China very badly wants to be self-sufficient when it comes to manufacturing chipsets. But it has had a problem as the U.S. has tried to prevent this from happening. China’s largest foundry, Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation (SMIC), could only produce chips using its 14nm process node compared to the 5nm process node being used by leading foundries TSMC and Samsung (and both will be shipping 3nm chips later this year).
Despite U.S. sanctions, SMIC is beginning work on reducing the process node lead that TSMC and Samsung have
Even without a $150 million EUV machine, like the one in this picture, SMIC is able to work on the 7nm process node
The EUV machine etches circuitry designs on a wafer that are a fraction of the thickness of a human hair. The machine has been credited with keeping Moore’s Law alive; that is the observation made by Intel co-founder Gordon Moore that the number of transistors in chips would double, at first every year. When Moore revised his “Law” in the 1970s, he changed the time frame to “every other year.”
SMIC might have copied TSMC’s technology in order to build its 7nm SoC.
TSMC has sued SMIC twice for copying its technology
The MinerVa Bitcoin mining chip shows signs of being an early stage production. Bitcoin miners do not use much RAM memory which allows the 7nm SMIC chip to get by without the full capabilities that similar chips from other cutting-edge foundries would have.
Still, while we hate to repeat ourselves, the Chinese government has the money and the brainpower to eventually get around the lack of an EUV machine. In the meantime, SMIC is sure to build more complex chipsets based on its 7nm process node. Right now, SMIC’s 7nm node isn’t even ready to tackle smartphones, or else we’d see Huawei use it in its handsets.