What are the opportunities for China in the post-Moor era?

(Through the observation of things) What are the opportunities for China in the post-Moor era?

　　China News Agency, Beijing, August 3 (Reporter Liu Yuying) The so-called Moore's Law means that "with the same price, every 18-24 months, the number of transistors that an integrated circuit can hold doubles, and the performance doubles."

Nowadays, the golden rule of this industry is being challenged, and the future direction of the market is variable.

　　Is Moore's Law proposed by one of Intel’s founders, Gordon Moore, reached its limit?

In terms of technology, several major chip companies in the world are embarking on an "arms race."

TSMC’s 5-nanometer process has been mass-produced, and the 3-nanometer process will be mass-produced in 2022.

Samsung is launching a 3-nanometer competition with TSMC and plans to mass-produce 3-nanometer processes in 2022.

Intel, which has fallen behind on the technological route in recent years, suddenly announced mass production of 2nm chips in 2024.

　　It seems that Moore's Law is still moving forward.

Han Xiaomin, general manager of Aiji Micro Consulting, who provides professional consulting for the entire electronic industry industry chain, said in an exclusive interview with China News Agency that the current chip manufacturing process is getting smaller and smaller, but due to the effective transmission of the internal signal of the chip, it is close to the limit of the physical scale. It is already very difficult to improve the process level below 10 nanometers, and to ensure the yield after mass production, higher costs are required.

　　How to continue Moore's Law has become a proposition of the times.

In May of this year, the 18th meeting of the National Leading Group for the Reform of the Science and Technology System and the Construction of the Innovation System had a special discussion on "Potentially Disruptive Integrated Circuit Technology Facing the Post-Moore Era".

　　The industry has already made some explorations.

Han Xiaomin introduced that the major foundry companies are still constantly improving their processes and using other means to move Moore's Law forward.

One way is to upgrade the structure of the transistor from a flat surface to a three-dimensional structure in the past.

Samsung is currently betting on this GAA (surround gate transistor) process.

　　"GAA is currently a clear R&D route, which is mainly promoted by large companies and is basically commercially feasible, but after GAA, there is no more unified route and direction," Han Xiaomin said.

　　Heterogeneous integration is another technical line.

Intel believes that heterogeneous integration is the combination of hardware with different process architectures, different instruction sets, and different functions into a computing system.

At the same time, this is also a collaboration of chips, packaging, systems, and software, rather than a single technical point.

　　At present, AMD, Intel, Nvidia, Qualcomm, Unigroup Zhanrui, Beijing Junzheng and other companies are actively conducting research and development on heterogeneous integration and launching corresponding solutions.

　　"Heterogeneous integration has improved the performance of chip systems by one generation through packaging methods. This technology still has potential to be tapped. For example, what methods and materials can be used to interconnect and stack, and it can continue to be optimized and improved," said Han Xiaomin.

　　The industry has high expectations for the substitution of silicon-based materials. If it can be industrialized, it will be a disruptive technology.

Because as the chip manufacturing process approaches 2 nanometers, the potential of silicon-based material chips has been exhausted, and the use of new materials is considered a fundamental solution to the problem.

All countries have invested in experiments with carbon-based carbon nanotubes and graphene, hoping to grasp the technological commanding heights of the post-Moor era.

　　It is said that the performance and integration of carbon-based chips using 90-nanometer technology is expected to be equivalent to that of silicon-based chips using 28-nanometer technology.

　　"However, the research and development of these carbon-based materials is basically still in the laboratory and the early stages of industrialization, and there is no possibility of replacing silicon-based materials. Even if they are made into devices in the future, they still need a lot of process polishing," Han Xiaomin said. If carbon-based materials enter commercial use in the future, based on cost considerations, there is a high probability that it will only replace silicon-based materials in some areas, and it is unlikely to replace all of them.

　　The third generation of semiconductors is also iterating on chip materials.

The so-called third-generation semiconductor refers to the third-generation semiconductor materials represented by gallium nitride (GaN) and silicon carbide (SiC).

5G base stations, new energy vehicles and fast charging are all important application areas for third-generation semiconductors.

　　China has made it clear that during the "14th Five-Year Plan" period, it will vigorously support the development of the third-generation semiconductor industry.

Han Xiaomin said, driven by application upgrades and policies, the third generation of semiconductors will usher in a period of rapid development.

But it mainly solves the problems of power and radio frequency, and cannot solve the Moore's law problem of CPU and GPU.

　　In addition, there are some new architectures and technical routes, such as spin, storage and calculation integration, online computing, etc.

Han Xiaomin believes that these can be regarded as bypassing Moore's Law, and the purpose is to solve local problems such as calculations.

　　Moore's Law is facing extreme challenges, and the industry has proposed a variety of technical directions. This is not only a turning point, but also an opportunity, which provides a direction for Chinese companies to catch up.

China has taken heterogeneous integration, carbon-based technology, and third-generation semiconductors as key development directions, and has achieved some breakthroughs.

　　Han Xiaomin used to be the general manager of CCID Consulting Integrated Circuit Center of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology of China. He graduated from Tsinghua University with a bachelor’s degree and master’s degree in microelectronics. All research.

　　Han Xiaomin reminded that we still need to see that there are still many shortcomings in China's chip industry. Even some new technologies that have a clear direction are still far from large foreign manufacturers.

For example, in heterogeneous integration, Chinese companies are still at the low end, while the mid-to-high end is still in the hands of several international giants.

　　In addition, some technologies that have not yet been industrialized have great uncertainty. Even if some technologies seem to be one year away from industrialization, they may not be able to get out of the laboratory and become commercial technologies.

In addition, it must also be considered that China's current chip industry chain is still blocked and restricted.

Han Xiaomin believes that some of the technologies in the post-Moore era are being explored by global manufacturers and even have been explored for a longer period of time. These challenges cannot be ignored.

(Finish)