SMIC's first 7nm processor will be commissioned in July this year. This chip has only 193 mm², originally designed to mine crypto money, each has 120 chips, three of which are controlled by each miner, consuming a total of 3,300 watts.
In 2023, the 7 nm Kirin 9000 chip will be installed on SMIC's Huawei Mate 60 Pro series. In 2023, Huawei will build 15 million smartphones with Kirin 9000 S processors, and in 2024, its production capacity will fivefold to 70 million units.
The Mate60 Pro has a capture rate of more than 350 MS, which is on par with Apple's iPhone, and it also meets the new standard for 5G wireless communication.
Perhaps, the equipment for making this kind of chip is ASML ** to the old DV2000i in our country. Due to the sanctions imposed by the United States on TSMC, Huawei has had no other choice from September 2020. By the third quarter of 2022, TSMC** chips to Huawei have run out. In other words, from now on, all high-end models produced by Huawei will use SMIC's chips.
So, when the minor 7 nm processor came out, many people were skeptical that SMIC would be able to make products with a 7 nm process. The Kirin 9000 S processor mass-produced by SMIC has broken all these doubts.
Although SMIC uses the old TSMC process from 2018-2019, it does not simply copy a single process, but synthesizes TSMC's process experience of multiple generations.
Dr. Leong Meng Song.
In 2017, SMIC hired a talented technologist and CEO, Professor Liang Mengsong (Professor Liang), who worked at TSMC for nearly 20 years and worked his way up to co-CEO, joining Samsung in 2010 to assist Korean companies in developing 14 nm and 16 nm process processes. Not only that, but when Dr. Liang joined SMIC, SMIC had already taken more than 200 technicians from TSMC!
Mr. Liang has been with SMIC since October 16, 2017 and is currently the CEO of SMIC. As of November 11, 2022, he has 37 years of experience in this field. He has been engaged in the research and development of FinFET memory technology and logic process, and has obtained more than 450 invention patents and published more than 350 scientific articles. He is a Fellow of the American Society of Electric Power and Power Engineers and holds a Ph.D. in Power Engineering from the University of California, Berkeley.
It is precisely with this big man that SMIC can complete the leap from 14 nm to 7 nm in just two years. In stark contrast, it took TSMC 3 years to upgrade from 16nm to 7nm, while Samsung also took 5 years to upgrade from 14nm to 7nm. Obviously, this is an outstanding achievement made by our country in the chip industry, because it is impossible for our country to get cutting-edge technology from abroad, and it does not have superior conditions like TSMC and Samsung.
However, the development of 7-nanometer chips does not require the use of ultraviolet lithography, which is not yet available in China, and can only be achieved by deep ultraviolet ultraviolet detectors. Our helpers can use existing older DUV equipment to build them.
For example, 7nm deep ultraviolet devices can manufacture Apple A12, AMD Zen2, Snapdragon 855, Apple A13, AMD Zen3, Snapdragon 865+, etc.
In principle, deep ultraviolet devices can be below 3 nm, and using more new processes on the basis of old devices is expected to break through the bottleneck of 3 nm devices, but the device yield is low and the manufacturing cost is high.
In order to overcome the shortcomings of EUV lithography technology, EUV lithography machine has been independently developed in China. In 2022, Huawei has obtained an invention patent for ultraviolet lithography, which can realize 7nm or 5nm processes. Although this patent does not represent a finished lithograph in the future, Huawei has the resources, money, and wisdom to find answers to these questions in the coming years. I'm a tech creator