New hope for China's chip industry

Chipmaker SiCarrier offers new solution for China's semiconductor industry. Photo: Bloomberg .

SiCarrier, a Chinese semiconductor equipment maker, grabbed the spotlight at a three-day event in Shanghai last week, where the company unveiled new chipmaking tools that could help boost its efforts to make its own chips in the face of U.S. export controls.

Just over four years after its founding, SiCarrier, backed by the Shenzhen government, has launched dozens of new chip-making machines, all of which were on display at Semicon China, an annual gathering of China’s leading semiconductor companies.

At the event, Huawei also showed off its devices to the public for the first time. According to some industry experts, the tech giant's ideas may have contributed to the production of 7nm chips, which will debut on the Mate 60 Pro smartphone in 2023. However, the company has not yet confirmed these claims.

Huawei has not yet specified the process nodes its machines can reach. A person at the event said that some nodes, including etching tools not listed in the product list, are capable of supporting 5nm chip production.

This is consistent with Huawei’s 2023 patent application for a process that would allow 5nm manufacturing using deep ultraviolet (DUV) lithography tools. Such advanced chips typically require extreme ultraviolet lithography, but most are banned from being exported to China.

For SiCarrier, the company’s booth attracted a large crowd, with many potential customers interested in its next-generation chip products, leading some experts to believe that China will soon reduce its dependence on foreign chipmaking equipment and become self-sufficient in future supplies.

Source: https://znews.vn/hy-vong-moi-cua-nganh-chip-trung-quoc-post1541093.html