SMIC bypasses US curbs to make 7nm chips
Sanctioned Chinese chipmaker hires Taiwanese engineer and uses secondhand equipment to make chips that are equivalent to Apple’s
Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp (SMIC), a Shanghai-based chipmaker, is said to have advanced its technology and supplied 7-nanometer chips to Huawei Technologies, bypassing the United States’ sanctions.
After Huawei unexpectedly announced on August 29 its plan to sell the Mate60 Pro, some analysts had speculated that the phone’s central processing unit (CPU) chipset, the Kirin 9000s, could have been made either by TSMC before the US curbs took effect in September 2020 or by SMIC with its latest technology.
The latest analysis shows that it is the latter case: SMIC has already developed the N+2 processing knowhow to use deep-ultraviolet (DUV) lithography to make high-energy 7nm chips.
Speed and performance testing conducted by Canadian research firm TechInsights for Bloomberg showed that Mate60 Pro’s speed reached 350 megabits per second, which is on par with Apple Inc’s iPhones. It found that the phone is equipped with 5G wireless capabilities and a system-on-chip (SoC) processor made by SMIC.
This news has caused considerable excitement. In an article published on Monday, Lu Xingzhi, a semiconductor analyst, comments:
Assuming that SMIC is making 169 square millimeter wafers with an 80% yield, it needs to have a N+2 production capacity of about 144,000 wafers. If it has to produce them within six months, its monthly production must reach 24,000 wafers, which is much higher than expected.
Lu says if these estimations are close to reality, it means that Chief Executive Liang Mong-song and his team have made a significant breakthrough in SMIC’s 7nm chip technology. He says other industry players should pay attention to this development.
Loopholes or compromises?
The background: In May 2019, the US Department of Commerce banned Huawei from purchasing hardware and software from the US. It also required the Dutch government to ban the exports of ASML’s most advanced extreme-ultraviolet (EUV) lithography, which can make 3-7nm chips with single exposure and 2nm or below with multiple exposures, to China.
In September 2020, Taiwan’s TSMC stopped producing Kirin chips for the Shenzhen-based firm. Market research indicated that Huawei might have run out of its 5G chip inventory in the third quarter of 2022.
Last October, the US unveiled chip export control against China and forbade US nationals from providing services to Chinese chipmakers. But China still could find some loopholes in these curbs.
Firstly, Liang, a former TSMC and Samsung executive, can continue to work for SMIC as he is Taiwanese, not American. Secondly, the US government did not put enough pressure on the Netherlands to stop ASML from shipping DUV lithography to China over the few three years, or to monitor the resale of its equipment.
Earlier this year, Taiwanese media reported that Huawei and SMIC had started acquiring secondhand DUV lithography domestically, mainly from closed foundries.
Taiwanese tech analyst Chai Huan-shin said the US only requested ASML and Tokyo Electron Limited to restrict their shipments to China but did not stop chipmakers from selling their equipment. Chai said that loophole made it possible for China to accumulate enough DUV lithography to make 7nm chips.
Some experts said that, theoretically ,ASML can stop providing maintenance services to sanctioned Chinese chipmakers and their associates but this would require further discussions between the US and Dutch governments.
In March, the Netherlands agreed with the US that it would require ASML to apply for export licenses for shipments of its DUV lithography, including the Twinscan NXT:2000i and subsequent immersion systems, from September 1.
But ASML said last Friday, after US Commerce Secretary Gina Raimond had visited Beijing on August 27-30, that it was allowed to ship those systems until the end of the year.
In October 2020, Semiconductor Manufacturing South China Corp (SMSC), a SMIC subsidiary, successfully used its FinFET N+1 process to make 10nm chips, which were said to be equivalent to 7nm chips in performance. Liang said at the time that the company was developing N+2 chips, which can be used in high-energy processors. But he has not given any update since then.
TechInsights found that SMSC silently sold its N+1 chips to MinerVa Semiconductor, a Henan-based bitcoin miner supplier, in July 2021. Now SMSC’s N+2 chips are seen inside Huawei’s Mate60 Pro.
‘2035CN’
The apparently now-resolved questions of when the Mate60 Pro’s chipset was made and by whom arose when a Chinese gadget expert surnamed Yang last week found a “2035CN” label on the Kirin 9000s chip.
One theory was that the designation meant the chip had been produced in the 35th week of 2020 in China, a week before TSMC stopped making chips for HiSilicon on September 15 that year.
However, a Shenzhen-based technology expert surnamed Bai says on his YouTube channel that the “2035CN” label was probably made to confuse people or mark a special day. In fact, China has been promoting the goal of fully digitalizing its manufacturing sector by 2035.
Bai also says he is not surprised that SMIC could achieve the N+2 technology, which had been achieved by TSMC seven years ago. He says the breakthrough was a result of an improvement in China’s electronic design automation (EDA) software.
He says it is possible that China can make 5nm or smaller chips with self-developed EUV lithography some years from now.
Follow Jeff Pao on Twitter at @jeffpao3