Currently, Taiwan’s TSMC and South Korea’s Samsung are the two semiconductor manufacturers with the most advanced integration technologies in production. In fact, both have been manufacturing 3 nm integrated circuits since 2022. However, for many months, the yield per wafer that they obtained wasn’t the best, which transformed their 3 nm nodes into a bottleneck and increased the cost of these chips.
Two years later, the 3 nm nodes from these two companies are performing much better. Their yield per wafer has increased significantly and is presumably already higher than the 70% set by the semiconductor industry as a benchmark. Currently, these two companies are in a relatively comfortable position, but there’s one company that seems poised to unsettle them: Rapidus Corporation, a Japanese company that plans to manufacture 2 nm semiconductors with an unprecedented technology.
Rapidus’ New Factory Will Be Fully Automated
Rapidus is currently constructing an integrated circuit factory in northern Japan to produce 2 nm semiconductors. According to Nikkei Asia, the first prototypes of these integrated circuits will be ready in 2025, with full-scale manufacturing possibly starting in 2027. By that time, TSMC, Samsung, and Intel will also reportedly be producing chips with comparable lithographies.
What’s drawing attention to the Japanese company’s new fab in the semiconductor industry is that it’s set to be fully automated, at least according to Rapidus president Atsuyoshi Koike. The fab will rely on robots and artificial intelligence to fine-tune an automated production line, specializing in the manufacturing of 2 nm chips for AI applications. Essentially, its purpose is to achieve faster production, lower costs, and higher quality of integrated circuits.
Manufactures use ASML’s extreme ultraviolet (UVE) lithography equipment to produce these semiconductors, and almost all manufacturing processes are automated. However, the test and validation, interconnect, and chip packaging phases are still largely carried out manually in most manufacturing plants. Rapidus claims that its technology for automating these processes will enable them to reduce the lead time of their chips by 66% compared to the times TSMC and Samsung usually offer.
If Rapidus achieves its goal and its competitors don’t improve their efficiency, the Japanese company will be able to deliver its semiconductors in a third of the time compared to its rivals. This could give Rapidus a significant advantage in the market, but it’s currently just a conjecture. Nevertheless, the company seems to have a solid plan in place. It aims to finish construction of the buildings in October of this year and to receive the UVE lithography equipment in December. If this happens, it’s credible that the company will have the first prototypes of 2 nm chips in 2025. One thing is for sure: Rapidus is a company worth keeping an eye on.
This article was written by Juan Carlos López and originally published in Spanish on Xataka.
Image | Nikkei Asia
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