Well, in anticipation of further US sanction, Huawei has started shifting its orders from TSMC to SMIC, ensuring the SMIC's coming revenue stream. SMIC just started mass producing 14nm end of last year, and end of this year it will start 7nm production, this speed up is due to Huawei's orders which require SMIC's N+1 process in 7nm to manufacture the Kirin chips. In addition, US pressure will literally ensure SMIC get all its required funding, moving to 5nm is just a question of how fast can it be done.SMIC 7nm process to be introduced in Q4 with 20% performance improvement
February 27, 2020The 7nm process of Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation (SMIC), China's most advanced and largest foundry, will begin small-scale production in the fourth quarter, according to kkj.cn.
Compared with 14nm, SMIC's N+1 process improves performance by 20%, reduces power consumption by 57%, reduces logic area by 63%, and reduces SoC area by 55%, the report cited Dr. Liang Mengsong, co-CEO of SMIC, as saying.
TSMC and Samsung will mass produce 5nm processes this year, and China's advanced processes are still catching up.
The largest wafer foundry, SMIC, mass-produced a 14nm process at the end of last year, which brought 1% of revenue and revenue of $7.69 million, but this process technology can already meet 95% of domestic demand.
The 14nm and improved 12nm processes are SMIC's first-generation FinFET processes. They are also developing more advanced N+1 including N+2 FinFET processes, which are equivalent to low-power, high-performance versions of the 7nm process.
After N+1, there will also be N+2. These two processes perform similarly in terms of power consumption. The difference lies in performance and cost. N+2 is obviously oriented towards high performance and the cost will increase.
As for the EUV lithography machine that has attracted much attention, Liang Mengsong said that under the current environment, N+1 and N+2 generation processes will not use the EUV process. After the equipment is ready, the N+2 process may have several photomasks. With EUV, the subsequent process will switch to EUV lithography on a large scale.
Now the most important thing is when SMIC will be mass-produced at 7nm. The latest news says that SMIC's N+1 FinFET process has been introduced by customers (but no customer list has been announced). Small-scale production will begin in the fourth quarter of this year, earlier than previously reported.
In order to accelerate advanced process capacity, SMIC's capital expenditure will reach US $ 3.1 billion this year (the company's annual revenue is only around US $3 billion), of which US $2 billion will be used for SMIC's 12-inch wafer fab in Shanghai and US $500 million At a 12-inch wafer fab in Beijing.
Related link: SMIC 7nm process to be introduced in Q4 with 20% performance improvement
