Russian Electronics: Semiconductor and Processors

seems most agree that

setting up a high volume CPU fab to reach "commercial" volumes re 28nm or 14nm
is not only out of Russia's technical reach right now
but is also stupendously expensive .... and very time consuming
and only by selling your products at global volumes can you recoup your capital investment
and that isn't going to happen for political reasons
Russia will therefore never recoup its capital investment
and therefore the decision to do so will be 100% strategic not commercial

it is also generally agreed that 28nm and its closely related spawn 12-14nm are more than enough for Russia's needs
28nm ok for desktop units .... 12-14nm ok for mobile units

it is also agreed that Elbrus and Baikal have designed pretty good chips in both sizes

so we end up with the conclusion that producing 28nm size CPUs on less than "ideal" for commercial volumes tech
is the best current option ....
it will be relatively slow production but its only option for Russia anyway
but it would keep Baikal and Elbrus developments active

now we are debating/discussing whether this "less than ideal" production process is possible inside Russia right now ?
does seem they are close ? but the jury is out ....

meanwhile in a lot of areas "older" 90nm stuff is perfectly fine for space. military and wherever you need a robust chip
in fact it is the best option ...

so we are really talking about servers, desktops and mobile equipment re 28nm and 12-14nm

everyone seems to agree you can bring in more than enough "older" CPUs via the grey market to keep your
servers etc going ..... despite being full of potential "holes" planted by the NSA ?
but by using your own Linux based OS's and encryption you can get around this ? ....
and also keep them well cooled and don't overclock them to extend their life beyond the "warranty period"

so I seem to end up with the conclusion
that we are really on about keeping Russian CPU design alive via low volume "non-ideal" production methods
to keep Baikal, Elbrus and Skif etc developments in 28, 12-14 nm alive ?
which is strategically important ... re braindrain effect

and getting those processors into equipment used by govt and key industries
is also strategically important

yes. I've added nothing new .... just thinking aloud ....

But as pointed out earlier, Russia has already instructed to build two types of Lithography equipment for production of chips 130nm and 28nm. So your suggestion isn't being taken into consideration by the Ministry of Industry and Trade - they know far better than you or I about what is needed and in demand in Russia.

Some people are not understanding... this is not a spat that will be fixed in 6 months after the conflict in the Ukraine ends, this is a total shift away from the west and towards the rest of the world for Russia.

Russia needs to either make everything it needs for itself or from an independent party not controlled by the west.

It is not a waste of time for Russia to cover all its own needs because the rest of the world has those same needs too and when things are up and running Russia is going to be the main rival to the west for rest of the world contracts... they wont bully or sanction other countries, except those that sanction them.

It is the same with aircraft, by meeting their own needs they develop various aircraft in different weight ranges that satisfy the needs of the rest of the world too.

Why build scalable jet engines that can be used from PD-8 to PD-50 if you only want to make Il-476s?

Most consumer electronics they can buy from China and cooperation with Huawei and other Chinese companies will boost both sides and satisfy needs and fill gaps left by the absence of western companies.

Especially when Russia get pushed into a box where they cannot sell to the whole world market while those countries can basically continue trading.

The west is making a box for itself... most countries wont put up with being told to do as the US tells them... even Pakistan and India have said no to the US openly, likely leading to attempts to remove Khan from power... I know Turkey will understand that feeling... not just the risk of being taken out of the top job and put in jail or assassinated, but the fact that the US controls who rules your country... it is a wake up call.... the irony is that during the Cold War it was the Soviet Union that was depicted as some big octapus with tentacles reachng into every country manipulating and controlling or trying to... seems that should have been the US.

Another good reason for a divorce.

When the US dollar tanks their ability to pay their bribes will collapse and they will rely on good will and propaganda.... good luck with that.

Russia didn't make its own helicopter or ship based gas turbine engines, most of their transport planes are still Ukrainian/Soviet.

This divorce with the west means a lot of things they bought from the west they will need to create themselves or source from other sources, and they are easily capable of doing either.

