Russian Chips, Silicone not Potato

At the SMO’s start, the West took great pleasure in denigrating the supposed inferiority of Russian microelectronic technology, that it was so backwards it needed to harvest Chinese and other chips from washing machines so its missiles could work properly. The reality as most have learned since is it’s the West that’s far behind Russian, Chinese and Iranian expertise in a great many areas related to national defense, most importantly air defense and missile technology. Again, as most are aware, industrial and technological strength/expertise is the foundation for geopolitical power, and for many decades the West assumed it was well superior to Russia in those attributes. If the SMO has proven one thing, it’s proven Russia is well ahead of the West in many areas that make it along with China the most powerful geopolitical entitles on the planet. And to try and keep them within reach, the Outlaw US Empire has resorted to illegal sanctions to try and slow their technological advancement.

A hat-tip to Andrei Martyanov for noting and linking to the following blog entry as it’s technical but not so much as to turn-off most readers who have all heard the Western garbage about shovels, hammers and washing machines. As I’ve written before, Nature’s secrets are there for anyone to discover—no one can patent Nature—so technological advancements are available to any and all nations that are willing to invest in such discoveries—and that’s a lot of investment from educational facilities onward. What the Empire tries to block is others discovering what it discovered earlier that they would have otherwise. For example, the West has no lock on the lithographic process; it merely discovered how to do it first. And sure, if trade and international relations were fair etc., then acquiring that process via purchase would be normal. But all that no longer exists thanks to the West thinking it’s somehow exceptional when it’s as mortal and fallible as all other humans:

By Electrobrain

Russian equipment for the production of chips up to 90 nm and thinner is presented!

When my articles talk about lithographs, there are fair remarks in the comments that the lithographic line consists not only of lithographs (also called steppers), but also of a large number of other equipment (etching, deposition, etc.).

Also, readers are constantly reminded that lithography production requires chemicals of a very high degree of purity, the so-called "pure chemistry". Often such reminders sound in a mentoring tone, the name is due to the fact that, of course, no one does all this in Russia.

I understand that the media does not cover all technical aspects of microelectronics production, but only the most striking, key, and emotionally evoking the majority of the ordinary population who are not specialists in this field. Lithographs are undoubtedly such a key element of the lithography production of chips.

But if information about lithographs, as the key and most understandable element of crystal production for the general public, periodically appears in the media, this does not mean that everyone has forgotten about the rest of the components of industrial lines, and only some, the most intelligent and far-sighted armchair experts remember this.

I want to reassure our caring and compassionate public. Of course, no one has forgotten about chemistry or equipment. It would be strange to limit oneself to lithographs when developing a program for the revival of the microelectronics industry, right? It's just that for most readers it is no longer very clear and not so interesting. Journalists understand this, and do not always cover it, and if they do, it is only in passing.

Of course, the incompetence of officials in the 90s and noughties has accustomed many of us to the idea that there, at the top, no one understands anything and does not consult with specialists. But let's still not go to extremes, and understand that even if everything is not so smooth yet, then not to the same extent)))

The program for the development of the electronics industry was drawn up, of course, in close contact with the industry community. Moreover, I suspect that it was drawn up by representatives of the same community, and was only approved by industry officials.

Representatives of the community were given only the framework of the strategy (I hope that they were) what the country needs, and the tactics were formalized at the expert level. It is important that the strategy is not formed exclusively by industry specialists, because this is a dead-end path. A common balanced vision of what exactly is needed for the country should come down from the strategic level, and not be at the mercy of specialists, as has often been done so far and led to getting hooked on everything foreign. I think this is obvious.

So, while Russian research institutes are working on R&D on the instructions of the Ministry of Industry and Trade, forming the basis for future domestic lithographic factories, individual commercial enterprises with the active support of the same state are also creating cheaper and more compact equipment for small industries.

Thus, the company GN Tech A cluster facility designed to implement several technological operations (for example, ion-plasma cleaning, magnetron sputtering, plasma-chemical etching, deposition) in one vacuum cycle was developed, produced in iron and presented at the exhibition of the Microelectronics-2024 forum:

At the same time, the individual process stations of this cluster unit operate independently of each other, i.e. they have independent vacuum pumping, and can simultaneously perform processes with different pressures and different gas mixture compositions.

The unit works with plates with a diameter of 100 and 150 mm, which ensures simplicity, compactness of the equipment, and often the very possibility of its creation right now. It is four times more compact than foreign ones with similar functionality.

The throughput of the unit is 60 plates per hour. In the future, the capacity will be increased to 120 wafers per hour. To move the plates, a carousel-type transport system was used instead of a robotic arm used in foreign installations, which simplified the design and significantly increased its reliability.

