Electrical Equipment / Components & Telecoms

The industry predicts that 28nm will be a new starting point for 100% domestic chips, and that domestic 14nm chips will be mass-produced this year and next year, respectively. Wen Xiaojun, director of the Electronic Information Research Institute of China Electronics Information Industry Development Research Institute, said in an interview with a reporter from Global.com that domestic 14nm chips can be mass-produced by the end of next year, and domestic chips have ushered in the best moment. "I agree with the industry's prejudgment. Although we are facing technical difficulties, we have seen hope."

14nm chip mass production status

Wen Xiaojun introduced the development and current status of 14nm chips to reporters in detail.

In his view, the development of 14nm chips has overcome many technical problems: key equipment such as etching machines and thin film deposition have been implemented from scratch and applied in large-scale production lines; breakthroughs have been made in the research and development of 14nm technology; and subsequent packaging integration technology The results have been fully realized mass production; hundreds of key materials such as polishing agents and sputtering targets have passed the assessment of large production lines and entered mass sales. These achievements basically cover the entire industrial chain system of my country's integrated circuits, and reverse the passive situation of the introduction of a complete set of process technologies.

"The rapid development of the localization of 14nm and even 28nm chips means that we adopt a return strategy and use mature technology to meet general chip needs. We do not blindly pursue high manufacturing processes. We pay more attention to design and packaging optimization, and we exchange time for semiconductor applications and the entire industry chain. Free space." Wen Xiaojun said.

In addition, in his opinion, after the mass production of 14nm chips, subsequent expansion of production capacity requires financial support. The required equipment including lithography machines, cleaning equipment, and polishing equipment is not only expensive, but also requires a lot of money in the process of use. Water and electricity; secondly, it is necessary to do a good job of integration at the supplier level of raw materials, components, etc., and do a good job of customer introduction in advance to ensure that production capacity is fully utilized.

14nm has become the most marketable process technology today

Wen Xiaojun is optimistic about the future of domestic chips. He believes that the current domestic chips "although there is still a certain distance from the chip manufacturers, but have seen hope."

Wen Xiaojun said that the production line of the 14-12nm generation is very critical in current semiconductors. The 14nm process and above can meet the needs of 70% of the current semiconductor manufacturing processes, and the mid-end 5G chips are positioned using the 12nm process. In addition, 14nm can basically meet the needs of the manufacturing process required by my country's domestic desktop CPUs.

For the world's large chip manufacturers, 28nm chip technology is already very mature, with some excess capacity. At the other end, the process technology below 10nm is very cutting-edge, and the only players in the industry are TSMC, Samsung and Intel at the top of the pyramid. 14nm, which is in the middle of the two, has clearly become the backbone and the main manufacturing process for most mid-to-high-end chips.

Statistics show that in the first half of 2019, the entire semiconductor sales market was about US$200 billion, of which 65% of chips used 14nm process technology, only about 10% of chips used 7nm, and about 25% used 10nm and 12nm. It can be seen that 14nm has become the most widely used and most market-valued process technology. It has great development potential in AI chips, high-end processors, and automobiles. The main applications include high-end consumer electronics, high-speed computing, Low-order power amplifier and baseband, AI, automobile, etc.

Wen Xiaojun said frankly that my country's 14nm technology is developing vigorously and has delivered a good report card, but it cannot be accomplished overnight if you want to be late and catch up. The industry's leading manufacturers have many years of production experience on 14nm, and the depreciation of the production line has been completed. Chinese enterprises have no advantage in cost competition with other manufacturers. Therefore, there is a generation gap between us and the world's first-class foundry companies in technology catching up. If you want to catch up with latecomers, you need to invest more manpower, financial resources and time costs.

The integrated circuit industry is one of the global frontier industries with ultra-intensive capital, frequent replacements, and extremely sophisticated talents. It has high technical difficulties, high cost of trial and error, and difficulty in troubleshooting. Judging from the development history of the integrated circuit industry in Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and other countries and regions, catching up with late-developing countries and regions does not happen overnight. It requires the determination of independent development, the perseverance of hard work, the confidence to succeed in catching up, and the strong and sustainable development. Only by combining the four elements of capital, technology, talent and market can we achieve successful catch-up and surpass development.

With the advent of the 5G and AIoT era, especially in the fields of smart cities, autonomous driving, security and Internet of Things, various products are becoming more and more abundant. Chips are gradually focusing on optimization for special scenarios, and dedicated chips are about to usher in a "hundred flowers" species In the era of the explosion, a wide range of AIoT scenarios will also give 14nm process chips a huge market space.