breaking the “last mile” of chip industrialization
2024-09-15
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china youth daily and china youth network reporter zhang yi
can we make good and cheap chips? this is a question that yang guangming, chief technology officer of china electronics engineering design institute co., ltd. (hereinafter referred to as cesi), has been working on for a long time.
chips are called the "heart of the digital world". there is one chip hidden in an ordinary water dispenser, dozens of chips in a mobile phone, and 1,500 to 3,000 chips in a new energy vehicle...energy revolution, smart manufacturing and other technological innovations are inseparable from the support of chips. however, chips are also the number one imported commodity in my country.
yang guangming has been deeply involved in the industry for decades. in his opinion, the "bottleneck" of chips is mainly reflected in the lack of market competitiveness in the consumer field. the key is to solve the problem of moving from the laboratory to large-scale mass production and to open up the "last mile" of industrialization.
yang guangming, chief technology officer of the china institute of electronics, explains how to promote the "last mile" of semiconductor industrialization. photo provided by the interviewee
why is the “last mile” so difficult?
"a chip the size of a fingernail integrates 30 billion transistors, and the length of the wires inside exceeds 20 kilometers when unfolded." yang guangming said that the difficulty of this kind of processing precision can be imagined.
semiconductor production plants that produce chips are complex and large precision manufacturing systems. they are highly automated, require expensive industrial equipment, and require huge investments. they have extremely stringent environmental requirements, including ultra-high-precision clean rooms, ultra-pure water that does not contain any metal ions or impurities, and production conditions with constant temperature and humidity. the high precision of process equipment also places extremely strict demands on micro-vibration environmental control.
yang guangming cited a semiconductor production line project they had participated in as an example. the clean room area was 300,000 square meters, about the size of more than 40 football fields. it consumed about 1.8 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity each year, close to the annual electricity consumption of residents in a city with a population of 2 million. semiconductor production requires multiple cleanings, and consumes about 15 million cubic meters of water each year, equivalent to the amount of water in west lake. "this is the result of us taking various measures to allow a drop of water to be recycled three times in the factory."
"saving 10% or wasting 10% is related to the company's market competitiveness and may very well determine whether the company makes a profit or a loss." yang guangming introduced that they carry out comprehensive planning and continuous optimization for the production line, continuously reducing the company's manufacturing costs and seeking the optimal solution.
jin chunfeng, head of the vibration technology research center of the chinese academy of electronics, introduced that the core process of chip manufacturing in the semiconductor industry is photolithography. if the photolithography is disturbed by slight vibrations and causes deviation, the entire chip will be destroyed.
as the requirements for micro-vibration control in precision equipment continue to increase, the traditional passive anti-micro-vibration mode can no longer meet the accuracy requirements, and active control vibration isolation has become a necessary means.
jin chunfeng said that this technology had been monopolized by foreign countries before, and the lowest vibration speed that could be achieved internationally was about 0.1um/s. after years of technological accumulation, the china institute of electronics has developed china's first large-scale active control vibration isolation device, which can achieve a vibration speed of 0.05um/s in the 1-100hz frequency band, breaking the foreign monopoly in one fell swoop, reaching the world's leading level, and laying a technical foundation for solving the "bottleneck" problem.
semiconductor chip production and processing must be carried out in a clean room, which requires the removal of dust particles and the capture of dust 100 times smaller than the diameter of a hair. the china institute of electronics has accumulated decades of experience in the field of clean technology. it can not only accurately control parts with high clean environment requirements, but also reduce the construction investment of clean rooms. in addition, the flat-plate chemical filter and chemical filtration unit independently developed by the company are the first commercial chemical filtration equipment in china, with a processing efficiency of 98%, filling the domestic technology gap.
yan dong, a clean technology expert at the institute, said that in addition to the precise design and construction in the early stages of the project, during the project operation, full-cycle service guarantees of intelligent diagnostic services can also be provided to further improve the yield rate.
interior of the project clean room provided by the interviewee
youth relay attack
bai fan, an employee of the digital technology center of the chinese academy of electronics, remembers that one day four years ago, a latest domestic mobile phone that could have been delivered upon ordering was suddenly out of stock due to the us government's escalating sanctions. it was a birthday present he had originally intended to give to his father on his 70th birthday.
as an ordinary consumer, bai fan felt for the first time the impact of western technology blockade on his life. as a scientific researcher in the semiconductor field, he felt the urgency of the current situation that the country's high-end chips were constrained by others.
chips may seem small, but their production is extremely complex. if we can present the real production status of the factory through models before the factory is built, we can avoid unnecessary detours and greatly improve production efficiency.
he wanted to contribute. the digital technology center where bai fan worked was responsible for this task - simulating the production of real factories in digital form to speed up the construction of semiconductor factories, optimize the layout of production lines, and save investment. at that time, this young team of 40 members, with an average age of less than 34, raced against time to tackle technical problems.
now, their scientific research results have been applied to specific projects, providing semiconductor companies with more advanced engineering design solutions.
the latest digital twin factory solution solves the problem of process source and factory system breakpoints. xia liankun, general manager of china electronics research institute, said that after practice and calculation, the factory operation efficiency has increased by more than 5%, the system has been optimized by more than 8%, and the investment has been reduced by more than 12%. after the optimization of some links, the annual operation cost can be reduced by nearly 10 million yuan.
"we will tackle whatever the country needs." the older generation of scientists at the china electronics institute still remember that their research topics were all determined based on the country's major needs. the china electronics institute was born during the country's "first five-year plan" period. at that time, china's industrial foundation was weak, and some were even blank. as the pioneer of china's electronic industry engineering technology, it has worked hard to win many "firsts" in the field of the electronic industry, making the hard-core electronic industry the country's confidence.
from the initial design team of dozens of people to the current team of more than 6,000 people, integrating design and scientific research, the engineering spirit has inspired generations of young scientific and technological workers to take over and serve the country's scientific and technological innovation. today, the "last mile" of the chip industry is constantly being optimized and unblocked. yang guangming said that there is still a long way to go to achieve independent and controllable chips, but he has strong confidence that there will be greater breakthroughs in the next few years.
source: china youth daily client
