Moore's Law is stagnant, and China's chips have plenty of time to catch up with TSMC and Samsung!
As we all know, in terms of chip manufacturing technology itself, Chinese mainland still has a gap with the world leader in this field. For example, TSMC and Samsung have already moved to 3nm and will move to 2nm by 2025.
What will happen to us? The current technology is 14 nanometers, a difference of four generations, i.e., about 10 years.
The release of the Huawei Kirin 9000s means that it may have reached the 7nm level, but it is unclear.
This is why the United States wants to prevent or delay the development of advanced chips through various bans, so that China's chip technology will always lag behind the chip technology of the United States, so that the United States can obtain economic and political benefits.
For example, EUV lithography machines may not be sold in China, and even two state-of-the-art DUV lithography systems may not be sold in China.
Although the situation is not optimistic, we are not too worried, because the current chip manufacturing technology has advanced to the point of approaching the physical limit, and there is still enough time to surpass TSMC and Samsung.
14 nm, 7 nm, 3 nm. What is the meaning of the chip technology process name? It actually represents the gate width. Some people use"Line width"instead. Line width"Refers to the minimum etching width of the chip.
However, since the 28nm process technology, there has been little improvement in the linewidth of the chip industry. It is impossible to shrink the line width indefinitely, because the circuit needs at least tens or even hundreds of atoms wide to provide sufficient power.
The improvement of 28nm and more advanced chips lies in improving the architecture and process technology to make it happen"Comparable energy efficiency and performance to more advanced chips"。
For example, I used the 28nm process to produce 28nm chips, and in the next generation, the linewidth has not changed, theoretically it is still 28nm, but in this generation due to the 15% increase in transistor density, at the cost of my improved architecture and process technology, I am 28nm, or is it 22nm as you are talking about? Of course, it's called 22 nanometers, and the principle is the same, followed by 14 nanometers, 10 nanometers, etc.
At the same time, 7nm, 5nm, and 3nm do not actually refer to 7nm, 5nm, and 3nm linewidths, but rather to improvements in architecture, process technology, etc., that make it theoretically possible for these chips to achieve 5nm and 3nm energy efficiency and performance.
Today, chip process technology continues to advance, and instead of relying on shrinking linewidths, it has evolved from FinFET transistors to more advanced architectures such as Gaafet transistors, to three-dimensional stacking of transistors, and finally to Moore's Law'Craft equivalent life", which translates to"Life"。Outcome.
The production of such chips also requires a large amount of semiconductor equipment, such as lithography and etching equipment, because the line width is not very small. In this case, the so-called chip manufacturing, while still advancing, has actually stagnated and will take a long time to catch up.
Even without advanced EUV lithography or advanced DUV lithography, it is possible to catch up by improving architecture and process, improving transistor structure, and changing packaging technology.