Russian Electronics: Semiconductor and Processors #2

Do not expect Russia to manufacture anything of significance with 65nm. From what I remember Mikron has a prototype process. But they figured out because of surface defects on 200mm wafers not designed for doing anything over 90nm plus other things, the defect rate on the chips manufactured at 65nm with 200mm KrF tools is kind of high, so at most it will be useful to make highly regular chips like memory chips. I think the only thing that Mikron did manufacture at 65nm was an SRAM.

Mikron has significant capacity at 180nm and 90nm. Both older fabs with 150mm wafers which can do 180nm, and the new fab with 200mm wafers which can do 90nm.

There is also Nm-Tech, it has tools which should be able to do 90nm on 200mm wafers but last I heard they were still stuck manufacturing at 250nm.

Syntacore seems to be working on a new RISC-V core design called the SCR9.
This is a Russian company owned by Yadro which designs RISC-V soft-cores that they sell as RTL to chip designers and manufacturers.
This is kind of similar to how ARM (the company) operates when they design and sell ARM core designs.

SCR9 is a 64-bit quad-issue out-of-order processor with vector instructions. The processor cluster can have up to 16 cores and up to 16 MB of L3 cache.
This processor should be twice more powerful in terms of integer performance than their older SCR7 processor which was dual-issue out-of-order.
It also has vector instructions. The vector unit is capable of operations with 8-bit to 64-bit values with a vector unit up to 512-bit wide (!)
The vector unit can do two vector operations per cycle. This is quite powerful. Would make it one of the most powerful RISC-V core designs around.





This slide is showing cases of clients using their prior SCR7 dual-issue out-of-order core design.


Notice the 56 core (!) SCR7 processor design at 7nm which they claim taped out in 2021 for an EMEA client. That is pretty significant.

They also claim an EMEA client taped out a quad-core SCR7 processor at 12nm just last year.

kvs wrote:The 200 mm wafer defect story smells.   Russia is one of the few countries on the planet that can manufacture high purity and consistency
crystals on the planet.  This includes industrial diamonds.   The notion that it couldn't produce high grade 200 mm silicon wafers is BS.  
...
Any talk about 90 nm and 65 nm is based on obsolete information.   The 65 nm Mikron manufacturing story is a decade old.   The 28 nm
EUV lithography breakout will be probably like with China.   Once the 28 nm capability is available the 14 nm capability is a dial setting away
and all the effort is in the chip physical architecture (SOI, copper, FinFet, etc.).

According to several Russian news stories, in Russia they only produced 150 mm wafer substrates from silicon crystals. The 200 mm wafer substrates were imported. Right now there is a program to make 200 mm wafer substrates to stop relying on imports. As for why they did not do this sooner, it was probably because only a couple companies like Mikron and Nm-Tech used those wafers.

No one really does 65 nm with 200mm wafers other than Mikron. The rest of the world switched to 300 mm wafers around the time that processes smaller than 90 nm came out. So the 200mm wafers available in the international market aren't defect free enough to manufacture under 90 nm reliably.

Like I posted here before they are building a small 28 nm test fab with 300 mm wafers right now just north of the Nm-Tech fab in Zelenograd. Who knows when it will be operational. But I would not be surprised if they got it to work somehow. They might get the tools for it via the black market just to ensure 28 nm production before the Russian lithography machine is available.

lancelot wrote:According to several Russian news stories, in Russia they only produced 150 mm wafer substrates from silicon crystals. The 200 mm wafer substrates were imported. Right now there is a program to make 200 mm wafer substrates to stop relying on imports. As for why they did not do this sooner, it was probably because only a couple companies like Mikron and Nm-Tech used those wafers.

No one really does 65 nm with 200mm wafers other than Mikron. The rest of the world switched to 300 mm wafers around the time that processes smaller than 90 nm came out. So the 200mm wafers available in the international market aren't defect free enough to manufacture under 90 nm reliably.

