Chinese state media said Thursday that Semiconductor Manufacturing International Co. has started mass-producing chips on a 14nm-class manufacturing process at Fab SN1 near Shanghai, China, citing local officials. Perhaps more importantly, the report also states that the company is pushing ahead with the 7nm and 5nm class nodes despite not being able to source advanced chip production equipment.
“The completion of Shanghai’s 14nm chip industry cluster will accelerate more advanced projects on the 7nm and 5nm processes.” global times (opens in new tab).
Emergence of 14nm, Emergence of N+1
SMIC is talking about its N+1 manufacturing technology. (opens in new tab) – Broadly sees the company’s 7nm-class node as a low-cost alternative to TSMC’s N7 node, which relies on deep ultraviolet (DUV) lithography tools, from early 2020. Compared to similar chips implemented using SMIC’s 14nm, N+1 offers 57% less power consumption, 20% better performance, and up to 55%-63% more logic area (selective structure ) we aim to reduce. Such improvements don’t necessarily justify the “7nm-class” label attached to the node by analysts and media, but enough to call N+1 an iteration of SMIC’s 14nm or 12nm process. Be specific.
Recent findings from Tech Insight (opens in new tab) Prove that SMIC’s N+1 are similar TSMC’s N10-like technology with relaxed rules (opens in new tab) and extensive design engineering co-optimization (DTCO) capabilities. Furthermore, it enables logic transistor densities of 89 million logic transistors per square millimeter (89MT/mm^2), making it a viable 7nm-class alternative (at least for logic, SRAM is difficult to scale). For).
Produced by SMIC Minerva Semiconductor (opens in new tab)of Bitcoin mining chips from July 2021 (opens in new tab) without disclosure. The company uses DUV equipment to make these tiny ~25W mining chips. They are simple enough to achieve acceptable yields in commercial applications and serve as a means to gain a better understanding of process performance, power, and defect density (at least as far as logic cells are concerned).
“The production of 7nm chips in China is also progressing faster than expected,” technology analyst Xiang Ligang reports to the state-run Global Times.
With SMIC’s N+1 certified and at least ready for limited production, it is clear that SMIC can survive without Extreme Ultraviolet (EUV) production facilities that cannot be sourced due to sanctions from the US government. is. However, whether the company can use his N+1 nodes to create large and complex system-on-chips remains to be seen.
In terms of logic transistor density, SMIC’s N+1 could be a replacement for TSMC’s N7. But the world’s largest chip contract manufacturers already have much more advanced manufacturing techniques that are attractive to developers of highly complex CPUs, computing GPUs, and a variety of advanced data center-grade chips. increase. As a result, acquiring N+1 high-profile customers can be difficult for SMIC. Don’t forget to serve Huawei’s HiSilicon (probably the biggest chip developer in China). Many of the tools used in SMIC’s fabs come from the United States, and Huawei is subject to severe sanctions, requiring it to obtain an export license from the United States.
5nm from SMIC?
SMIC briefly mentioned N+2 technology for 2020. This is yet another evolutionary step from his 14nm node, but Chinese analysts seem to be labeling it a ‘5nm class’ technology as it is a step ahead of N+1. “7nm class” node. However, his DUV tool, which uses a 193nm ArF laser, has known resolution limitations that affect yield with intensive use of multi-patterning to reduce the critical dimensions of circuits. Therefore, it is unlikely that N+2 is significantly ahead of his N+1 in terms of transistor density.
Since SMIC has been working on the N+2 node for over two years (companies tend to refer to the new node when they have a more or less clear vision of what they want and how to get there), we refer to this as It’s reasonable to expect. The manufacturing process may even come to fruition in 2023. However, since being added to the U.S. Government Entity List in late 2020, (opens in new tab), SMIC keeps a low profile in its announcements about its achievements.The company only said it would focus on developing more advanced chip packaging technology. (opens in new tab) Enables heterogeneous integration and compensates for the inability to procure the equipment needed for sub-10nm technology.
That said, it’s very interesting that the state media has revealed SMIC’s “5nm” technology in a fairly detailed report on the mass production of SMIC’s 14nm chips.
complicated announcement
In fact, SMIC has been making chips with 14nm class manufacturing technology From late 2019 (opens in new tab) (One of the products is Huawei’s HiSilicon Kirin 710A (opens in new tab)) at the SN1 fab. Still, while the process is officially ready for mass production, the actual volumes were so small that at some point the company stopped reporting the node’s contribution to revenue, leaving it in one category with the 28nm node. Integrated. It also contributes to company profits.
Wu Jincheng, director of the Shanghai Municipal Commission of Economy and Digitalization, reiterated that SMIC has started mass production of 14nm chips. At Wednesday’s press conference, he said nothing about more advanced nodes. global timesfeatured an “independent” expert who spoke about the N+1 (7nm class) and N+2 (5nm class) manufacturing processes.
As all interested parties already know about SMIC’s 14nm capabilities, state media reports from Shanghai have suggested the company’s ‘5nm’ as the US government’s plan to tighten restrictions on China’s rapidly developing semiconductor sector. It looks like a complicated way of re-emphasizing the intent of