The cost involved might be too much for most western countries up to their eyeballs in debt... other than the US who can just print more money, but Russia is balancing its budgets and also needs computers that are safe with no backdoors or other western bullshit... they can use their technical skills and look at existing designs and work out how to improve them as far as possible but also at the same time look at potential new technology that might replace it all and make it obsolete... they way that they did with their military equipment where weapons and systems were upgraded as far as possible and then quickly upgraded in service while parallel to this they also started programmes for the next generation replacement equipment that over the longer term would replace those items in service... most of which were leftovers from the Cold War.

The potential not only to make things themselves but to actually make them better and also apply new technology and techniques and materials to make them quicker and easier and cheaper to make is enormous... what a great investment...

Russia's tech industry price structure does not need to mirror the west. As with the MIC, the west is full of corruption.

lancelot wrote:A 28nm fab would not be that expensive. It would cost like $2-4 billion USD. That is well within the reach of Russia.
It is when you get to 5nm or lower with EUV that the price of the fab goes up by like an order of magnitude.
At that point you cannot justify that investment unless you have a huge market to sell to.

The problem is with the current sanctions Russia cannot buy the equipment to make a 28nm fab. Neither new nor used.
Not that there are used tools around given all the factories which can manufacture at 28nm are probably near full capacity right now.

Russia bought the tools for Angstrem when AMD (now Globalfoundries) in Dresden switched to 28nm production. AMD had to get rid of their older 130/90nm tools. So they sold them for cheap including a license for the process technology to Russia. I think that was a good deal. Even if it wasn't followed through quickly enough and they took forever to build the facilities and put the equipment in them. Supposedly Angstrem got the equipment and licenses for the process from AMD for like $500 million USD back when AMD were in a tough financial condition around a decade ago.

The Chinese are still working on making a 28nm production line with 100% Chinese tools. So even they cannot do it right now.
Even when the Chinese can do it they will have issues scaling production and getting the tools to work reliably. Realistically at best this will happen in like two years. There are rumors the SMIC fab at Beijing will have 100% Chinese tools and it is going to use 300mm wafers. Still unknown which design rules it will use though. Might not even be 28nm. For reference the fab is supposed to cost $7.6 billion USD and produce 35,000 wafers of 300mm diameter a month. That is like twice the cost of other similar fabs and probably reflects the fact the factory was built more recently (i.e. inflation) and the extra premium of having to use Chinese tools. You cannot expect the early production tools to be cheaper than more established ones with a long production run.

Existing Chinese semi fabs at 28nm or better will be using Western tools and will be vulnerable to sanctions.

Which companies in the west actually manufactures those tools?
What is required to actually set up such production?

Having such tooling production is something that can be used for something else?

Finally...are those tools consumables or not?

Sorry, for me the topic is quite interesting but I do not have any knowledge in this area.

Well those tools and equipment didn't just fall from the sky... they were designed and built, and there is no reason others can't also do the same.

With their excellent educated skillforce I am sure the Russians could work on the problem and use new technology and new physics and new ideas and make it better.

As a stopgap the Russians made existing engines they previously got from Motor Sich, they basically made the engines themselves based on the original designs while they worked on a new range of replacement engines and they found with their more modern production equipment and new materials they could make them more precisely and that on its own improved airflows and temperature tolerances and therefore also performance without actually changing the designs at all.

Making stuff really small is an entire branch of useful technologies for the future... not just computers but nano bots and all sorts of other interesting and useful things that Russia needs to be in the game regarding... this investment is important, not just for Russia, they can supply others and work with others... there is no reason why India couldn't become the worlds best car maker, or the production hub of new designed computer chips... there is plenty of money around in the rest of the world and properly invested money is not just spent... the dividends mean you tend to get your money back with interest so it generates money... if done correctly.

Russia is not alone... the rest of the world is under threat from an out of control US... they probably want more independence too.

Russia does not have to start from scratch. It already has companies that produce tools for wafer processing. The all-important
practical experience is not absent in Russia. The time is ripe for Russia to get in gear and produce EUV IC manufacturing equipment
itself. It can use China to contract production volume which it cannot have itself in the initial stages. In a few years that need
will abate.

