Today, British chip design company Imagination Technologies announced the appointment of Bainong (Wallace Pai) as chairman of Imagination China through its official account Wechat.
A reporter from Science and Technology Innovation Board Daily noted from this message that Bai Nong had previously served as the senior vice president of SMIC's advanced technology business.
Before joining SMIC, Bai Nong served as General Manager of GE Core China. According to the industry media in May 2020, "Bai Nong, the former general manager of GE Core China, joined SMIC, mainly serving as the business and marketing of FinFET advanced process products, so as to dig more customers for SMIC's advanced process." the source also said that Bai Nong directly reported to SMIC Joint CEO Liang Mengsong.
Just on July 4 this year, Wu Jingang, the former core technical staff of SMIC, also offered to resign. According to the announcement, Wu Jingang has been the vice president of technology research and development since 2014 (the above announcement was issued). During his tenure, he was responsible for participating in the research and development and management of the company's FinFET advanced process technology.
In December 2020, SMIC announced the arrival of Jiang Shangyi, a leader in the semiconductor industry, but suddenly received a resignation statement submitted by the company's joint CEO and core technical staff Liang Mengsong.
Although Liang Mengsong chose to stay in SMIC in the end, the reporter noted that the focus of Liang Mengsong, Wu Jingang and Bailong in SMIC is focused on advanced process business.
So, what is the current level of SMIC's advanced process and what is its operational contribution?
A reporter from Science and Technology Innovation Board Daily learned that with the efforts of Liang Mengsong and more than 2000 engineers, SMIC has completed five generations of development from 28nm to 7nm technology, and SMIC has also become the first integrated circuit wafer foundry in mainland China to achieve mass production of 14nmFinFET in the field of logic chips.
Not only that, in a statement sent by Liang Mengsong to SMIC's board of directors circulated on the Internet in December last year, Liang Mengsong also mentioned that "SMIC's 28nm, 14nm, 12nm and Ninten1 technologies have all entered mass production on a large scale, and the development of 7nm technology has been completed, and it will be ready for risk mass production immediately in April next year. The eight most critical and arduous technologies of 5nm and 3nm have also been carried out in an orderly manner, and only with the arrival of the EUV lithography machine, we can enter the stage of comprehensive development.
But the key semiconductor equipment is stuck in the neck.
On December 20, 2020, SMIC confirmed and responded to the inclusion of the United States in the "entity list". According to the company's preliminary assessment, the matter has no significant adverse impact on the company's short-term operation and financial position, but has a significant adverse impact on the R & D and production capacity construction of 10nm and the following advanced processes.
In the Q4 quarter of 2020, SMIC achieved revenue of 6.671 billion yuan, up 10.3% from the same period last year, but affected by the US export ban, the company's 14/28nm process accounted for only 5% of revenue in the Q4 quarter, down sharply from 14.6% in the previous quarter.
Zhao Haijun, joint CEO of SMIC, had three main ideas on the advanced process at the Q4 financial meeting last year: the first is to ensure the continuity of production and will continue to push forward the application for export access license with suppliers; the second is to expand production cautiously; the third is to consider strengthening the components developed by the first-and second-generation FINFET multi-platform, and to expand the reliability and competitiveness of the platform.
In the first quarter of this year, SMIC's revenue from advanced processes showed a pick-up momentum, and the revenue contributed in the first quarter increased month-on-month after troughs.
Zhao said at the Q1 earnings meeting in 2021 that in terms of FinFET process, the first generation FinFET process has entered the stage of mature mass production, the product yield has reached industry standards, the development of a number of derivative platforms is carried out as planned, and the steady introduction of NTO, is achieving the goal of product diversification. Compared with the previous generation technology, the second-generation FinFET technology has greatly increased the transistor density per unit area, and has completed the development of low-voltage process and entered into risk mass production.
Zhao Haijun also said that the depreciation burden of the advanced process is heavy, the profit pressure on the company will exist for a long time, and the physical inventory control will bring greater risk and uncertainty to the advanced process.
In this context, SMIC will spend most of its capital expenditure (about 28.1 billion yuan) in 2021 on the expansion of mature processes with strong demand, and a small portion on advanced processes.
In fact, the more advanced the process is, the higher the investment cost will be. According to industry data, the construction of a 50, 000-chip 3nm production line requires more than US $20 billion in equipment investment, which is more than three times that of 14nm and five times that of 28nm, while 3nm chips only reduce power consumption by 25% and improve performance by 15% compared with 5nm chips.
At present, only TSMC and Samsung can provide 7nm and below advanced process, Intel is expected to complete the research and development of 7nm process in 2021. Among them, TSMC raised its capital expenditure this year to US $30 billion, 80% of which was spent on N3, N5, N7 and other advanced technologies.
According to the second-quarter financial results released by TSMC on July 15, the contribution of 5nm and 7nm advanced technology to TSMC's revenue is almost the same compared with the previous quarter, accounting for 49% of the total revenue. Among them, the 7nm process accounts for 31% of the total revenue, and the 5nm process accounts for 18%.
Step Rixin, Executive Director of Chuangdao Investment Consulting, told Science and Technology Innovation Board Daily that there are two main reasons for the limitation of the advanced process: one is external reasons, the EUV lithography machine that supports the high-end process is limited, and the domestic wafer generation factories are unable to solve this problem; second, the accumulation of domestic chip manufacturing technology is weak, and long-term technical R & D investment is needed to make a breakthrough in the high-end process.
According to a research report released by Cinda Securities, SMIC, as the only company in mainland China to achieve mass production of 14nmFinFET, although the research and development of advanced processes affected by the US ban has slowed down, as the foundry with the most capital, talent and technological advantages in mainland China, SMIC will still be fully competitive in the long run.
After the departure of two important scientific research talents, whether SMIC's advanced process research and development progress is affected is worthy of continuous attention.
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