Behind the Huawei Mate60 domestic chip: SMIC foundry, miner chip training success minister

Original author: Deep Chao TechFlow maintenance worker

Yesterday, the most explosive market information came from Huawei. When I was free, I went to the WeChat group. The WeChat communities of cryptocurrencies, stocks, and the property market all talked about Huawei Mate 60. There was no warm-up, no notification, and no announcement. , Huawei suddenly launched a new generation of flagship mobile phone Mate 60 Pro on Huaweis official store in advance in the name of Pioneer Project.

What everyone is most concerned about is the core - where does the chip come from?

Since being included in the entity list by the U.S. government on May 16, 2019, Huawei has encountered a comprehensive technical blockade. On September 14, 2020, TSMC completely cut off the supply of Huawei chips. So far, Huawei has no chips available, and it has been 1081 days.

Today, Huawei Mate 60 Pro is determined to use the Kirin 9000 s chip developed by Huawei HiSilicon, which has a total of 8 cores, including 4 large cores and 4 small cores, with a main frequency of up to 2150 MHz and a GPU of Maleoon 910.

Who will manufacture this chip? Huaqiangbei took action immediately, and the mobile phone maintenance anchor live disassembled the machine, and found that the serial number on the CPU of Huawei Mate 60 Pro was 2035-CN.

The answer is revealed. The Kirin 9000s chip of Mate 60 Pro is manufactured by SMIC.

According to the screenshots of netizens’ mobile phones, Kirin is a 5nm process, but technical experts generally believe that the 9000 S is not a 5nm process, but SMIC’s N+2.

SMIC is the only company in China that can mass-produce the 14-nanometer FinFET process. The N+ 1 and N+ 2 processes are both improved based on the 14-nanometer FinFET process and are implemented based on DUV lithography machines, bypassing the U.S. ban. (Currently the most advanced process requires EUV lithography machine)

SMIC has not publicly stated that N+1 and N+2 are 7nm processes, but the chip industry generally believes that N+1 process is equivalent to 7nm LPE (low power consumption) process, and N+2 process is equivalent to 7nm LPP (high performance) Craftsmanship.

The shipment of Mate 60 Pro seems to have disclosed the information that SMICs N+ 2 process is moving towards mature mass production. However, many people in the industry are not surprised. nm chips, their customers are-Bitcoin mining companies.

In July 2022, TechInsights, a well-known foreign reverse engineering analysis company, released a report. They disassembled the dedicated chip used for mining by the Bitcoin mining company MinerVa Semiconductor. After analysis, it was confirmed that this chip was manufactured by SMIC. is 7 nm.

According to the MinerVa Semiconductor website, this IC started shipping as early as July 2021, so it can be inferred that SMIC will be able to mass produce the 7nm process in early 2021.

Industry insiders told TechFlow that Chinas one-stop IP and chip customization leader, Innosilicon, which is also a mining chip designer, is one of the first customers of SMICs N+1 process and successfully launched trial production at the end of 2020. MinerVa Semiconductors mining IC is likely to be operated by Innosilicon.

In the early stages of a new process, the yield rate is usually very low. For chip foundry companies, it is necessary to continuously improve the yield rate to obtain a large number of customers. However, this requires trial and error with orders, and it is easy to fall into an endless loop.

Apple has given considerable support and cooperation to TSMC in its 5nm research and development. In return, 50% of TSMC’s 5nm production capacity has been used by Apple.

SMIC does not have the appeal of TSMC, but fortunately, it has encountered the ultra-low-end version of Apple - mining chip design companies such as Canaan Technology and Innosilicon Technology.

The mining machine chips not only gave SMIC orders (money), but also gave SMIC the opportunity to train troops and improve the yield rate.

According to the minutes of the 2021 conference call of the mining machine company Canaan Technology, Canaan Technology began to cooperate with SMIC in 2019. The two parties cooperated on 14 nm mining machine chips, and SMIC once gave 95% of its N+1 production capacity to Canaan Technology. Nan Technology.

Canaan Technology Conference Call Minutes 20210301

Mining machine companies naturally have a demand for advanced process technology, but it does not mean that wafer foundries are willing to give the production capacity of advanced technology to mining machine companies.

For example, TSMC has no worries about buyers. Major mobile phone companies are lining up to send money, but they may not necessarily like mining machine companies. Mining leader Bitmain once directly paid all the fees at once to obtain TSMCs production capacity.

Samsung received a large number of orders from Nvidia and Qualcomm, and at the end of 2020, it was notified that it would not accept blockchain-related orders.

Mining machine companies need foundries with advanced manufacturing processes, and SMIC’s new technology needs customers, and the two hit it off.

As for the yield rate, it may be a big problem for other chip companies, but for mining machine companies, the problem is not that big.

According to industry insiders, mining-specific ICs have a relatively simple structure and small RAM capacity. Therefore, the yield rate of newly developed manufacturing processes will exceed that of many ICs.

Usually mining chips will accumulate dozens or even hundreds of cores in one chip. These cores operate in parallel and do not affect each other. Therefore, ordinary chips may be scrapped because one unit is broken, while mining chips may only affect one core, and the other cores continue to calculate normally.

Among different chips, some cores are more broken, and some cores are less broken, which leads to different computing capabilities of the chips. This is usually solved by screening. Assemble chips with stronger computing power into high-end mining machines, and chips with weak computing power into low-end mining machines

There are hundreds of chips integrated into a mining machine. Even if one or two chips are completely broken, it will not have much impact. This also leads to the mining machine chip having a high tolerance for yield.

In short, when SMIC needed customers most to test the latest N+ 1\N+ 2 process, the mining machine chip stepped forward and laid the foundation for the launch of Huawei Mate 60 Pro.

As a leader who inspected mining machine companies said, ASIC chips are also chips.