The United States, Japan and the Netherlands have reached a chip alliance, which brings a crisis to domestic chips and challenges independent research and development
On April 4, the WTO held a meeting of the Council, at which China asked questions:"Is there an agreement between the United States, Japan, and the Netherlands on chip export restrictions?
At the same time, he said that the agreement violated WTO rules, called on the United States, Japan and the Netherlands to notify the agreement, and at the same time asked the WTO to strengthen relevant supervision.
It can be seen that in order to restrict China's development in the field of ejiao, the United States in the past can be said to have taken great pains, not only to push its little brother forward, but also to go into the water by itself, and even to flout the rules of the WTO.
So the question is, why does Lao Mei have to obstruct us in the field of potato chips?How to use domestic potato chips?
How important are potato chips?
We talk about chips every day and use chips every day, but do you really know what chips are and how important chips are?
A chip is actually a type of microcircuit, which we usually refer to as an integrated circuit, microcircuit, or microchip. It is a miniature circuit made on the surface of a semiconductor wafer using a photolithography process.
With the continuous development of chip manufacturing technology, the precision of chips is getting higher and higher, and it has reached the 3nm process.
How spectacular is a chip with a 3nm process?
Viewed through a microscope, the inside of the chip resembles a miniature city, with dense streets and buildings and stunning details.
On chips the size of fingernails, there are more than a dozen kilometers of wires and hundreds of millions or even tens of billions of transistors.
How are these nanoscale components"Sit"What about on the chip?They are extremely sophisticated devices that require hundreds of complex processes before they can be successful"Transfiguration"。
Due to the extreme complexity of equipment and transformation technology, a technological monopoly and even technological protection have gradually formed.
Let's take a look at why chips are so important
1. The application range is extremely wide.
Chips are widely used in industry, military, people's livelihood and other fields.
Our automobile factories, shipyards, chemical plants, machinery factories, textile factories, garment factories, beverage factories, etc., all use a large number of automated machines, and these equipment are equipped with countless large and small chips.
Our fighter jets, intercontinental missiles, satellite navigation, tanks, and armored vehicles all rely on chips to complete tasks such as flight, attack, positioning, and surveillance.
Smartphones, TVs, washing machines, refrigerators, etc., in daily life, are also inseparable from chips.
2. Support the development of future science and technology.
Information technology is known as the fourth industrial revolution, and typical representatives are: 5G, artificial intelligence, big data, cloud computing, and the Internet of Everything.
It is not known whether these cutting-edge technologies rely on chips, or even rely heavily on chips.
Take the example of the vigorous artificial intelligence revolution some time ago. This technology is designed to replace programmers, lawyers, designers, news editors, accountants, financial analysts, and more.
Such a powerful AI can only be achieved after countless trainings, and the training must be backed by powerful computing power. Naturally, this requires AI chips to provide.
According to relevant data, since the emergence of ChatGPT, the demand for computing power has been 10-100 times that of the original, and more than 600 DGXA100 servers are needed to meet it.
It can be seen that the demand for chips in the future technology is huge.
3. Change the economic development model.
Can a small chip change the economic development model?
In the era of steam engines and electrification, it is absolutely not possible. But some time ago, one chip was enough to drive the economic development of a country.
Take my country, for example:
If China solves the problem of high-end chips, then smart phones, 5G, smart cars, artificial intelligence and other industries will develop rapidly. China will shift from a labor-intensive economy to a technologically innovative economy.
China's economic development will undergo earth-shaking changes, and it is not impossible for China to become a developed country.
Given the wide range of applications in chips, they are extremely important for future technological developments and can even transform an economy. It is the United States that is desperately trying to prevent our development and breakthrough in this field.
Now, the United States, together with Japan and the Netherlands, has reached the so-called"Chip Export Restriction Agreement", to thoroughly ** us in the field of high-end chips.
So, if this agreement is reached, what kind of predicament will our country face?
Is the US-Japan-Netherlands chip restriction agreement terrible?
The United States, Japan, and the Netherlands control the global semiconductor equipment market, with the United States accounting for 41Of the 7% market share, Japan occupies 311%, the Netherlands occupies 188%, and the three together accounted for 916% market share.
If these three stop ** semiconductor equipment, then basically this foundry can change careers.
Because the equipment of the entire industrial chain such as lithography machines, etching machines, CVD, PVD, cleaning equipment, coating and development equipment, ALD, ion implantation, measurement, CMP, heat treatment, etc., has disappeared.
There is no device that is not made with chips, even if we give an order, how to do it?
We can make the equipment ourselves!Isn't that simple?
State-of-the-art ultraviolet lithography machines, for example, are far more difficult to manufacture than atomic bombs, hydrogen bombs, and aircraft carriers.
Light source: The first step is to establish a high-power CO2 laser emission system with a power of up to 30 kilowatts and a laser frequency of 50,000 seconds. This question alone has stumped 99 of the world99% of the company.
Because the main components – the high-power seed module, the high-power amplifier link, the beam delivery system, the FFA optical platform – each of them has a very high technological content.
After the laser emitter is manufactured, it is difficult to reach a state where tin droplets with a diameter of 2 microns fall down.
ASML's lighting systems are supplied by Trafigura (Germany) and Cymer (USA).
Optical lenses: The flattest mirror in the world must be the optical lens of the EUV lithography machine.
The makeup mirror we use every day looks very flat, but if you stretch it from Beijing to Shanghai, the protrusion of the mirror will reach 2 meters high, while the EUV optical lens is only 2 centimeters. The difference in accuracy is 100 times.
What's more, the lens must be coated with multiple layers of nickel-chromium coating, each with a thickness of only 2 microns.
