What is the "three big mountains" on the road of domestic chip development?

Along with domestic intelligence in recent yearsMobile phoneThe rise of the industry, the topic about domestic chips has not been broken. The recent industry lack tide, once again pushing the chip problem into the tip. Here, we have proposed a question: What is the problem of domestically produced chip development? Many friends may think of lightning machine, yes, light moment is very important, but the problem on the development of domestic chip is far more than it is so simple. Today, let's explore the "three big mountains" on the road to the domestic chip development.

01 Manufacturing material silicon production capacity

There are foundations of the house, and the big trees have foundations. Any matter of matter is relying on the source, the chip is no exception. We all know that the material of the manufacturing chip is silicon. Silicon is a second rich element in the crust, while the sand can be more than 25% silicon element, and exists in the form of silica (SiO).

Silicon (SiO) has been referred to as the basis of the semiconductor manufacturing industry. Since silicon is extracted from the sand. Then, the sand is all in place, it is impossible to lack the sand, and we lack the technology from the sand in the sand.

The chip is extremely complicated from the design to manufacturing. From the sand, silicon is extracted from the sand, and the silicon ingot is made, and the silicon ingot is cut into a silicon wafer, and then hand it over to the chip foundry production. Production chip. In the process of extracting silicon from sand, the technical difficulty is that its purification, cannot be less than 99.9999%, which is to extract the purity of silicon, and its impurity content cannot exceed one million.

This is equivalent to that the silicon wafer is 8 inches (diameter 200mm), the dust diameter in the air is 100,000,000 millimeters, then according to the purity requirements of silicon, it must be controlled to control more than 2 grain dust falling in 8 inches. On the silicon wafer, this is also an important reason for the chip manufacturing inseparable from the dust-free workshop.

The manufacture of silicon materials has been famous for Japan has Japanese chemistry and SUMCO, South Korea's LG chemistry and global wafers in Taiwan. Although there are also a number of companies in the mainland, there is also a research and development of silicon materials, but the proportion is too small. It can be said that the problem of wafer production capacity during the chip manufacturing process is a large mountain on the development of domestic chips.

02 Chip mother EDAsoftwareTechnology is lacking

Whether it is a computer chip, or a mobile phone, car chip, etc., it requires design planning, and the design of the chip does not only need the innovation of talent research and development capabilities, but also inseparable from EDA tool software.

Here we first take an example, in addition to your own skills, painter painting, in addition to your own skills, drawings and drawings, good painting tools to make painting's efficiency of half-effort. It can be said that the EDA tool software is like painting tools with painters.

Specifically, EDA refers to electronics, which is successful in the computer-as a work platform, fusion application electronics, computer technology, and intelligent technology.CADGeneral software packages, mainly can assist in three design work, namely IC design, electronic circuit design, and PCB design.

To say that the development of the integrated circuit is not too complicated, the circuit design is not too complicated even without the EDA software. But as the circuit integration is getting higher and higher, it is impossible to complete design without relying on software. Moreover, the chip has long been a nano-level circuit design, and EDA software is more indispensable. For this reason, EDA software is also known as "chip design mother".

Currently, the world's most famous EDA software company, is the Mentor Graphics of Synopsys, Cadence, and Siemens, USA, almost monopolized more than 90% of the EDA market share in the world. Moreover, China is also the most valued business growth market for the three giants.

In a sense, the three EDA giants belong to the United States, and the Siemens Industrial Software Headquarters of the Mentor is also in the United States. Affected by EDA control, from the first step of the chip design, the first step in the chip may be a card neck.

Of course, there are also EDA software companies in China, the most powerful as the nine days of China, and China's nine days inherited the earliest panda EDA system, the technology accumulation is quite mature. However, looking at the entire EDA industry in China, most companies are difficult to do full processes, so there is still a far way.

The emergence of the EDA tool has greatly improved the efficiency and operability of the circuit design, reducing the burden on the chip engineer, which brings revolutionary changes to the electronic system design. Without EDA software design, high-end chips have no way to design, chip design should be completely autonomous, and EDA software is a problem that cannot be opened.

03 Current status of chip manufacturing lightning machine technology

Production of chip raw materials, design chips, and you need to use a lightning machine to really produce a chip. As we all know, whether it is Apple or Liaota, Qualcomm and other mobile phone chips, it is necessary to build a power of electricity or Samsung to produce, and currently used to make such high-end chips require ultraviolet (EUV) lightning machine, and only the Netherlands ASML can provide energy-friendly EUV lightning machine.

It is reported that an ASML lightning machine can reach 180 tons, with an internal parts of up to 100,000, of which major components come from dozens of developed countries in Europe and America. The Netherlands's lightning machine Germany provides Zeiss lens equipment, Japan offers special composites, Sweden offers industrial precision machine tools, USA to provide control software, etc.

The Netherlands ASML is also impossible to make high-end lightning machines only because it involves the global supply chain system, which brings together top technology in all countries, and there is no components and links.

So, can China produce lightning machine independently? In fact, last year, China's strongest lightning machine manufacturer Shanghai Microelectronics has broken the 28nm lightning machine, although domestic light engraving companies have a small gap between the Netherlands ASML, but as an independent research, the meaning is extraordinary. In short, domestic development of drient engraving technology requires policy support, capital investment and talent training, and more time.

Written in the last

In 2020, the import volume of China's chip climbed to nearly $ 380 billion (equivalent to RMB 74 trillion), accounting for 18% of the total domestic imports. According to Bloomberg's analysis of official trade data, China has purchased nearly $ 32 billion in equipment from Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan, China in China, used for chip production, an increase of 20% over 2019. An analyst believes: "In the short term, China will rely on import to enhance the level of chip manufacturing."

The chip is designed, produced to mass production, is an extremely complex project, the chip industry has developed so many years, from simple to complex, from low-end to high, not one. There are still many problems facing domestic chips, but we are in the process of solving these problems, the practice of "catching the bodge" is not advisable, only one step is a footprint to make the foundation of domestic chips more firm. Find problems, solve problems, three mountains can't stop the pace of domestic chips.