Russia sells S-400 systems to China

gelgoog

Brigadier
Registered Member
(remarwk - I am not expert on this field, this is the informations that I collected to understand why the cost decrease of ICs stopped years ago)
The semiconductor industry using 193nm lasers even for 10nm parts.
The only way to do that is using multiple patterning, it means that the final pattern generated in several step, using interference patters from different masks.

However, the cost composition is a bit deeper, because two third of the semi plants come from cleaning/air filtration, the leftover from actual machines.

Problem is multiple patterning (And many other issue with smaller features) increase dramatically the cost of IC design.
IF a country learning the IC design, and has to make a lot of different type the simplest is to use 90nm technology, that gives the cheapest design for low volume ICs.

There is more to it than that. The industry moved to so called immersion lithography. i.e. the chips are immersed into a liquid during the lithography process which enables etching finer details. It is a bit more complicated to use but it was cheap enough that it basically lead to the demise of the efforts to design lower wavelength light sources for like a decade.
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Unfortunately even with immersion lithography you can only go so far. That's why a lot of people claim that 45 nm is the manufacturing node which makes the most sense in the perspective of cost per transistor. To go beyond that you typically need to rely on multiple patterning which reduces the wafer output like you said. Multiple patterning allows you to etch finer details at the cost of more exposure steps. Not only does it cut wafer output but you also need to spend more money on photolithography masks. Which are typically one of the major costs in moving a new chip from design to manufacturability.
 

Anlsvrthng

Captain
Registered Member
There is more to it than that. The industry moved to so called immersion lithography. i.e. the chips are immersed into a liquid during the lithography process which enables etching finer details. It is a bit more complicated to use but it was cheap enough that it basically lead to the demise of the efforts to design lower wavelength light sources for like a decade.
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Unfortunately even with immersion lithography you can only go so far. That's why a lot of people claim that 45 nm is the manufacturing node which makes the most sense in the perspective of cost per transistor. To go beyond that you typically need to rely on multiple patterning which reduces the wafer output like you said. Multiple patterning allows you to etch finer details at the cost of more exposure steps. Not only does it cut wafer output but you also need to spend more money on photolithography masks. Which are typically one of the major costs in moving a new chip from design to manufacturability.
Under 90 nm either there is more mask, or Immersion, under 64nm both required.
However even the immersion require additional coating steps, so from the perspective of someone learn the trade the 90nm is the cheapest point.
esilicon-figure1-design-cost-by-process-node-color-12092014.jpg
 

gelgoog

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Registered Member
Under 90 nm either there is more mask, or Immersion, under 64nm both required.
However even the immersion require additional coating steps, so from the perspective of someone learn the trade the 90nm is the cheapest point.
esilicon-figure1-design-cost-by-process-node-color-12092014.jpg

Right, the costs increase with each manufacturing node. This is called Rock's Law or Moore's Second Law.
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The only question is if the costs per transistor increase, decrease, or remain the same. Russia has more issues vs China in that they have a smaller chip market. Their population is much lower than that of China so there are less consumers too. So making a large chip factory makes less sense given their market conditions. Also AFAIK beyond the light source issues there is the fact that the industry has moved from 200 mm wafers to larger 300 mm wafers around the 45 nm node. This was done to reduce the cost per transistor but it means that manufacturing of smaller batches is more expensive as is wafer cost. Fabs like TSMC make do by placing multiple chip designs, from different manufacturers, on the same wafers so they can waste as little wafer die area as possible. But this means you have to make the customers use the same design rules and you have a harder time to get enough production volume to justify the operational costs.