At present, only the German company Zeiss is able to offer this technology, and in limited quantities. ZEISS has been perfecting technology in this field for hundreds of years, and when it comes to lithography, ZEISS is a global leader in this field.
Researchers and developers around the world say that even finer structures and processes can be seen with optical, electron and X-ray microscopy from ZEISS. This is possible thanks to ZEISS's superior optical lenses.
According to the currently known technical route, it is basically impossible to overtake ZEISS.
Each EUV lithography machine has 100,000 precision parts, more than 4,000 bearings, 3,000 cables and 2 kilometers of pipes, and it takes half a year to assemble all the equipment alone.
In addition, ASML has more than 2,000 leading companies to provide parts and technical services"Specialization"The companies are all leaders in their fields.
In other words, if we want to develop domestic EUV lithography machines, we must push back the three major laboratories of ASML, Zeiss, crack, and the United States, as well as more than 2,000 laboratories"Specialized", the difficulty can be imagined.
If the United States, Japan, and the Netherlands set up obstacles in semiconductor materials, if domestic chips are worse.
When it comes to semiconductor materials, Japan is the dominant player.
According to relevant data, Japan controls 66% of the world's semiconductor materials, and among the 19 most critical materials, Japan has a market share of more than 50% in 14 kinds.
Japan's market share of the four main semiconductor materials: wafers, masks, photoresists, and electronic specialty gases, exceeds 50%.
The key is that Japanese companies have very strict control over technology and patents, and it can even be said that they have achieved a monopoly on certain materials, such as EUV photoresist.
Japan launched a campaign against South Korea in 2019"Material Ban", the export of photoresists, fluoropolyimides, and high-purity hydrogen fluoride is controlled, resulting in an average loss of 5 trillion won per day in South Korea. Even Samsung had to bow its head.
If the United States, Japan and the Netherlands reach an agreement, integrated circuit equipment and semiconductor materials will be close"Absolute monopoly", it will be more difficult for the state to replace.
How to get out of the dilemma of independent research and development?
First, stabilize the 28nm industry chain.
In the field of mature 28-nanometer chips, there is no doubt that China still has a great advantage.
The integrated circuit industry chain includes design, manufacturing, packaging, testing, architecture, EDA, materials, equipment, etc., and Chinese enterprises have participated in it and achieved good results.
In terms of design, Huawei HiSilicon, UNISOC, Ali Pingtou, SoC mobile phones, 5G chips, and cloud chips can all be designed, and the accuracy has reached 3 nanometers.
In terms of manufacturing, SMIC is responsible for mass production, which can already mass-produce 12nm chips, and the manufacturing technology has exceeded 7nm, only waiting for EUV lithography machines.
In the field of packaging and testing, JCET has surpassed 4nm packaging technology and ranks third in the world, second only to Micron and Amkor.
In terms of architecture, there is the company's self-developed Loongarch (Loongson architecture), which has a 4-year gap in performance with Intel. The company is also a leader in the research and development of the RSIC-V open source architecture platform.
In the field of EDA tools, domestic enterprises such as Huada Jiutian, Huawei, and Guorun Electronics have made great progress, not only owning the whole industry chain, but also surpassing 7 nanometers.
In terms of materials, the main materials of Shanghai Silicon Industry, Nanda Optoelectronics and other enterprises can meet the materials required for mature processes.
At present, Shanghai Microelectronics can only produce 90 nanometer lithography machines, theoretically able to manufacture 65 nanometer chips, and 28 nanometer lithography machines are still being tackled.
At present, since the attack on the 28-nanometer lithography machine, the pure localization of 28-nanometer chips can be realized to meet the needs of the military, industry and most civilian fields.
Second, retain and make good use of qualified personnel.
The most important thing in chips is talent, and with talent, everything can be easily solved.
In the field of materials, the six best materials scientists in the world are all Chinese, five of whom graduated from the University of Science and Technology of China:
If we can retain and make good use of these talents, we will not worry"Stuck neck"The tablet material too.
As far as fab equipment is concerned, the same is true for manufacturing, where most of TSMC's talent is Chinese, including founder Zhang Zhongmou and president Liu Deyin.
Even Nvidia founder Jensen Huang, AMDC CEO Su Lifeng, Broadcom CEO Chen Fuyang, and MediaTek President Tsai Mingjie are all yellow-eyed Chinese.
This shows the intelligence of the Chinese, so where is the most Chinese?Of course, we are China, 1.4 billion Chinese, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, just put these"Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon"Use it well, why worry about the chip problem can't be solved?
Finally, the advanced 7nm field.
In the 7nm wafer industry chain, equipment and materials are still our soft underbelly, which needs to be solved with great efforts.
There is a huge difference between 7nm and 14nm and 28nm, and there are two major problems to pass through EUV lithography machine and EUV photoresist.
It is simply impossible to overcome with existing technology, it is needed"Concentrate on doing great things", it is more necessary to settle down to engage in basic research and development.
We need a large number of mathematicians, physicists, and chemists to lay the foundation and conquer EUV in order to build something bigger and grander"Science and Technology Building"。
The integrated circuit industry is a highly globalized industry, which has been formed after decades of development and iteration"You have me, I have you"This is the role of the law of the market.
Today, this pattern is being broken, and the United States is joining forces with Japan, the Netherlands and other countries to build it"Some kind of agreement", trying to build one"Silicon fences"。
We must not let him succeed, on the one hand, we will join forces with friends to block the attack, and on the other hand, we will vigorously develop independent research and development and implement domestic substitution.
As long as we are willing to work hard, success will get closer and closer, and it is only a matter of time before we turn defeat into victory.