Getting Connected (13)

These larger chips came in varying specifications, with differing numbers of Transistors inside.

Besides some general-purpose chip models, Li Qingsong also manufactured gigantic chips that could be called "Supercomputers."

These chips were so enormous that a single room could not contain them. A dedicated hall had to be built to house one!

Their power consumption was so terrifying that they required a specially installed, extremely thick power cable.

They stood three meters tall, were around ten meters long and five meters wide, with a total internal volume of 150 cubic meters!

But despite their immense size, they used the same manufacturing model inside: circuit boards, resistors and capacitors, and Flying Wires.

There were simply a terrifying number of them.

Inside one such Supercomputer, there were more than 90,000 circuit boards alone, while the number of Transistors, Capacitors and Resistors reached 80 million.

Eighty million Transistors were manually soldered onto circuit boards one by one by the clone bodies, then connected by over a hundred million Flying Wires.

This computer also adopted a redundant design. If something went wrong somewhere, specially designed redundancy programs could bypass the fault without affecting overall operation.

This unprecedented Supercomputer was installed at Steel Factory No. 1, the largest factory Li Qingsong currently possessed.

In addition to this Supercomputer, more than 200,000 chips of various sizes were installed throughout Steel Factory No. 1.

Material input, sorting, smelting, transportation, chemicals, and so on.

In the end, data from every chip was transmitted through network cables to the Supercomputer for final processing, then displayed before the clone bodies through various instruments or screens.

Naturally, Li Qingsong could not make real screens at this point, but primitive screens were no problem.

These screens had ten thousand pixels, and each pixel had two states: lit or unlit.

That made them very simple to manufacture. He only needed to control the brightness of the corresponding pixels.

These screens could only display simple black-and-white text or numbers, nothing else. But that was fine. It was enough.

From that moment onward, the production model of the upgraded Steel Factory No. 1 underwent earth-shaking changes.

A large number of frontline clone body positions were eliminated outright. Of those who remained, quite a few could sit in the Central Control Room or various Sub-Control Rooms, watch the Instrument Panels and screens before them, then press the appropriate buttons and flip the corresponding switches according to the data. Their workload was greatly reduced, as was their exhaustion.

After completing Steel Factory No. 1's informatization upgrade, Li Qingsong did not stop. He immediately began renovating every factory.

Millions upon millions of packaged Iron Shell Chips spread through every factory, every Railway Line, every communal dormitory, every Breeding Farm, and every Planting Base like spring rain.

As these chips were incorporated, the production model of the entire base cluster underwent earth-shaking changes.

Temperature control at the Planting Bases no longer required manual operation by clone bodies, instead being handled automatically by chips;

Power grid dispatching no longer required clone bodies to manually reroute lines. Chips could handle the task.

At the Power Plants, clone bodies no longer needed to carefully calculate grid data before deciding generator output. It was entirely controlled autonomously by chips;

Even aeration in aquatic pools, train scheduling on Railway Lines, conveyor belts in steelworks, machining in foundries...

Beyond the factories, Iron Shell Chips were also introduced in large numbers into all kinds of vehicles.

Adjusting oxygen and methane consumption, coordinating the gears for automatic shifting, adjusting pressure, steering systems...

After chips were introduced, the difficulty of driving vehicles dropped to less than thirty percent of what it had been.

Across the entire base cluster, who knew how many arduous tasks had been handed over to chips, and how many clone bodies had thus been "freed from work."

For this informatization upgrade, Li Qingsong had even specifically built a Network Cable Factory, laying network cables in every direction throughout the Main Base and all Branch Bases like a power grid.

Watching the automatically dispatched trains, the vehicles that had become far easier to drive, the automatically operating conveyor belts, and the network cables stretching in every direction, Li Qingsong smiled with deep satisfaction.

"Luoshen Star is finally connected to the internet..."

According to Li Qingsong's preliminary estimates, the introduction of chips and networks had increased the production efficiency of the entire base cluster by at least fivefold.

In other words, although Li Qingsong currently had only 60,000 clone bodies, the Industrial Capacity they could exert was at least equivalent to that of 300,000 clone bodies before the informatization upgrade!

At this point, although the large-scale Clone Cultivation Factory Cluster had not yet been completed, Li Qingsong had already achieved a massive increase in productivity ahead of schedule.

Not to mention that the chips he was currently manufacturing were merely the most basic kind.

A new generation of Planar Integrated Circuit Chips was already under development.

So-called planar chips were the kind used in modern technology: first manufacturing silicon ingots, then cutting them into silicon wafers, and then directly creating Transistors on those wafers through lithography, etching, various chemicals, and other methods.

Without a doubt, this would integrate far more Transistors, and its efficiency was nowhere near comparable to manually soldering Transistors onto circuit boards.

Once chip technology improved, the work capacity each individual clone body could exert would soar even further.

"Then... it's time to begin constructing the Clone Cultivation Factory Cluster."

Now that he possessed productivity equivalent to 300,000 clone bodies from before, Li Qingsong finally had the confidence to take on this colossal factory cluster, with a total area of ten million square meters, an annual output of 100,000 clone bodies, and numerous supporting factories.

After switching to a new body, Li Qingsong estimated that he could now control at least 90,000 clone bodies at once.

Even if it was only 90,000, multiplying that by five made 450,000.

Once enough clone bodies were produced, he would immediately possess productivity equivalent to what 450,000 clone bodies had once provided!

And when he had only 21,000 clone bodies, he had already been able to assemble a massive mechanized army and wipe out a million monster birds in one stroke.

Once he possessed productivity equivalent to 450,000 clone bodies, just how far would this production and Industrial Capacity soar?

Li Qingsong raised his head and looked toward the vast, boundless depths of space.

By then, I should have the ability to manufacture all kinds of spacecraft and truly enter space...

Lowering his gaze, Li Qingsong looked toward the enormous construction site spanning ten million square meters.

Tens of thousands of clone bodies had already driven all kinds of machinery here, carrying all manner of materials.