Japanese Chipmaker Rapidus to Build Fully Automated 2-nanometer Chip Line
TapTechNews August 11th news, the Japanese chipmaker Rapidus Corporation announced that the chip factory it is building in northern Japan will adopt robot and artificial intelligence technologies to create a fully automated 2-nanometer chip production line to meet the needs of advanced artificial intelligence applications. According to the Nikkei Asian Review, the company plans to start prototype manufacturing of 2-nanometer chips next year, but it won't be able to achieve mass production until 2027 at the earliest.
Through automated production, Rapidus expects to be able to shorten the chip delivery time to one-third of its competitors'. The exterior structure of the company's factory is planned to be completed in October this year, and the EUV lithography equipment will enter the site in December.
The fully automated factory is expected to help Rapidus gain an advantage in the highly competitive semiconductor manufacturing field. Although the front-end process of chip manufacturing, including EUV lithography, has already been highly automated in most production facilities, but the back-end processes such as interconnection, packaging and testing are still highly dependent on manual labor. Rapidus plans full-process automation to improve efficiency. The company's president, Atsuyoshi Koike, said that this will bring higher performance and faster delivery speed than other companies' similar 2-nanometer products.
For Rapidus, speeding up AI chip production is crucial because the company lags behind TSMC and Samsung's schedule by two years, and these two giants plan to start mass production in 2025. Especially in the context of this year's AI accelerator market expected to grow by 250%, time is particularly important.
If Rapidus can significantly shorten the delivery time without sacrificing price and quality, it is expected to occupy an important position in the market, and the faster delivery speed will bring greater planning and deployment flexibility for data centers and other AI companies.
Despite the optimistic outlook, Rapidus still faces some challenges before full operation. The company said that starting prototype manufacturing in 2025 requires 2 trillion yen (TapTechNews note: currently about 97.786 billion yuan) in funds, and large-scale mass production requires at least 3 trillion yen (currently about 146.679 billion yuan). Although the Japanese government has promised to provide 920 billion yen, private enterprises are still reluctant to fill the funding gap due to Rapidus' lack of performance records. Atsuyoshi Koike acknowledged that it is currently difficult for the company to obtain private financing, but is actively promoting financing facilitation measures including government loan guarantees.