People's Daily: China is expected to surpass foreign countries in chip development technology

Zhang Baoshu, reporter of People's Daily Overseas Edition (August 19, 2017, Page 08)

The working speed is three times that of Intel's most advanced 14-nanometer commercial silicon material transistor, and the energy consumption is only one-fourth of that. This is the excellent performance index of the carbon nano transistor developed by Peking University Professor Peng Lianmao and his team not long ago, which means that Chinese scientists may be able to develop commercial carbon-based chips with such transistors as components, and are expected to surpass their foreign counterparts in chip development technology.

The development of carbon nano transistors is undoubtedly a major victory achieved by Chinese scientists in their efforts to catch up with the world's advanced level, and it is a new milestone in the development of China's information technology. Since the beginning of the new century, especially since 2008, China has been committed to building its own high-end chip industry chain. After persistent efforts, China's chip research and development has not only achieved phased results, but also achieved major results in the field of carbon nano transistor development, which is at the forefront of international chips, laying a solid foundation for moving towards world-class levels.

The foundation of modern information society

"Chip" is one of the modern information technology buzzwords that we are familiar with, but what exactly is it? Before answering these questions, let us first get familiar with "integrated circuits". "Integrated circuit" is a kind of microelectronic device or component. People use certain technology to interconnect the transistors, resistors, capacitors, inductors and other components and wiring required in a circuit, make them on a small piece or several small pieces of semiconductor wafers or dielectric substrates, and then package them in a tube shell to become a microstructure with the required circuit function, making electronic components take a big step towards miniaturization, low power consumption, intelligence and high reliability. "Chip" generally refers to the carrier of integrated circuits, which is the result of integrated circuits after design, manufacturing, packaging and testing. It can be said that the content of "integrated circuit" and "chip" is essentially the same, but the focus and angle of description are different. The former emphasizes the design and layout of the circuit, while the latter emphasizes the integration, production and packaging of the circuit. Therefore, it can also be said that the development process and level of China's chips are the development process and level of China's integrated circuits.

"A strong chip means a strong industry, a prosperous chip means a prosperous economy, and without high-end chips, there will be no real industrial security and national security." This is the clear understanding and high-level summary of the importance of chips by Ye Tianchun, director of the Institute of Microelectronics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. He said that in today's information age, integrated circuit technology is the most important and basic technology, and it can be said to be the cornerstone of the information age. Whether it is computers, mobile phones, home appliances, or cars, high-speed railways, power grids, medical instruments, robots, industrial control, etc., the core of the products and the carrier of intellectual property rights are integrated circuits. Without the support of the integrated circuit industry, the information society will lose its foundation. This is also the reason why integrated circuits are called the "food" of modern industry.

Independent innovation, self-reliance and self-reliance

It is precisely because of the profound understanding of the strategic value of chip technology and integrated circuit technology in the modern information technology revolution that China has launched a self-reliance movement to rely on independent innovation, break the technological restrictions and blockades of Western developed countries, and achieve chip "breakthrough". Ye Tianchun introduced that for a long time, Western developed countries have strictly blocked and restricted us in the development of integrated circuits.

In order to break the dilemma and fundamentally realize the independent innovation and development of the information technology industry, in 2000, the State Council issued the "Several Policies to Encourage the Development of the Software Industry and the Integrated Circuit Industry", which marked that China's integrated circuit industry has entered a real starting stage. According to the Outline of the National Medium- and Long-term Science and Technology Development Plan (2006-2020), in 2008, China included "core, high-end and basic" (core electronic devices, high-end general-purpose chips, basic software products) and "extremely large-scale integrated circuit manufacturing equipment and complete sets of processes" in the national major science and technology projects and began to implement them. In 2014, the Outline for Promoting the Development of the National Integrated Circuit Industry was promulgated, and the National Integrated Circuit Industry Investment Fund with an initial scale of 120 billion yuan was established. These measures are aimed at giving full play to the advantages of the socialist system of concentrating resources to accomplish major tasks and the role of the market mechanism, and strive to achieve strategic breakthroughs. After years of hard work, "China Chip" has achieved a number of impressive results and basically achieved self-reliance.

In the international supercomputer rankings released in June this year, China's "Sunway Taihu Light" won the championship again, and what made it the champion was the authentic "China Chip", which integrated 260 computing centers and billions of transistors on its small and thin block. Its single-chip computing power is equivalent to three world-class supercomputers in 2000. In addition to Shenwei, China also has a number of well-known chip companies such as Loongson, HiSilicon, and Spreadtrum and their excellent products. These achievements are due to the great development of China's integrated circuit technology. Ye Tianchun concluded that through the implementation of relevant special projects, high-end equipment and materials for integrated circuits have been created from scratch, filling the gaps in the industrial chain and forming a benign industrial ecology; manufacturing processes and packaging integration have gradually become stronger, the technical level has achieved a leap, and international competitiveness has been greatly improved. Chip products such as smart phones, communication equipment, and smart cards manufactured by them have entered the market in large quantities; innovative inventions have continued to emerge, forming an independent intellectual property system.

Aiming at the forefront

According to customs data, in 2016, China imported more than 342.5 billion integrated circuits, with an amount of more than US$227 billion, which is close to twice the amount of crude oil imports in the same period, while the export value of integrated circuits was about US$61.4 billion, with a large deficit. This shows that as a global information industry base, although China has met its own demand for integrated circuits to a certain extent and has begun to participate in international market competition, it still lacks high-end chip products in general.

As Ye Tianchun pointed out, although it is standing at a new starting point today, the "China Core" is still in a difficult "climbing" stage. On the one hand, there is still a large gap between the integrated circuit technology and industry and developed countries, the overall industry scale is still small, and the innovation capacity and level need to be further improved. On the other hand, foreign countries have increased their technological blockade and set up more obstacles. In 2015, the United States actually issued an export ban to China in the name of supercomputer chip export review. In 2016, under the guise of maintaining "national security", the United States completely disregarded the principle of free trade, which not only led to the failure of Tsinghua Unigroup's acquisition of Micron Technology, but also "strangled" the acquisition of German chip companies by Chinese investment funds.

China will continue to be the most dynamic economy in the world, and the Chinese market will continue to be the largest market for the world's information industry. These will surely give "Chinese chips" and integrated circuit technology and industry more energy to climb over obstacles. In the process of implementing major national science and technology projects, we have accumulated experience in the coordinated development of "innovation chain, industrial chain, and financial chain", and explored the assessment mechanism of "downstream assessment of upstream, complete machine assessment of components, application assessment of technology, and market assessment of products", laying a solid foundation for further development.

As the chief technical engineer of the major national science and technology project "Very Large Scale Integrated Circuit Manufacturing Equipment and Complete Process", Ye Tianchun revealed that the project has been systematically deployed in 14-nanometer equipment, processes, packaging, materials, etc., and is expected to enter the industrialization stage in 2018. During the "Thirteenth Five-Year Plan" period, the project will focus on supporting the research and development of large-scale strategic products and international advanced technologies such as 7-5 nanometer processes and three-dimensional memory.

According to relevant plans, the main links of China's integrated circuit industry chain will reach the international advanced level by 2030, and a number of companies will enter the international first echelon and achieve the final leap. Integrated circuit manufacturing technology represents the highest level of micro-manufacturing in the world today, and it can be said to be the culmination of human ultra-fine processing technology. It can be expected that with the efforts of scientific researchers and the information industry, China will advance to a higher level in the field of ultra-fine processing of integrated circuits, and the strong "Chinese core" will hopefully benefit the world.