Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation, China’s largest contract chip maker, has quietly removed 14nm manufacturing technology from its system. Service list on website. The company didn’t mention FinFET-based advanced technology at its earnings conference last week. DigiTimes reports.
The latest US government export control regulations require Chinese semiconductor manufacturers to allow non-planar transistor logic chips with dimensions of 14nm/16nm or less, 3D NAND chips with 128 or more active layers, and DRAM ICs with half active layers. Prohibits acquisition of the equipment and technology necessary to manufacture – Pitch below 18nm. Similar regulations are set to come into effect in the Netherlands, Japan and Taiwan in mid-2023, prompting Chinese companies such as SMIC and YMTC to produce chips at the latest production nodes such as 14nm/12nm, 14nm and 12nm. Equipment is no longer available. N+1 from SMIC, 128-layer and 232-layer 3D NAND from YMTC.
Without access to advanced equipment and spare parts from suppliers such as ASML, Applied Materials, KLA, and Lam Research, SMIC may not be able to produce chips for its customers using the latest manufacturing techniques, so the 14nm platform is reasonable to remove from SMIC. list of technologies.
Meanwhile, the company’s shuttle service page still mentions 14nm and even states that the company is using this node to produce shuttle wafers on a regular basis.
“Currently, we offer regular shuttle services for processes from 0.18μm to 14nm,” SMIC said in a statement. read
In addition, another page on SMIC’s website also mentions 14nm capabilities.
“SMIC is a pure semiconductor foundry offering fabrication of 200 mm and 300 mm wafers from 0.35 microns (μm) to 14 nanometers (nm),” the company said. casting solution To read.
SMIC has been using 14nm-class manufacturing technology at its SN1 facility since the end of 2019. One of the 14nm SoCs produced by the company is Huawei’s HiSilicon Kirin 710A. However, it appears that the company has stopped disclosing revenue from this node as 14nm production was very limited, even though it was technically in mass production. Instead, he combined this with revenue from his 28nm node, which did not contribute much to the bottom line.
Last year, Chinese state media reported that SMIC had started mass production using 14nm-class manufacturing methods at its Fab SN1 fab near Shanghai, China. The report also suggested that the company is making progress at the 7nm and 5nm class nodes despite the lack of access to cutting-edge wafer fab equipment.
