Japan’s Minister of Economy, Trade and Industry Minoru Nishimura said that the Japanese government is prepared to continue and strengthen its financial support for the Japanese chip company Rapidus, which needs trillions of yen to achieve the goal of mass production of 2nm chips in Japan.
In addition to the Japanese government’s 70 billion yen (currently about RMB 3.64 billion) support, the company has also received a total of 7.3 billion yen (currently about RMB 380 million) in investment from eight Japanese companies, including Toyota and Sony.
Rapidus was established in August 2022, by Toyota, Sony, NTT, NEC, Softbank, Denso Denso, Armor Man, Mitsubishi UFJ Bank and other eight Japanese companies jointly funded the establishment of the amount of 7.3 billion yen, in addition to the Japanese government also provided a 70 billion yen grant as a research and development budget.
Japanese semiconductor company Rapidus President Junyi Koike previously said: the earliest plan is to complete a 2nm prototype line in the first half of 2025, the technology needs to establish 2 trillion yen, and the preparation of the mass production line needs 3 trillion yen.
The first prototype of this 2nm semiconductor pilot line will be built in 2025, and then mass production will start in the “late 20s” to catch up with world-class semiconductor manufacturers such as TSMC, which plans to mass produce a 2nm process in 2025.
It is worth mentioning that the 2nm mass production requires a much higher degree of technical difficulty compared to existing technologies. Although TSMC has a factory in Japan’s Kumamoto Prefecture, and this scheduled to start mass production of semiconductor plants in 2024 and can only produce 12 to 28-nanometer products.
In addition, Rapidus signed a technology licensing agreement with IBM in late 2022, and IBM has successfully piloted 2nm products in 2021. Rapidus will be sending employees to the U.S. in the near future to become proficient in the underlying technology required.
