HN Explorer

Ask HN: What is your take on SMIC 7nm and the Huawei chip?

2 points by TradingPlaces ↗ HN
I have my own suspicions, but I am wondering what other people are thinking about this little mystery. https://www.tomshardware.com/news/huaweis-new-mystery-7nm-chip-from-chinese-fab-defies-us-sanctions

8 comments

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wmf
What's mysterious about it?
TradingPlaces
How did they do it without EUV?
brucethemoose2
7nm is just a word.

Maybe its right at the edge of what the old UV machines can do with double patterning and such.

TradingPlaces
That’s my thinking — a low yield version of TSM N7+, maybe?
wmf
TSMC N7 doesn't use EUV and SMIC 7 nm is a copy of N7.
TradingPlaces
My understanding is that this is closer to N7+, which does.
yyyk
It's perfectly possible without EUV, if you're willing to accept high defect rates. That's one reason why the chip bans can never have military effects (the other is that current military hardware doesn't need the smaller nodes) - only commercial effects.
TradingPlaces
But the Huawei phone. I suspect the government is subsidizing that chip.