Japanese Minister of Economy, Trade and Industry Yasutoshi Nishimura expressed high hopes for the Japanese chip company Rapidus to mass-produce 2nm chips on a daily basis. The Japanese government is ready to continue and strengthen financial support for the company because it needs tens of thousands billion yen to achieve this goal.
According to Japan’s “Hokkaido Shimbun”, several sources said that Japan’s Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry is drawing up a plan to provide Rapidus with an additional 300 billion yen (currently about 15.63 billion CNY) in funds for the Construction of a semiconductor factory in Hokkaido.
Rapidus selected Chitose, near Sapporo, in February to build a 2nm chip factory after receiving initial funding of 70 billion yen from the Japanese government. The additional funding from the Japanese government will help Rapidus build a prototype production line that it plans to start production in 2025, the sources said.
In fact, the company has previously received initial funding of 70 billion yen (currently about 3.64 billion CNY) from the Japanese government, and the company has also received a total of 7.3 billion yen (currently about 3.64 billion CNY) from eight Japanese companies including Toyota and Sony. 380 million CNY) investment.
Rapidus was established in August 2022, jointly funded by 8 Japanese companies including Toyota, Sony, NTT, NEC, Softbank, Denso Denso, Kioxia, and Mitsubishi UFJ Bank, with a capital contribution of 7.3 billion days In addition, the Japanese government has also provided a subsidy of 70 billion yen as a research and development budget.
Koike Junyi, president of Japanese semiconductor company Rapidus, previously said: It is planned to build a 2nm prototype line by the first half of 2025 at the earliest. It will take 2 trillion yen to establish the technology, and 3 trillion yen will be needed to prepare for the mass production line.
The first prototype of this 2nm semiconductor trial production line will be completed in 2025, and then mass production will begin in the “late 20s” in order to catch up with world-class semiconductor manufacturers such as TSMC as soon as possible. Mass production of 2nm process technology in 2025.
It is worth mentioning that the technical difficulty required for 2nm mass production is greatly improved compared with existing technologies. Although TSMC has a factory in Kumamoto Prefecture, Japan, this semiconductor factory, which is scheduled to start mass production in 2024, can only produce 12-28 nanometer products.
In addition, Rapidus signed a technology licensing agreement with IBM in the United States at the end of 2022, and IBM has successfully trial-produced 2nm products in 2021. Rapidus will send employees to the United States in the near future to master the required basic technologies.
