Reborn Shenhao Miner

Chapter 471 Drift Film!!

Li Mingxuan shook the hand of Ni Guangnan, who was the chief engineer of microelectronics, and said gratefully: “Chief Engineer Ni, you and you have worked hard!” ”

“Mr. Li, this is what we should do, you have provided us with such a good research environment, what better way to repay you and the country than to design an outstanding chip!”

Ni Guangnan paused here, and then said: “And now it is about to be tape-out, whether it can reach the design index, further testing is needed!” ”

Hearing this, Li Mingxuan nodded.

“When is tape-out?”

“It’s about to start, do you want to see if Mr. Li wants to take a look!”

Ni Guangnan suggested.

“Of course, as the first self-developed chip we manufactured, I naturally won’t miss it!”

Li Mingxuan said.

In fact, the tape-out process is the same as gambling, there is a problem of success rate.

Because the price of tape-out is quite expensive, especially for some of the latest developed chips.

Generally speaking, future generations of enterprises are looking for foreign foundries to tape out.

Like Jinxiu Microelectronics, it is very rare to have production equipment such as a lithography machine and be able to design more chips by themselves.

Although the chips produced by Jinxiu are now low-end chips, they are basically used in TVs, washing machines and mechanical equipment.

Some even use the 65nm process as a waste.

But even so, he has accumulated a lot of experience for the employees of Weidianzi.

Now there are nine lithography machines per year, with an annual output of about 4 million chips.

Although the output is a little smaller, the road has to be taken step by step, and it is impossible to eat fat in one go.

In fact, now the whole world can produce and design its own chip manufacturers, except for Intel, there are really not a few.

Of course, such a process as tape-out, Splendid Microelectronics can also be regarded as driving ducks to the shelves.

Success rates are not guaranteed.

Of course, if you invite foreign foundries to give chips tape-out, although the success rate will increase, the price is quite expensive, like a high-end chip, if it is an ordinary company three or four times of tape-out failure, it can cause a huge consumption of funds.

Basically, if you fail again, you almost go bankrupt.

However, Li Mingxuan, who has deep pockets, does not care about this.

What he needs are employees of Fairview Microelectronics to gain experience.

Including design, production, packaging and other links, can not fake hands to truly achieve self-sufficiency, so that the future will not be pinched.

An hour later, change into dust-proof clothing and be in the 10,000-level dust-free workshop.

Ni Guangnan took Huang Yuguang, Jiang Hong and other returned technical backbones to accompany Li Mingxuan to watch the tape-out process.

In fact, if this is just a chip, everyone will not be so nervous at all, after all, the general low-level chip tape-out price, even if it fails, it will not cost much.

However, the chip named Pangu 1 by Jinxiu Microelectronics is a super complex chip with a new instruction set.

Hundreds of researchers in Jinxiu are also designing chips with this architecture for the first time.

Difficulty and effect aside, the cost of tape-out is childlike.

I’m afraid many people will ask, why is the tape-out so expensive, isn’t there a lithography machine and a mouth etching machine?

In fact, streaming is more expensive, streaming a film is equivalent to burning the boss’s wallet again!

In the cost breakdown of the tape-out, the cost of machinery and equipment, the cost of chemical liquid, etc. are not a big head, which is not worth much at all.

In terms of the most advanced lithography machine in 2005, the annual depreciation cost is about 80 million Chinese yuan, and the hourly depreciation cost is about 9132 yuan, so it is estimated that the start-up cost of one lithography machine is about 20,000 yuan per hour.

The mass production throughput of 1 lithography machine is 250 12-inch wafers per hour, and each wafer can cut at least 300 dies (unpackaged chip cores)

In other words, if the tape out film, the output of the lithography machine for 1 hour of work is more than enough, which can fully meet the verification needs of the tapeout.

In other words, the cost of using the lithography machine is not the cost of tape-out.

So, where is the bulk of the cost of tape-out? The answer is masking!

Simply put, the mask is a photolithography processing template, equivalent to the film of the film camera era, on top of which is a dense chip circuit.

The work of the lithography machine is to transcribe and develop the circuit diagram on the mask from the photoresist, and then etch, and then transfer it to the silicon wafer.

The masks used to produce high-end chips are now very expensive, $600,000 for a DUV mask.

This is only a DUV mask, if it is a later EUV mask, a piece is 5 million US dollars, which is more than 8 times the DUV mask, the difference between these two masks is that the former can only do 25n and the latter can do less than 10nlm.

Later generations of Huawei’s Qi Manure 985 with TSMC’s 7nm EUV process tape-out cost at least 30 million US dollars…

That’s why.

Due to the complex internal structure of such multimedia high-end chips like Pangu 1st generation chips, multi-layer wiring structures are used, and each layer requires 2 to 4 masks, so a set of chips even needs 10 masks.

That is, each tape-out, the cost of DUV mask alone is 6 million US dollars.

If you think about it, if the tape-out fails a few times, which boss can stand it more.

At this time in the main control area, Li Mingxuan and others were nervously looking at the tape-out of Pangu 1st generation chips, and with a 12-inch wafer, it was sent to the lithography machine, and the purple light began to develop the DUV mask circuit diagram on the wafer with the help of photoresist.

This process is very slow.

This is like making a cake with 100 layers, each layer needs to be made Of course, the current chip cannot be as complex as the future life, a wafer takes 3 months.

However, even so, it takes 2 weeks at the fastest, and about 1 week at the slowest depending on the complexity of the chip, after all, the more you need to accurately carve the cake, the more complicated it is.

Li Mingxuan looked at Ni Guangnan for a while and asked, “Ni Gong, how long will this take?” ”

“Maybe two or three months or more, after all, our Pangu 1 generation is a very complex chip!”

Ni Guangnan explained.

“Okay!”

Li Mingxuan sighed, he thought that the tape-out process was fast at first.

I didn’t expect it to take so long.

In addition, even if they wear dust suits, they cannot enter the manufacturing workshop to watch.

Because for this precision manufacturing, any dust may make chip manufacturing fail.

At most, they can only watch through the glass and watch the employees operate the machine.

So after watching for a while, Comrade Xiao Li decided to leave first.

Anyway, here is Ni Guangnan watching, he doesn’t have to worry.

Now that the chip problem has been solved, the roadblocks blocking the development of smartphones have basically been removed.

Next, there is other software and hardware.

Li Mingxuan immediately asked Academician Ni and others to take good care of their health again, and then instructed the specially equipped doctors to always pay attention to the health problems of Academician Ni and others, and try to meet the diet and so on.

He left with his bodyguards.