Recently, there has been a lot of publicity about the magic change of domestic lithography machines, which roughly means that the most advanced domestic mobile phone SOC did not find ASML's focus mark; Therefore, it is speculated that either the domestic lithography machine has broken through, or some key components of the ASML lithography machine have been "magically modified", of course, the second possibility is greater!
In this regard, Uncle Biao should be a magic change! For the domestic semiconductor industry, some of the key "magic changes" of lithography machines are indeed a kind of progress; It is also helpful for the breakthrough of domestic chip manufacturing process, but it does not mean that there is a real breakthrough in the advanced manufacturing process of domestic chips, why?
1. The essence of competition in advanced process chips
We know that the process of chip manufacturing and production mainly has two processes: the front and the back; The semiconductor front end is mainly responsible for a series of physical and chemical processes in the preparation and processing of chip surfaces, such as deposition, corrosion, etching, cleaning, etc., etching, etching, etching, etching, etch These processes are critical steps in chip preparation, which directly determine the performance of the chip and also have a decisive impact on the subsequent packaging and testing. The semiconductor back-end is the process of packaging the prepared chip into the final product.
Both the front and back are inseparable from the relevant semiconductor equipment, especially the "lithography machine" in the front lithography process, which can be said to directly determine the process of the chip; But isn't it possible to have a lithography machine or an advanced lithography machine to manufacture advanced process chips?
If so, then why is TSMC now almost monopolizing sub-5nm process chips in the world, and the only ones that can pose a threat to TSMC are Samsung and Intel.
Is it because only these three foundries can afford advanced EUV lithography machines? Of course not, in fact, advanced process chip foundry is a highly technical field, and it is by no means possible with advanced equipment. For example, masks are used in the field of lithography processes, and the masks used by TSMC to prepare advanced process chips are basically self-developed, similar to Samsung and Intel.
Therefore, the foundry of advanced process chips is a manifestation of comprehensive capabilities, and its competitive essence is the perfect balance of comprehensive technical capabilities and cost control capabilities. Among them, the continuous development and iteration of transistor architecture; and the upgrading of semiconductor equipment represented by lithography machines is particularly typical.
Second, the iteration of the transistor architecture
Recently, at the TSMC 2024 Technology Forum, TSMC announced that it has successfully integrated different transistor architectures and made CFET (Complementary Field Effect Transistor) in the laboratory. The head of TSMC said: CFET is expected to be introduced into the next generation of advanced logic processes. CFET is the next new transistor architecture after the nanochip field-effect transistor (NSFET, also known as ring gate or GAA) architecture used in the 2nm process. In other words, TSMC's transistor architecture has been iterated to the fourth generation!
Looking back at the birth of the transistor, in 1947, when John Bardeen, Walter Brattain and William Shockley succeeded in manufacturing the world's first working transistor; Today, transistors are the most important component of electronic products.
It was a decade later that integrated circuits (ICs) with multiple transistors and other electronic components appeared, becoming a central driver of transistor ubiquity. After the 1960s, ICs typically used traditional planar structures to design digital circuits.
In the decades that followed, ICs gradually transitioned to newer structures: in 2011, Intel introduced the first commercially available FinFET fabric chip with the introduction of a three-dimensional FinFET (FinFET transistor) architecture from 14nm. Since then, Samsung and TSMC have also started producing 16nm and 14nm FinFET chips. Since then, advanced processes have been developed based on FinFET architectures and have continued to the current 5nm and 3nm.
FinFET technology has reached its limits, and the industry is turning to GAA technology to further shrink transistors, solve problems, and reduce costs. Samsung has already taken the lead in switching to the GAA (Total Surround Gate) transistor architecture at the 3nm node last year. TSMC will also fully switch to the GAA architecture when mass production of 2nm chips in 2025.
And now TSMC has once again evolved to a new generation of transistor architecture - CFET; At the same time, chip foundry giants such as Samsung and Intel also attach great importance to the development of CFET; Related demonstrations were also carried out successively.
CFET – as a transistor vertically stacked CMOS process. It is widely believed that CFET will be used in more sophisticated Angstrom-scale processes in the future. According to the technology roadmap previously announced by IMEC, with CFET, chip process technology is expected to evolve to 5 angstromes (0.5nm) in 2032 and 2 angstromes (0.2nm) in 2036.
Therefore, we can clearly see that from the FinFET architecture, to the GAA architecture, and then to the CFET architecture, it is the process of continuous evolution of the chip manufacturing process. This is also one of the core technical elements that can continuously advance, iterate and progress in the world's advanced semiconductor process.
In addition, under the guidance of new transistor architectures, semiconductor equipment and materials are constantly iterating and evolving.
3. Iteration of semiconductor equipment and materials represented by lithography machines
We are all familiar with lithography machines, taking ASML lithography machines as an example, which has been iterated for at least 5 generations. As shown below:
On February 17, 2024, ASML officially delivered the first high-NA EUV extreme ultraviolet lithography machine to Intel, which will be used for the manufacture of chips below the 2nm process, and can directly manufacture about the 1nm process.
It is reported that the High NA EUV lithography machine is the size of a double-decker bus, weighs up to 150 tons, is larger than a truck, and needs to be transported in 250 individual crates. The installation time is expected to require 250 engineers and six months to complete.
From the above process corresponding to the lithography machine, we can see that the lithography machine and the chip architecture are synchronous iterations, that is to say, in fact, the progress of transistor technology and the development of transistor architecture have driven the iteration of lithography equipment.
In fact, with the iteration of transistor architecture, the lithography machine is just one of the devices that iterates with iteration; Almost the entire semiconductor industry requires further development, starting with EDA tools, preparing related new materials, integrating new processes and capabilities, and so on.
This means that the manufacturing or foundry process of advanced process chip wafers is itself a process of technology integration, which is constantly iterated with the update of chip architecture and the continuous progress of equipment and materials. Its essence is not a simple comparison of chip process nodes, but a competition of comprehensive strength and capabilities of the entire semiconductor industry.
Therefore, through the "magic change" lithography machine, we can of course deeply tap the potential of the previous generation of lithography machine and the previous generation of chip architecture, and continue to do some expansion; But it is only a helpless move in the current situation, and it is only an excessive or expedient measure for domestic semiconductors and domestic chips; It does not mean that domestic chips have unlocked the manufacturing problems of advanced process technology; It doesn't even mean that the domestic chip manufacturing capacity is shrinking from the global mainstream.
In addition, in view of the importance of the current semiconductor industry, the preparation capacity of advanced processes is not only a gap in the domestic semiconductor industry, but also a gap in social production efficiency and cost, that is, the gap in the productivity of the entire economy.