a trace, and everyone was fantasizing about China's ascent to the top of the world's chip development.

However, on January 17, 2006, on the Tsinghua University Waterwood Tsinghua BBS, a basin of cold water was poured on everyone— "Hanxin No. 1" was a fake.

In fact, the so-called "Hanxin No. 1" was just a source code of a Motorola chip, but even with the source code, the chip designed could not be applied to actual systems, and could not even complete the demonstration function. So how was all this accomplished at the unveiling ceremony of "Hanxin No. 1"?

Chen Jin asked his younger brother in the United States to help him purchase a batch of Motorola chips, had the workers use sandpaper to remove the original logo on the surface of the chips, and then added the "Hanxin" logo to "develop" them. With this set of tricks, everything went smoothly.

After the incident was exposed, when the relevant departments organized an expert group to investigate, Chen Jin fled to the United States with 1.1 billion yuan of research funds.

In the United States, Chen Jin not only established his own company but also became a shareholder of three listed companies.

This incident caused a great sensation at that time, and many chip industries were shut down one after another. Many young people who wanted to enter the chip manufacturing industry, as well as those who were already in the chip manufacturing industry, were also affected and turned to other industries, causing China's chip industry to once again fall into a stagnant state.

The "Hanxin No. 1" chip fraud incident, in which Chen Jin deceived the country out of billions of yuan in research funds, has made the country more cautious in its investment in chip research and development.

The "Hanxin No. 1" fraud incident also directly affected the development of the "Longxin" chip and various major semiconductor companies in China. It was not until many Chinese technology companies such as ZTE and Huawei were sanctioned by the United States that the Chinese people realized the importance of independent chip development.

Currently, in order to quickly surpass Europe, the United States, Japan, and South Korea in the semiconductor chip field and to break away from the impact of sanctions, the country's support for the semiconductor industry is increasing, with more and more investment. However, it is hoped that the support policies can truly be implemented in the companies that need them.