Like I posted here before they are building a small 28 nm test fab with 300 mm wafers right now just north of the Nm-Tech fab in Zelenograd. Who knows when it will be operational. But I would not be surprised if they got it to work somehow. They might get the tools for it via the black market just to ensure 28 nm production before the Russian lithography machine is available.

So, just to understand. Does Russia produce 200 mm wafers now? I cannot understand if the 90 nm chips are now made using imported wafers or locally produced wafers.

And the 300mm wafers for 28 nm manufacturing will be made in Russia or imported?

Btw, the 90nm chips will still have a lot of applications even after Russia will have mastered 14 nm manufacturing.

kvs wrote:https://www.eetimes.com/russias-angstrem-modernizes-wafer-fab/

Angstrem has a 200 mm wafer production line from around 2010.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_semiconductor_fabrication_plants

https://mvc-nn.ru/en/wafers

ICSM makes 200 mm SOI wafers.

"Small batch" does no mean inferiority, unlike western wankers love to peddle.   The product still has to be made.   Scaling production is another
problem mostly about money.  

So apparently there is also this plant in Moscow, Crocus nano, which produces 300 mm wafers

http://crocusnano.com/en/manufacturing-technologies

MANUFACTURING TECHNOLOGIES
Crocus Nano Electronics is a 300mm wafer diameter and 90/55 nm node Copper BEOL wafer fab capable of integrating MRAM technology between the interconnect levels. The current capacity is up to 4000 wafers/mounth. The cleanroom is Bay class 1,000 and with a class 10,000 Chase (equipment bay)

Process scope:

Magnetic Layer Module
90nm dual damascene backend of line CMOS including magnetic cladding and strap
Equipment:

Magnetic PVD Deposition system
PECVD (TEOS & SiN)
PVD (Me)
CMP
Electroplating
Delectric and Metal Etch
Photolithography
Magnetic Etch/Encapsulation
Metrology (Resist thickness, CD, Overlay)

kvs wrote:https://www.eetimes.com/russias-angstrem-modernizes-wafer-fab/
Angstrem has a 200 mm wafer production line from around 2010.

That is a foundry i.e. a fab where they do lithography and etch wafers to make ICs. They "print" chips on blank wafers. That EETimes article is talking about what became the Angstrem-T fab and is Nm-Tech today. They neither make silicon crystal nor cut it into blank wafers.

kvs wrote:ICSM makes 200 mm SOI wafers.

These SOI wafers are made by processing regular imported 200mm Si wafers with a special process and then grinding them down. You still need to get the Si wafers somehow. i.e. grow the silicon crystal and cut it into wafers. From what I get from the articles in the Russian press, right now Russia still does not grow its own 200mm silicon crystals. But only 150mm crystals with less diameter. Anyway, I think this "problem" is kind of overblown. China has massive capacity to make 200mm and even 300mm wafers with several Chinese companies making them. Blank wafer supply from Europe was cut, and replaced with Chinese suppliers. Big whoop.

kvs wrote:There is a surge of 200 mm wafer plants underway in the global space because of industrial demand. The value of 300 mm wafers is
volume of chip production and not chip resolution. To get higher yields the defect rate in the wafers needs to be no worse than the
200 mm wafers per unit area. This requires higher manufacturing tolerances since defect rates are proportional to surface area.

It is not that simple. Higher resolution tools are typically more expensive. The cost of the tools and fabs grows exponentially with each generation with a power law known as Rock's law.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moore%27s_second_law

To keep the cost of individual chips down, they increase the size of the wafers every several generations so that each tool can process more area simultaneously. The industry has already gone from 1-inch (25mm), to 2-inch, 3-inch, 4-inch, 5-inch, 6-inch, 8-inch (200mm), and now it is at 12 inch (300mm) diameter.

The ArF, ArFi, and EUV lithography tools are made to process 300mm wafers from the get go. And modern KrF and i-line tools can process either 300mm or 200mm wafers. If you can process 300mm wafers, it does not make economic sense to use the smaller wafers. Because you need to amortize the cost of the tools by producing chips. The more chips you produce the better. A 300mm wafer has 2.25x more area than a 200mm wafer. So you can produce 2.25x more chips in the same amount of time with one. Making them 2.25x cheaper. The cost of the blank wafer and chemicals is kind of marginalized by the cost of buying the tools.