I really do not see a technological barrier for high resolution lithography in Russia. It is the same story as with all the other sectors
that became dominated by the west in the 1990s. After western sanctions spasm of 2014 this distortion is being successfully removed.

kvs wrote:Russia does not have to start from scratch.  It already has companies that produce tools for wafer processing.   The all-important
practical experience is not absent in Russia.   The time is ripe for Russia to get in gear and produce EUV IC manufacturing equipment
itself.  It can use China to contract production volume which it cannot have itself in the initial stages.   In a few years that need
will abate.  

I really do not see a technological barrier for high resolution lithography in Russia.   It is the same story as with all the other sectors
that became dominated by the west in the 1990s.   After western sanctions spasm of 2014 this distortion is being successfully removed.

I guess truths is somewhat between urra we got all and oh no we are in the middle of big ass. AFAIK There are parts of the whole microelectronics lifecycle, the question is how fast you can add missing elements i mean time vs. money. How cooperation with China and eventually late India can help here?

GunshipDemocracy wrote:

kvs wrote:Russia does not have to start from scratch.  It already has companies that produce tools for wafer processing.   The all-important
practical experience is not absent in Russia.   The time is ripe for Russia to get in gear and produce EUV IC manufacturing equipment
itself.  It can use China to contract production volume which it cannot have itself in the initial stages.   In a few years that need
will abate.  

I really do not see a technological barrier for high resolution lithography in Russia.   It is the same story as with all the other sectors
that became dominated by the west in the 1990s.   After western sanctions spasm of 2014 this distortion is being successfully removed.

I guess truths is somewhat between urra we got all and oh no we are in the middle of big ass. AFAIK  There are parts of the whole microelectronics lifecycle, the question is how fast you can add missing elements i mean time vs. money. How cooperation with China and eventually late India can help here?

It is not a trivial task. But Russia is not at zero in the whole IC manufacturing chain. It needs to develop new equipment which it has the
ability to do even if it takes around 10 years.

Necessity is the mother of invention, and lets not forget anything they do get working they can sell to the entire rest of the world that isn't part of the 11% that is the west... that means China and India and lots of other countries potentially sick of being told what to do by the US.

I suspect they wont just want to copy what is already being done but actually improve things as much as possible too so with their multimaterial 3D printing capability they might find a much cheaper simpler and faster way to serial produce what they want in enormous numbers while custom making other more complex designs in smaller batches as needed.

On customer to look for, and in this regard, potentially major provider in technology and finance for the R&D and manufacturing of the lithography technology will be Rosatom. They already make their own 3D printers for industrial use which built from ground up. So I suspect they will also end up working with Roscosmos and Rostec in R&D and such. Roscosmos has their own IC production that they showcased a few months ago and Rostec is the center next to Mikron in the IC industry in Russia. Rosatom will have the biggest use cases and push.

The Russian government is offering financing for EUV equipment. Various Russian social media analysts ask why now and not 10 years ago.
I think it is for two reasons. One is that the primary tech development required to start EUV equipment development was necessary and has
occurred. The other is that Russia is not running on a command economy model and costs count for a lot. It was vastly cheaper
to contract TSMC instead of creating Russia's own TSMC. This is not a trivial detail. AMD had its own fabrication plants but switched
to "fabless" and contracted TSMC.

Now the economics have totally changed and Russia will develop EUV equipment. In particular the maskless type which are not common
at all. So by no means will Russia just copy some existing equipment. This has not been the Russian approach for over a century.

The current epic fail of NATzO sanctions on Russia underscores the lack of appreciation and respect for Russia's competence and capability.
The science and engineering required to develop leading edge tech for IC manufacturing in Russia exists and is not a theoretical exercise.
It can be inferred that the base technological development has been active since even the depression of the 1990s. After 2008 it appears
to have picked up the pace. I am sure that 2014 prompted a big push that is "invisible" because there was no hype.

link

In Russia, the development of domestic lithographic scanners has begun — their production will begin in 2025-2026
10.02.2022 [16:28], Gennady Detinich

At the end of last yearThe Ministry of Industry and Trade has allocated 5.7 billion rubles for the development of domestic lithographic scanners. Recently it became known that the Zelenograd Nanotechnology Center (ZNTC) has started project work on this order. Learn more about the center's project resource plans zelenograd.ru Anatoly Kovalev, General Director of the ZSTC, said.

