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According to analyst firm Tech Insights, Chinese foundry SMIC is producing chips based on the 7nm process node for the Bitcoin Miner SoC, which will ship from July 2021 (s/t to SemiAnalysis). TechInsights reverse-engineered the chip, saying that “early images suggest it is a close copy of TSMC’s 7nm process technology,” which Taiwan-based TSMC has twice sued SMIC for copying the technology. The findings come as China continues to build up its own domestic semiconductor production, with heavily sanctioned SMIC leading the way, and the US government on the verge of approving massive subsidies to US chipmakers.
According to a Tech Insights report, TSMC, Intel and Samsung have all developed more advanced technology than SMIC 7nm, with at least two nodes ahead. Regardless, the importance of SMIC shipping the 7nm process cannot be overstated – SMIC has been heavily sanctioned by the US government, limiting access to advanced UV chip manufacturing equipment. However, the company can clearly use its existing equipment to produce 7nm chips (perhaps smaller), despite less desirable economics and production. This is not a concern for China, which seeks technological independence from Western countries by developing its own indigenous chips.
SMIC first announced the 7nm node in early 2020, then it and partner Innosilicon announced that the chip will be on the N+1 version of the 7nm node later that year. It is unclear whether the Minerva bitcoin mining chip that Techinsights bought on the open market has anything to do with the Inosilicon initiative. At the time, SMIC also said it had a 7nm node N+2 in the works, but we’re not sure if the Minerva chips (shown below) use the N+1 or N+2 version of the process technology.
Taiwan-based TSMC has sued SMIC twice (in 2002 and 2006) for copying its process technology, and TechInsights’ assertion that SMIC copied TSMC’s 7nm leads to further legal battles between the two firms.
The MinerVa Bitcoin mining chip looks very basic and measures only 4.6 x 4.2 mm, which shows that SMIC is still in the early stages of chip development. However, these types of small, simple and basic chips are often used as learning nodes as the process technology becomes more sophisticated.
“This low-volume production scale could be a stepping stone for the actual 7nm process, which includes logic and memory bits. Bitcoin miners have limited RAM requirements and may not feature the typical bitcell memory required by a true 7nm technology definition (both). Scale Logic and Bitcell Adoption ) this chipset will probably show the logic part but not the bitcell aspect,” Tech Insights said.
Mining chips are ideal for making new processing nodes – as seen in the image above, these small chips are mass-produced to create powerful machines. In this case, the miner has 120 chips per board to create a machine that takes up to 3300 W of power. As production continues to improve, we can expect SMIC to make larger and more complex chips based on its 7nm process node.
As a reminder, the process naming convention, like “7nm,” has become a marketing exercise for chipmakers, rather than a measurement tied to any physical measurement. However, in the real world, several factors affect the economics and performance of a process node, which you can read about here.
TechInsights is selling individual reports based on chip analysis – digital floor plan analysis, advanced CMOS process analysis and process flow analysis – to give you a better idea of how the SMIC node stacks up against the competition – with additional details, transistor density industry nodes.
The US has long banned SMIC from buying UV equipment from ASML and has recently considered tightening the sanctions, restricting even the company’s relatively simple DUV chip manufacturing equipment. That approach will slow China’s progress, but the country continues to plow money into developing its own chip manufacturing equipment and software (EDA) ecosystem. As SMIC has proven, it can use less complex tools to create advanced process nodes, albeit less profitably, and that opens up the company to more sales from chip designers. Whether those chips will be subject to export bans due to legal challenges remains to be seen, but China has its own growing ecosystem of chip designers who can use their designs domestically, perhaps mitigating the impact of the sanctions.
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