In the past two or three years, affected by Huawei's chip foundry problem, the development of domestic chips has become a hot topic of concern for many netizens. It is also during this time that many manufacturers have announced "core manufacturing", mainly involved in the field of chip design. However, under the boom of "core making", another focus worthy of attention is semiconductor equipment manufacturing, that is, the field related to the manufacture of chips, after all, the process of chips from design drawings to physical objects is inseparable from various semiconductor devices related to core making.
Compared with the field of chip design, the development situation in the domestic chip manufacturing field is more embarrassing, and it is easier to be stuck by foreign manufacturers. Recently, according to the report of the Oriental Network, Shanghai Microelectronics, as a domestic semiconductor equipment R & D manufacturer, held the first 2.5D/3D advanced packaging lithography machine delivery ceremony. Like other semiconductor industry news, the news of Shanghai Microelectronics' delivery of advanced packaging lithography machines immediately caused discussion among netizens on the Internet.
However, many netizens also have questions about the specific use of this device, and some even directly equate the advanced packaging lithography machine with the "lithography machine". Below, let's take a look at the advanced encapsulated lithography machine and the Shanghai Microelectronics Company behind it.
For the field of chip packaging
What needs to be understood in advance is that the production and manufacture of chips are divided into multiple processes, and according to the different production processes, semiconductor equipment can be divided into front and back equipment. The lithography machine and etching machine that we are more familiar with belong to the front channel equipment, and the 2.5D/3D advanced packaging lithography machine of Shanghai Microelectronics belongs to the rear channel equipment, which is suitable for the packaging field of the back end of chip production, and the various elements in the chip are packaged, rather than the lithography machine used for wafer "engraving" as some netizens say.
A more graphical statement is that after the manufacturer has created a complete wafer, it needs to slice the wafer to cut out a small die, and then encapsulate the die. Of course, the packaging process also involves the connection of different kinds of chips through the substrate, apple AirPods Pro equipped with H1 chip, the use of SIP packaging to package audio processing and decoding and other chips together, in order to improve the integration of the chipset, reduce the occupation of the internal space of the headphones.
And what about the so-called 2.5D/3D advanced package? As shown in the figure below, THE CPU and DSP are connected to the TSV layer and the substrate for stereoscopic vertical stacking. It can be said that the package tube is the connection degree of different units in the chip, rather than the manufacture of chips such as CPUs.
Huawei uses different chip packaging technologies on the Kirin 710 series SoCs. In the Kirin 710, Kirin 710F and Kirin 710A three chips, the first two core specifications are the same are made of TSMC 12 nanometer process, the main difference is that kirin 710F replaced the chip packaging process, suffix F refers to the FCCSP flip chip level packaging meaning.
It is worth noting that the 2.5D/3D advanced packaging lithography machine of Shanghai Microelectronics belongs to a new generation of products, with the characteristics of large exposure field of view and high resolution, which helps the packaging and testing factory to improve the packaging and testing process of purchasing equipment. According to a number of media reports, the device is mainly used in high-density integration heterogeneous fields, including high-performance computing and high-end AI chips, which can meet the packaging needs of some enterprises for 2.5D/3D super chip size.
After consulting the official website of Shanghai Microelectronics, the author learned that Shanghai Microelectronics has previously launched two 500 series lithography machines for IC back-channel manufacturing, and the two products are suitable for 200 mm (8 inches) / 300 mm (12 inches) wafers. Advanced processes such as 7nm and 5nm require 12-inch wafers, which means that Shanghai microelectronics equipment may be used for the packaging of advanced processes (note non-manufacturing).
The emergence of Shanghai Microelectronics' new advanced encapsulation lithography machine is aimed at the new market demand. High-performance computing and AI chips are the industry's hot tracks, Huawei, Ali and Baidu have a layout in the field of AI chips, at the end of last year, Foxconn's semiconductor packaging and testing project in Qingdao has introduced dozens of Packaging Lithography Machines of Shanghai Microelectronics.
But it should also be known that the distribution of the entire chip industry chain is extremely complex, and any omission in any field may be "stuck in the neck". Rationally, although the research and development difficulty of the sealing lithography machine is lower than that of the IC manufacturing lithography machine, the efforts of Shanghai Microelectronics in this field have at least filled the gap in the domestic industry and solved the problem of whether there is any.
