what has he achieved and at what price

SMIC (Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp) is the semiconductor manufacturer most important in China. It currently has a slightly greater than 5%which puts it close to Samsung, which has a share of 7.2%and in third overall position ahead of Intel, GlobalFoundries or UMC. In September 2023, this company was placed in the spotlight by making official that it had been able to make a 7nm chipthe Kirin 9000S SoC for Huawei, using ASML’s deep ultraviolet (UVP) lithography equipment.

This milestone, as could be expected, put SMIC in the crosshairs of the US Government. And it did so because the US Administration did not expect that a Chinese integrated circuit manufacturer would be able to produce advanced chips without having access to manufacturing machines. extreme ultraviolet photolithography (VVE) of ASML. US and Netherlands sanctions They prevent this Dutch company from delivering its most sophisticated equipment to its Chinese clients, so SMIC has been forced to use ingenuity to produce its semiconductors.

Its 7nm integrated circuits are the result of a technique well known to chip manufacturers: multiple patterning. Its strategy consists, broadly speaking, of transferring the pattern to the wafer in several passes with the purpose of increasing the resolution of the lithographic process. It has an upward impact on the cost of chips and a downward impact on production capacity, but it works. In fact, SMIC already has China’s most advanced integration technology, the N+3 node, ready and is using it to manufacture the SoC HiSilicon Kirin 9030 for Huawei.

SMIC has reached the logical density of TSMC’s N6 node

SMIC has gone further than we could have anticipated in 2023, when it began manufacturing the Kirin 9000S SoC. SemiAnalysis has published the first public report prepared by its new reverse engineering laboratory STEEL, based in Oregon (USA), after having dismantled the HiSilicon Kirin 9030 SoC integrated into the smartphone Mate 80 Pro from Huawei. Their conclusions are very interesting because they clearly reflect how far the SMIC N+3 node has come, and also what its limitations are.

This Chinese company has achieved something that seemed unlikely just three years ago: reaching the logical density of TSMC’s N6 node without access to EUV lithography. He has achieved this thanks to the combination of a multiple patterning Extremely aggressive UVP and design and technology optimization taken to the limit. That combination allows N+3 technology to achieve a transistor density of 113.4 MTr/mm², slightly above the 107.7 MTr/mm² of TSMC’s N6 node, which does use UVE lithography. It’s a genuine engineering achievement achieved with tools from a previous generation.

The cross-section images (they are microscopic cuts of the chip that allow its internal structures to be measured) reveal how far SMIC has come in squeezing UVP lithography. The N+3 node’s transistors have taller, narrower ends than those in TSMC’s N6 node: an aspect ratio of 9.5:1 versus 7.8:1, with sharper and less rounded top edges. And, in addition, the logic cells are also 5% lower. The ends (endsin English) are the vertical, ultra-thin sheets of silicon that constitute the body of the transistor in FinFET designs.

To achieve this, SMIC has applied three optimization techniques: it has eliminated the excess ends where they are not necessary, it has directly connected the contacts on the active gate, and, finally, it has cut the diffusions in a surgical way. Combined with the quadruple patterning UVP, these techniques allow SMIC get closer to what achieve UVE lithography with fewer steps and a greater margin of process, but through a much more laborious path.

Export controls have not stopped China; They have changed the problem you have to solve. SMIC has reached the density of the N6 node without UVE lithography, but at higher cost, lower process maturity and lower energy efficiency. And Huawei, for its part, has managed to compensate with architecture, advanced packaging and optimizations for the inability to access cutting-edge lithographic nodes.

As a consequence of everything we have just seen, knowledge is being distributed. And the Chinese Government is forcing SMIC to license its N+2 and N+3 processes to Hua Hong Semiconductor, which transforms an advantage concentrated in a single manufacturer into an asset of the semiconductor ecosystem. Sanctions designed to isolate SMIC have become less effective as knowledge about manufacturing processes has spread to other chipmakers and semiconductor designers.

Image | SMIC

More information | SemiAnalysis

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