Shulou(Shulou.com)11/24 Report--

CTOnews.com, April 10, Japanese Minister of economy, Trade and Industry Yasuni Nishimura said that he has high hopes for Japanese chip company Rapidus to produce 2nm chips per day, and the Japanese government is ready to continue and strengthen its financial support to the company because it needs trillions of yen to achieve this goal.

Japan's Ministry of economy, Trade and Industry is drawing up a plan to provide an additional 300 billion yen (CTOnews.com Note: about 15.63 billion yuan) to Rapidus to build a semiconductor factory in Hokkaido, Hokkaido Shimbun reported.

In February, Rapidus chose to build a 2-nanometer chip factory in Qianshi City, near Sapporo, after receiving an initial funding of 70 billion yen from the Japanese government. Additional funding from the Japanese government will help Rapidus build a prototype production line that is scheduled to start production in 2025, the source said.

In fact, the company has previously received 70 billion yen (currently about 3.64 billion yuan) from the Japanese government. And the company has also received a total of 7.3 billion yen (currently about 380 million yuan) investment from eight Japanese companies, including Toyota and Sony.

CTOnews.com Science Popularization: Rapidus was founded in August 2022 and is jointly funded by eight Japanese enterprises, including Toyota, Sony, NTT, NEC, Softbank Corp., Denso Denso, Meixia and Mitsubishi UFJ Bank, with a capital contribution of 7.3 billion yen. In addition, the Japanese government has also provided a subsidy of 70 billion yen as the R & D budget.

Jun Koike, president of Rapidus, a Japanese semiconductor company, previously said that he planned to build a 2nm prototype line by the first half of 2025 at the earliest. It would take 2 trillion yen to establish the technology, and another 3 trillion yen to prepare for the production line.

The first prototype of the 2nm semiconductor pilot line will be completed in 2025, and then mass production will begin in the "late 1920s" to catch up with world-class semiconductor manufacturers such as TSMC, which plans to mass-produce 2nm process processes in 2025.

It is worth mentioning that the technical difficulty required for 2nm mass production is much higher than that of the existing technology. Although TSMC has a factory in Kumamoto Prefecture, Japan, the semiconductor plant, which is scheduled to start mass production in 2024, can only produce 1228 nm products.

In addition, Rapidus signed a technology licensing agreement with IBM of the United States at the end of 2022, and IBM successfully trial-produced 2nm products in 2021. Rapidus will send staff to the United States in the near future to master the basic skills needed.

Related readings:

"IBM announced a partnership with Japanese chipmaker Rapidus to help it make state-of-the-art chips"

"Rapidus, a joint venture of Japan's Big eight, joins hands with IMEC, Europe's largest chip research and development institution, to promote 2nm semiconductor production."

Welcome to subscribe "Shulou Technology Information " to get latest news, interesting things and hot topics in the IT industry, and controls the hottest and latest Internet news, technology news and IT industry trends.