The delivery of the 2.5D/3D advanced packaging lithography machine has once again pulled Shanghai microelectronics into people's field of vision. For many people, Shanghai microelectronics is still relatively unfamiliar, but it is not known that it is the only manufacturer of lithography machines in China.
Lithography, packaging all available
In the chip industry chain cluster, there are three major clusters of upstream, middle and downstream, the upstream is the supplier of various chip equipment and materials, the midstream is the chip foundry and design manufacturer, and the downstream is the industry application industry chain. Chip OEMs such as Samsung, TSMC and SMIC, which we are familiar with, still need to purchase equipment such as lithography machines for chip manufacturing upstream, such as Samsung and TSMC's advanced process lithography machines purchased from the semiconductor industry giant ASML (Asmail).
In China, Shanghai Microelectronics is one of the few companies with semiconductor equipment development, design and manufacturing, although its public popularity may not be as good as SMIC, but its market value and importance are not low at all. Since its establishment in 2002, Shanghai Microelectronics has developed a variety of chip manufacturing equipment, including lithography and packaging.
In addition to packaging equipment, Shanghai Microelectronics has also developed lithography machines for THE front-channel fabrication of ICs, of which the SSA600/20 lithography machine supports up to 90nm chip process. Not only that, last year has been out of a lot of Shanghai microelectronics 28 nanometer lithography machine news, 28 nanometer process process is difficult to apply to flagship smart phones, but its existence for other industries is still of great significance.
The 28-nanometer process can be regarded as the boundary line of the development of the semiconductor industry, the "older" process above 28 nanometers is called the mature process, and the 28-nanometer below is called the advanced process, such as 14nm and 7nm. Different process processes have different application areas, "2019 Integrated Circuit Industry Research Report" shows that the market share of processes above 28 nanometers reached 52%, such as many automotive grade chips do not pursue absolute advanced processes, still use tens of nanometer process manufacturing chips.
In addition, Shanghai Microelectronics also produces wafer detection, wafer alignment/bonding equipment, etc., suitable for a number of different chip production processes. However, it should be noted that a major difficulty in the domestic chip industry is to "beautify", reduce the application and dependence on its related technologies, and the 90-nanometer node domestic equipment can achieve de-beautification, what about the 28-nanometer and 14-nanometer and above process nodes? Some technologies cannot be bypassed at this stage, whether it is Shanghai Microelectronics, SMIC, or TSMC, so even SMIC, which has 14-nanometer process foundry capabilities, cannot continue to oem chips for Huawei.
Domestic chips, the task is long
In the vast majority of the time, the awareness gap is more important than "deliberately ignoring the gap.". Probably in order to chase hot spots and traffic, there have been many chip-related "boiling" articles on the Internet in the past two years, deliberately ignoring some key points. Last year, many news said that TSMC's 7-nanometer process "source beauty technology" has been less than 10%, but the reality is that it is still unable to supply Huawei, which may mean that the domestic industrial chain must achieve complete "de-beautification" to break the shackles of card neck technology. In many areas of the chip industry chain, we still have many "soft ribs" that have not been solved.
In the field of lithography machines. As early as the 80s of the last century, the United States began to lead related companies to develop EUV lithography technology, and now asML can monopolize the market for advanced lithography machines, behind which is the technical support of Cymer in the United States, which is also an important reason why ASLM is difficult to provide lithography machines for SMIC.
In the field of chip design tools. EDA software (electronic design automation) dedicated to chip design is still our weak point, the industry's three mainstream EDA software providers (Synopsys, Kaideng and Mingdao) are foreign enterprises, although there are other alternatives in China, but it is difficult to call the mainstream. Just like Photoshop used by many users, when switching to other domestic similar software, it is not only necessary to adapt to the new interface and use mode, but also to face a series of hidden problems such as file compatibility.
In addition, there are still many shortcomings in the domestic core industry chain in terms of epitaxial materials and packaging and testing. In the author's view, maintaining the original intention and continuous investment is the key to solving the problem, and there have been many scandals such as fraudulent subsidies and Hanxin No. 1 fraud on this road, which has chilled the hearts of many industry practitioners and netizens. It is also hoped that under the impetus of the market and the government, manufacturers in the field of domestic chips can develop new technologies down-to-earth and solve the technical problems of various card necks as soon as possible.