The Center has signed two contracts with the Ministry of Industry and Trade: one for the development of scanners with a topology level of up to 350 nm, the second — up to 130 nm (the interview refers to steppers, although this is the old name for scanners, when photomasks were mechanically shifted to project onto a new section of the silicon substrate). As a result, as planned, fully domestic photolithographs will replace imported ones, in particular, those currently used in Zelenograd factories.

Serial production of 350 nm photolithographs is expected to start in 2025. A ready-made semiconductor laser of domestic production will be used for installation. It is possible that in the future lasers of Zelenograd companies may also be used for this purpose. According to the contract, the scanner design and its prototype should be ready by the end of 2024, including all documentation for the launch of mass production of the installation.

From the tender documentation, it follows that the 350-nm scanner will be a 3.5-ton installation with dimensions of 2 × 2.6 × 2.5 m and a control complex with dimensions of 2 × 0.8 × 1.6 m. The unit is focused on processing 150-and 200-mm silicon substrates.

Development of the 130-nm scanner will be completed about a year later. For this scanner, a domestic 193-nm laser will be created from scratch in order to get away from imported components, in particular, from the lasers of the American company Cyber, which are now widely used in Russian semiconductor factories. For this reason, the completion of the 130-nm scanner project will take a little longer.

The project of a 130-nm scanner with the ability to process up to hundreds of 200-mm plates per hour will be put into mass production at the end of 2026. In the future, the plant will be upgraded to produce chips with lower technological standards up to 65 nm. Reducing the size of the topology, among other things, will be achieved by double exposure. The main plate size for this scanner will be 200 mm substrate with optional use of 150 mm substrates.

According to the developers, the vast majority of orders for the production of chips in the world lies in the range from 250 to 65 nm, so there is no point in chasing tens and units of nanometers. The main thing for Russia in this project is to avoid possible sanctions on the supply of industrial semiconductor equipment. Own production of scanners can protect the country's electronics industry.

The serial scanner manufacturer has not yet been selected. This may be ZNTC, Zelenograd companies, or Belarusian partners represented by Planar. In the USSR, lithographic scanners, which, by the way, still continue to work in Russian factories, were produced by the Minsk plant "Planar". This practice may extend to the release of a new generation of scanners.

Both China and Russia totally need independent chip manufacturing capability so it would be just logical that they set up strategic cooperation in that regard, I don't know if there are already concrete projects in this regard?

The news I posted above is for "coarse" resolution IC manufacturing. I think the whole contract is a formality where the ducks have
already been lined up in a row. If I find news on the EUV scanners then I will post it.

China is now at the stage of producing its own EUV tools. I think that Russia will use China like it used Taiwan to manufacture high
resolution ICs in the short term.

As I said earlier, The money, the plan and also a company with expertise is involved. So I wouldn't worry. If done in a few years I wouldn't be surprised. I would be more surprised if they can start mass production of such tech compared to individual models for specific facilities.

lancelot wrote:Like I said this will be hard to do because most Chinese foundries and other semi fabs use Western chip making tools and in some cases supplies and they can be sanctioned themselves. At this point it is still too early for the Chinese semi industry to assert itself.

