As an indispensable high-end equipment in chip manufacturing, without it, it is equivalent to "an armchair strategist", and the giants in the semiconductor industry in China naturally know this truth. Therefore, as early as 20 18, SMIC ordered a state-of-the-art EUV photomask aligner from ASML, the Netherlands.
However, due to the limitation of the United States, the delivery of high-end equipment has been delayed, which has also plunged China's chip industry into a quagmire. Huawei, which we are most familiar with, has lost its leading position because of the lack of "high-end core". However, SMIC failed to report the progress of 7nm as scheduled after the process yield of 14nm tied TSMC, largely because the EUV mask aligner was not in place.
It is true that ASML has been courting the China market and making a "helpless" appearance, but for it, it mainly covets a huge market, and once it has other options, it will never take the risk of providing EUV mask aligner. It's true. Recently, news came out from ASML that mask aligner's equipment remanufacturing factory and equipment operation engineer training center will be built in South Korea, and it seems that the Korean market has been regarded as an "alternative".
At the same time, chip giants such as TSMC and Samsung have also stated that they will build advanced technology production lines in the United States to cope with the global "core shortage" situation. Facing the choice of other giants in the industrial chain, where should China's "high-end core" go?
As the saying goes, Huawei's strength is doomed to face such a difficult situation today, but even so, it has not given up its breakthrough in the "high-end core".
Huawei executives have previously said that Hayes will exist forever as long as Huawei can afford it. The implication is that even while the basic chip industry chain is constantly being laid out, Huawei has not stopped the research and development of high-end chips because it can't produce them.
Recently, it was reported that Huawei's 3nm chip was already on its way, and it has applied for a trademark and named it "Kirin" chip. In addition, there is good news. According to Fast Technology, Huawei has provided a development board named Hi386 1 to HarmonyOS system developers, which means it is a chip designed based on RISC-V architecture.
It is worth mentioning that this chip is not used for mobile terminals, but to help developers better build the ecosystem of HarmonyOS system, which is also in response to the fact that ARM is facing the acquisition by NVIDIA. If the dust settles, it is not known whether ARM's oauth2.0 service will be damaged, and this chip can also be "just in case".
According to all kinds of news, even if Hisilicon is not profitable, Huawei will always adhere to the road of self-research, at least in chip design, it will not lag behind the global advanced level.
It seems that Huawei's attitude is decisive, and we all hope that it can break the game, but the reality is cruel, which makes Huawei look a bit "tragic".
Recently, Wu Hanming, an academician of China Academy of Engineering, talked about EUV mask aligner at the 5th International Conference on Big Data Science and Engineering. This kind of high-end equipment, which covers 654.38+million parts and costs more than 654.38+billion dollars, has more than 5,000 suppliers alone. It is the crystallization of the whole world, and it is unrealistic for a country or region to do it.
Academician's point of view is objective and reasonable, but it's like pouring cold water on Huawei's head, because it means that even if Huawei can achieve something in design, some technologies for manufacturing mask aligner are from the United States, so it can't be done after all.
Of course, all walks of life in China are trying to overcome the mask aligner problem, including the research and development of quantum chips and carbon-based chips, trying to bypass the EUV mask aligner, but it is quite difficult and takes a lot of time.
Judging from the current situation of all parties, there is only one way for us to go, and that is to avoid rushing for success and base ourselves on the current development of basic technologies.
Earlier, the Chinese Academy of Sciences also said that the main domestic demand is still on 55nm chips. In this process, it is more valuable to realize the independence of the industrial chain than to develop high-end chips.
Because of the problem in mask aligner, SMIC also slowed down the progress of the 7nm process and chose to spend 70 billion yuan to focus on the development of the 28nnm process. At present, the shift of Huawei's business focus also illustrates this point. The shift from mobile phone business to software and cloud services just shows that the problem of "high-end core" can not be solved in a short time.
The author can't help but think of what my mother used to say when I was a child, that is, "the rice should be eaten bite by bite." Indeed, everything is in a hurry. We always believe that the day will come when the "domestic core" becomes independent, don't you think?