The smaller wafers aren't made to the same tolerances since there is no demand for working at high resolution with small wafers. So no one makes them with those tolerances. So let's say they are neither cut, grinded, nor polished to the same specifications.

Rodion_Romanovic wrote:So apparently there is also this plant in Moscow, Crocus nano, which produces 300 mm wafers

Yes. This was founded by Rusnano initially to make MRAM. But that fab can only print 2 metalization layers in a special process specific to MRAM. Then the wafers are sent to an independent fab in China to print the rest of the layers. This Crocus fab has too few tools to run a full logic process. For reference a 65nm logic process has like 11 metal layers.

It's quite funny, however, that the problems of Russian silicon products are discussed here first of all. At the same time, there is practically no news that Russia, for example, occupies 40% of the world market for artificial sapphires, which is also a necessary part of the electronics manufacturing process. This is not counting the market for noble gases of high purity.

We already talked about that here several pages ago. Sapphire crystal is used for specialty processes. It is used, among other things, to make GaN LEDs with GaN on Sapphire process. It is not typically used to make regular logic or memory chips. Those use silicon wafers.

There are alternatives to using GaN on Sapphire. There is GaN on Silicon and GaN on Silicon Carbide as well.

But yes, the fact that Russia can already manufacture 150mm silicon crystals, and 200mm sapphire crystals, shows they could manufacture 200mm silicon crystals if they wanted to. And they are working on it.

As for the noble gases, the main producers were Russia, Ukraine, and China. With the war and the sanctions Taiwanese TSMC and the West have been buying gases from China.

It is kind of pointless to be extremely worried about the wafer and chemical imports though. The West stopped selling them, so Russia switched to Chinese suppliers. There are plenty of those.

Now that Russia needs to find its own sources and has to develop some of its own it should be using its technology base and theoretical physics potential and look at existing technology and rather than just replicate it, look at its problems and limitations and issues and start to look and alternative ideas and methods and materials and create something new.

No point spending billions to redesign the wheel when the hoverboard is an option...

https://www.typhoon.su/


Some interesting news..

Unfortunately I dont know what most of the stuff in here is but it tells me that there is some serious work om semiconductors in Russia..

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ternary_computer

Yeah thats not helping..

Starting at 12:12 you can see Russian machine tools for cleaning 100-150mm wafers and test equipment for checking for defects on these kinds of wafers. The wafer cleaning is done with plasma.
These guys have developed a vacuum chamber for the machine tools and enclosures for wafers to prevent their contamination while handling them.
These machine tools are used by educational institutions and small scale laboratories in Russia.

Looking at their website they also either have or are developing plasma etching tools, and layer deposition equipment:
https://www.gn-tech.ru/en/produktsiya/

Will be interesting to see what they can learn from creating X ray lasers... I wonder if they might find a frequency that passes easily through the atmosphere that might be good for use against drones and weapons and other air targets? Perhaps there is a frequency that would be useful in space so it could be fitted to satellites for use against other satellites or enemy nuclear weapons in space...

More here:
https://smoothiex12.blogspot.com/2023/12/a-very-timely.html

Short wavelength light scatters
more off any air molecules than long wavelength light such as infra-red. That is why the sky is blue.

The sky is blue because the other colours of the spectrum are absorbed by water vapour or some such thing... which is why the sea or large bodies of water look blue too.

Blue ray technology replaced IR because its shorter wavelength allowed more information to be placed on a compact disc.

X rays are even shorter still so should allow even more compact and precise burning to be done.

X ray lasers might have a range of useful properties that can be used in a range of areas.

...and:

Russia could have done this decades ago.. They would have a 14nm by now. Why does Russia wait to get sanctioned before initiating these projects? This project If I remember right started in 2014 and it just paused until what? 2021?