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Anlsvrthng

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Right, the costs increase with each manufacturing node. This is called Rock's Law or Moore's Second Law.
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The only question is if the costs per transistor increase, decrease, or remain the same. Russia has more issues vs China in that they have a smaller chip market. Their population is much lower than that of China so there are less consumers too. So making a large chip factory makes less sense given their market conditions. Also AFAIK beyond the light source issues there is the fact that the industry has moved from 200 mm wafers to larger 300 mm wafers around the 45 nm node. This was done to reduce the cost per transistor but it means that manufacturing of smaller batches is more expensive as is wafer cost. Fabs like TSMC make do by placing multiple chip designs, from different manufacturers, on the same wafers so they can waste as little wafer die area as possible. But this means you have to make the customers use the same design rules and you have a harder time to get enough production volume to justify the operational costs.
Agree with it, but in case of Russia / China we talk not about the whole chip segment, but only a small, specialised portion of it, the military /radhard ICs.

Even the USA has hard time to keep this market segment alive, due to the low production volume.

Now, Russia problem is they need to develop ICs in the production range of dozens for satellites, in thousands for missiles, maybe ten thousands for other applications.
The only that maybe needs millions is the government systems.

Now, the USA has military IC designs, validated and production ready for very long time.

But now Russia has to make thousands of IC designs.

This means there is only limited amount of engineering resources.

Multi patterning, immersion lithography and so on makes more complicated the chip design, and longer the validation process, require more time and resources to do.

So, it is easier to make everything on 90nm, the part that makes big difference and can not make parallel can be done on smaller at same point of future.

Example the radar computers are very heavy parallel types, doesn't really matter if there is one or ten cpu doing the same job.
 

gelgoog

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Registered Member
Agree with it, but in case of Russia / China we talk not about the whole chip segment, but only a small, specialised portion of it, the military /radhard ICs.

Even the USA has hard time to keep this market segment alive, due to the low production volume.

Now, Russia problem is they need to develop ICs in the production range of dozens for satellites, in thousands for missiles, maybe ten thousands for other applications.
The only that maybe needs millions is the government systems.

Now, the USA has military IC designs, validated and production ready for very long time.

But now Russia has to make thousands of IC designs.

This means there is only limited amount of engineering resources.

Multi patterning, immersion lithography and so on makes more complicated the chip design, and longer the validation process, require more time and resources to do.

So, it is easier to make everything on 90nm, the part that makes big difference and can not make parallel can be done on smaller at same point of future.

Example the radar computers are very heavy parallel types, doesn't really matter if there is one or ten cpu doing the same job.

For military ICs they would be interested in using SOI or FD-SOI manufacture and using different materials. i.e. other than silicon. SOI is inherently somewhat rad-hard but it requires the use of different design tools and techniques compared to more conventional manufacturing methods. For the case of radar chips the technology is not that different from telecommunications systems chips. So, say, China already has largely made their own solutions in this area. The Russians also have their own Elbrus 2K architecture which should have great performance for digital signal processing. The Chinese have their supercomputer architectures which would enable them to do much the same thing. Simpler systems can use the Elbrus chips with the SPARC architecture. SPARC, much like x86, also has vector instructions. So I wouldn't be surprised if the Elbrus SPARC chips also had those to facilitate digital signal processing. Yes their requirements are much more limited. That's why it's hard for Russia to justify the investment in fabs much better than the ones they have right now. Even if they were hit with an USA led embargo, which meant they could not use western factories to manufacture their chips, the Russians could still use Chinese fabs like SMIC for the more intricate chip designs. They have quite limited requirements in terms of chip production capacity. Still I think Russia has severe issues with their chip packaging technology, their integrated memory technology, and their production processes are utterly obsolete. They should have at least one 28 nm fab I think.
 