Currently, a minimum process technology of 90 nm is available at the installation, but in the future, the company expects to bring the platform to slightly thinner standards. As the developers themselves say, it is impossible to make a few nanometers on such machines, but tens are quite possible.

Such equipment can be installed both in educational or research institutions, and in real production. All nodes of interaction with the outside world are standardized and unified with the equipment of large factories. Plate loading cassettes are standard, which are used in large-scale factories. The equipment can be used in existing production facilities and integrated directly into ready-made technological lines.

In general, the niche of the so-called "minifabs" in the globalized world was not very much in demand, so we heard little about it. Leading specialists in the development of lithography equipment were accumulated at large world factories, and there were not so many people left to develop compact installations, which are also quite complex and require high qualifications from developers, but are not in great demand.

Until recently, we all thought that there were simply no alternatives to large factories. I remember how skeptics often wrote to me in the comments that lithographic production will never pay off in Russia, that for this we need a market for the whole world, and Russia will not have it, 150 million population is too little, and so on.

I would like to ask, what do you propose? The answer was a proposal to be friends with the whole world (in fact, with the United States), that is, to trade natural gas (over time, as expected, reducing its sales due to the increase in exports of liquefied gas from the United States) and not to produce anything. I'm exaggerating, but in general, with large strokes, something like this. In general, in fact, an obvious dead end was proposed, which many skeptics naively did not see, and some still do not see (or pretend not to see, receiving their 30 pieces of silver).

But in reality, a natural segmentation of markets is already taking place, and our own microelectronic production is becoming more and more relevant. And therefore, equipment that would maintain the profitability of production with smaller volumes is becoming in demand. And interestingly, this suddenly turned out to be possible.

If at the dawn of the emergence of large-scale lithographic lines it was really impossible to make cheap compact equipment from scratch, today many technical methods and technical units have already been worked out and polished on equipment for large factories. Science does not stand still.

In addition, many components for such small installations (as opposed to components for large large-scale installations) are already available and produced for various other purposes in Russia, and they can be used.

Thus, at this stage, compact equipment is becoming not only relevant, but also relatively cheap, and production on it is profitable.

Moreover, if necessary, large-scale production can be launched on such equipment. It's just that instead of one production line with high-performance equipment designed for 200-300 mm wafers, it is possible to install several such cluster units in the same areas, and give the same result plus increase the reliability of the entire production - the failure of one unit will not cause a shutdown of the entire technological process.

I foresee the readers' question – from whose components is the described equipment made? Most of the key components are Russian-made, including the controller and software.

The ion source was developed and produced in Belarus. The magnetron is in Moscow, the turbomolecular pump is still Chinese, but it is planned to replace it with a pump developed and already produced in Vladimir.

Currently, the company is creating a demonstration production on its equipment so that potential customers can see its work live. Quite a lot of customers have shown interest in such equipment, there are already potential customers. And this suggests that the production of chips in Russia will soon receive another impetus.

I am pleased to note that so far everything is going as expected, despite the concerns of skeptics, the cumulative effect of the measures actively taken since 2020 and constantly adjusted in accordance with the current situation is yielding a good result to date. As I predicted a couple of years ago, 2024 brings a lot of exciting news. Or else it will be! :-)

That's all for today. Put likes, share your thoughts in the comments and subscribe to my channel. Good luck! :-)

No wonder he has almost 61K followers. And what he’s written for chips can be written about for other high-tech areas, particularly nuclear imaging machines and commercial turbines. Russian advances in robotics are kept very quiet for good reason, while China flouts its fantastic robotic automotive assembly lines. And given Russia’s shortage of skilled labor, its advances in improving worker productivity are critical. And I should note this big difference: Russian workers aren’t worried about being displaced by a machine; they welcome the advancements because they mean workers advance higher on the skill-level plane to higher pay and greater job stability. There’s nothing wrong with being a store clerk or a barista, but wouldn’t most people want to use their brains in their job, or else be presented with a challenge? I didn’t publish the meeting yet, but at the latest meeting Putin had with the government, the need to ensure employing the physically disabled was given great emphasis to the point where that priority was incorporated into a national project.

One big issue globally is the vast disparity in development levels, something that will exist for at least several more centuries. This raises the question about the need for all nations to reach the same ability levels that might lead to overproduction and product gluts, the problem Ricardo fretted about 200 years ago. That discussion will need to be held later. But at the moment we can see that China’s the world’s workshop while India very much wants that position, and there’re other aspiring nations wanting part of that market. So, how can Humanity make the outcome Win-Win? Yet another topic for later. Meanwhile, enjoy your chips with your favorite dip!

*

*
*
Like what you’ve been reading at Karlof1’s Substack? Then please consider subscribing and choosing to make a monthly/yearly pledge to enable my efforts in this challenging realm. Thank You!