China is now producing high resolution equipment.

https://www.verdict.co.uk/china-chips-manufacture-technology/

The 28 nm is not a defining characteristic for the Chinese EUV scanner. Once they have it the transition to higher resolution is a strictly secondary
effort.

so it seems the way this will play out is that China will not supply any "finished goods"
as in complete products
but Russian "entrepreneurs" will start to assemble finished goods after "sourcing" various "components" from OS .....

that keeps international Chinese brandnames out of it all ....
this will happen across multiple categories
and these "components" will mostly be sourced from companies that operate in China with little to no OS mkt share wherever possible

meanwhile back to the dreaded 28nm stuff
this x-ray tech sounds low volume ?

https://zen.yandex.ru/media/sferalive/tehnologiia-kotoraia-unichtojit-gollandskuiu-kompaniiu-asml-v-rossii-nachalas-razrabotka-bezmasochnogo-fotolitografa-dlia-norm-28-nm-62538039b250b242be0f60f0?&

"Technology that will destroy the Dutch company ASML: in Russia began the development of a maskless photolithography for the norms of 28 nm"

and this other crew Ostek-EK working with GS Nano
seem to specialise in cutting silicon into thin layers etc

https://zen.yandex.ru/media/id/5fe3362f4a4ce621cf6ccaea/gs-nanotech-i-ostekek-chast-3-razvarka--etap-wire-bond-iz-istorii-zapuska-v-rf-606173e37e40c468537eb352

sooner or later .... they will crack this .....
my money says sooner

guess the real end-game is to 3D print chips .... rather than etch them ?
that makes more sense to me
its always easier to build on top of something than to dig down ....

From Gazputin's link

Technology that will destroy the Dutch company ASML: development of a mask-free photolithograph for 28 nm standards has begun in Russia
2 days ago
4,6 thousand reads

65% of all modern processors are produced on photolithographic scanners of the Dutch company ASML. It costs billions of dollars to develop such
technologies from scratch. Therefore, well-known manufacturers such as Intel and AMD preferred to invest in Dutch technologies. However, Russian
scientists intend to "break" the monopoly of ASMLithography. We'll tell you exactly how.

What Russian scientists came up with

The cost of the lithograph is above $300 million. The smaller the technical process (and now 7 nm, 6 nm are already used), the more expensive it is.

To work, the photolithograph needs masks, so-called templates, which are used to transfer the drawing. This template is made for each new generation,
that is, for core i7 3770 — one mask, and for core i7 4770-another.

The Moscow Institute of Electronic Technology (MIET) is developing the concept of an X-ray lithograph, for which masks (as a separate part) are
not needed. The entire drawing, which is a digital image, is projected onto a micro-optical system( MOEMS), essentially a micro-screen. At the
same time, the equipment supports a process speed of 28 nm or less, up to 10.

Theory or reality

MIET, based on Russian developments, received a state contract worth 670 million rubles for the creation of technology and models of masks,
technical specifications and technical and economic justification of the first sample of the lithograph. All work is expected to be completed in
November this year. That is, the creation of a prototype may begin in early 2023. Industrial production is projected to start in about 5 years.

The project will use theoretical developments and equipment of many research institutes and design bureaus. In particular, the Zelenograd
company "ESTO", TNK "Zelenograd", SIC "Kurchatov Institute", branch of the Institute of Applied Physics of the Russian Academy of Sciences
in Nizhny Novgorod, Institute of Spectroscopy of the Russian Academy of Sciences in Troitsk.

It is noted that such lithographic scanners will be several times cheaper than those that use radiation with a wavelength of 193 nm (deep ultraviolet).
And they, in turn, are several times cheaper than the most modern ones that use hard ultraviolet light.

And this is not taking into account that the speed of operation of maskless multipath scanners will be several times higher. We wrote more about
the technology and device here.

If Russian scientists successfully complete the development, the Dutch company will face an inglorious end.

Economic prospects

Research on the creation of a maskless photolithograph has been conducted since 2010. So, success is quite likely. There are no analogues of the
Russian technology. It can really change the idea of manufacturing microprocessors, as it reduces the cost of the entire process.

In the current conditions, large-scale production of chips is economically profitable. A maskless lithograph will allow you to create popular narrow-profile
and specialized processors. Very optimistic forecasts. How real do you think they are?

link

Linked in the above article. Rusnano has been involved in the Dutch Mapper Lithography company. Even if NATzO cuts this off
I am sure that Russia transferred the IP for obvious reasons.