Anlsvrthng

Captain
Registered Member
For military ICs they would be interested in using SOI or FD-SOI manufacture and using different materials. i.e. other than silicon. SOI is inherently somewhat rad-hard but it requires the use of different design tools and techniques compared to more conventional manufacturing methods. For the case of radar chips the technology is not that different from telecommunications systems chips. So, say, China already has largely made their own solutions in this area. The Russians also have their own Elbrus 2K architecture which should have great performance for digital signal processing. The Chinese have their supercomputer architectures which would enable them to do much the same thing. Simpler systems can use the Elbrus chips with the SPARC architecture. SPARC, much like x86, also has vector instructions. So I wouldn't be surprised if the Elbrus SPARC chips also had those to facilitate digital signal processing. Yes their requirements are much more limited. That's why it's hard for Russia to justify the investment in fabs much better than the ones they have right now. Even if they were hit with an USA led embargo, which meant they could not use western factories to manufacture their chips, the Russians could still use Chinese fabs like SMIC for the more intricate chip designs. They have quite limited requirements in terms of chip production capacity. Still I think Russia has severe issues with their chip packaging technology, their integrated memory technology, and their production processes are utterly obsolete. They should have at least one 28 nm fab I think.
ELBRUS is VLIW , it is designed for parallel computation (like signal processing) from ground up.

I think the main problem of the russians is not the radards, they can make PESA and so on, and not the signal processing, but mainly satelite / missiles/ aerospace .


There was an arrest of few Russians, who imported ICs from USA, and they mentioned that those are the same stuff that used in the MS Kinect.

There was a few remark when Russia made the rocket engine deal with China about ICs, but the Russians side said that the available technology from China in radhard is not the level that they need ( it could mean either inferiority, or the Chinese doesn't want to sell the top technology )


And finally, there is the trade restrictions for semi machines, few years ago there was a block of sale of a semi machine to Russia for MRAM manufacturing.

Actually, we don't know really the current situation, the mikron website is around smartcards, but they heavily in many other area as well, like spin torque transfer MRAMs, but there is no real data about that.


From the other side there is the information about that Russia closed the capability gap in the area of far IR sensors, and they can make the same class of IR cameras like the USA now.
But if I try to found any data about it there is practically not mentioning on any manufacturer website.


I presume there is similar regime for Chinese import as well.
 

gelgoog

Brigadier
Registered Member
When you mention IR sensors are you talking about thermal gun sights? Russia start by importing thermal gun sights for their tanks from France. Initially they bought the whole thing from France. Thales manufactured the sights. Then they switched to the Catherine-FC system which mostly used Russians manufactured parts except for the IR sensor which was still imported from France. Later they made their own system. This article describes the history rather accurately.
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Anlsvrthng

Captain
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When you mention IR sensors are you talking about thermal gun sights? Russia start by importing thermal gun sights for their tanks from France. Initially they bought the whole thing from France. Thales manufactured the sights. Then they switched to the Catherine-FC system which mostly used Russians manufactured parts except for the IR sensor which was still imported from France. Later they made their own system. This article describes the history rather accurately.
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Yes, this was the article that I read.

According this they had to develop a lot of new electronics ( including ICs) for the Russian supply chain.
 

antiterror13

Brigadier
Yes, this was the article that I read.

According this they had to develop a lot of new electronics ( including ICs) for the Russian supply chain.

Why don't the Russian simply buy from China ? .... China' military Thermal Imaging technology is one of the best ... including the civilian version. I am pretty sure China would be more than happy to sell it to Russia ;)
 

AndrewS

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Registered Member
Cost per transistor is one metric.

Also remember smaller transistors use less electricity when they operate.



Right, the costs increase with each manufacturing node. This is called Rock's Law or Moore's Second Law.
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The only question is if the costs per transistor increase, decrease, or remain the same. Russia has more issues vs China in that they have a smaller chip market. Their population is much lower than that of China so there are less consumers too. So making a large chip factory makes less sense given their market conditions. Also AFAIK beyond the light source issues there is the fact that the industry has moved from 200 mm wafers to larger 300 mm wafers around the 45 nm node. This was done to reduce the cost per transistor but it means that manufacturing of smaller batches is more expensive as is wafer cost. Fabs like TSMC make do by placing multiple chip designs, from different manufacturers, on the same wafers so they can waste as little wafer die area as possible. But this means you have to make the customers use the same design rules and you have a harder time to get enough production volume to justify the operational costs.

gvuxr8A.gif
 
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