When it comes to Huawei's self-developed chips, the first thing that comes to mind is the Hess Kirin series. Yes, it is precisely because of the self-developed mobile phone chip-Hisilicon Kirin that Huawei can quickly occupy the commanding heights of the market and become theNo. 1 in China's mobile phone industry.
HiSilicon Kirin chip is the place where Huawei is on an equal footing with Apple and Samsung. So when did Hayes Kirin begin to develop and what kind of experience did it have? Below, the author will briefly describe the bumpy road of Huawei HiSilicon Kirin chip research and development. Before discussing, we need to know the manufacturing process of the chip first.
0 1 chip manufacturing: qualitative change of a grain of sand
How is the chip designed? How is the designed chip produced? I hope you can have a general understanding after reading this article.
Silicon (SiO _ 2) —— The Foundation of Chip
A chip that looks as big as a fingernail contains tens of millions or even hundreds of millions of transistors. It is incredible to think about it, and how is this realized in engineering?
The main component of the chip is silicon. Silicon is the second most abundant element in the earth's crust, and deoxidized sand (especially timely) contains up to 25% silicon in the form of silica.
Silicon ingot
Silicon (SiO2 _ 2) has always been called the foundation of semiconductor manufacturing, because it can be made into a substance called a wafer. First, we need to turn silicon into ingots through multi-step purification and melting. Then cut the silicon ingot with a diamond saw, and it becomes a wafer with uniform thickness.
The photoresist layer is exposed to ultraviolet (UV) through a mask to form a circuit pattern.
Next, a substance called photoresist is needed to cover its surface. Then, the photoresist layer is exposed to ultraviolet (UV) through a mask and becomes soluble, during which a chemical reaction occurs. Pre-designed circuit patterns are printed on the mask, and ultraviolet rays shine on the photoresist layer through it, which will form various circuit patterns of the microprocessor.
Transistor formation
At this point, we have to continue to go down. We need to continue to pour photoresist, and then photoetch to wash away the exposed parts. The remaining photoresist is still used to protect the part of the material that will not be implanted by ions.
Transistor formation process
Then there is an important ion implantation process. In a vacuum system, solid materials are irradiated with accelerated ions of atoms to be doped, thereby forming special implanted layers in implanted regions and changing the conductivity of silicon in these regions.
After ion implantation, the photoresist is also removed, and the implanted region (green part) has been doped with different atoms. At this point, the transistor is basically completed.
Wafer slicing and packaging
Then we can start electroplating, plating a layer of copper sulfate on the wafer and depositing copper ions on the transistor. Copper ions will move from the positive electrode (anode) to the negative electrode (cathode). After electroplating, copper ions are deposited on the surface of the wafer to form a thin copper layer.
Among them, the excess copper needs to be polished first to polish the wafer surface. Then you can start to build the metal layer. Transistor level, a combination of six transistors, is about 500nm. A composite interconnection metal layer is formed between different transistors, and the specific layout depends on the functional design of the corresponding processor.
chip
The surface of the chip looks extremely smooth, but in fact, after zooming in, you can see an extremely complex circuit network, such as a complex highway system network.
Next, the function of the wafer is tested, and then the wafer slicing begins. A good slice is the core of the processor, and a defective core will be discarded during testing.
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Finally, after packaging, grade testing and packaging, we see the chip.
Explain the manufacturing process of the processor.
Simply put, the manufacturing process of the processor can be roughly divided into many steps, such as raw sand (timely), silicon ingot, wafer, lithography, etching, ion implantation, metal deposition, metal layer, interconnection, wafer testing and cutting, core packaging, grade testing and packaging listing, and each step contains a more detailed process.
Chip design
The chip manufacturing mentioned here is so complicated, not to mention the engineer's initial chip functional design. It can also be considered that the development of Huawei Hisilicon Kirin is not easy so far. Let's briefly talk about its development history.
History of Hayes Kirin
Start: Focus on consumer electronics chips.
When it comes to Kirin, it is inseparable from Haisi Company. Founded in June 5438 +2004 10, formerly Huawei integrated circuit design center, was established in June 5438 +099 1. It was at this moment that Huawei began the battle of independent chips. After more than ten years, the company has been committed to the design and production of ASIC.
With a long-term vision and a wave of his hand, Huawei wants to be its own mobile phone chip. Now that I think about it, this is really a great decision. Today, Huawei's success cannot be overstated.
After it was formally established, Hisilicon team mainly focused on three businesses: system equipment business, mobile phone terminal business and external sales business. Thanks to years of cooperation with communication giants, HiSilicon's 3G chip has achieved great success in the global scope, and its accumulation in the communication field has also laid an important foundation for Huawei HiSilicon's success.
Dai Hui, a veteran, once said that the director of PSST Committee (Product and Solution Group) is Xu Zhijun, who manages Hayes from a strategic perspective. After many years, he was the patron and boss of Hayes behind the scenes.
Xu Wenwei, who has gone to Europe as the president, is also the president of Hayes, participating in strategic decision-making and enhancing demand from the market perspective. He Tingbo and Ivy are responsible for the specific work of Hayes. He Tingbo later became the head of Hayes, while Ivy was in charge of marketing.
When it was founded in 2004, it mainly manufactured some industrial chips supporting network and video applications. Did not enter the smart phone market.
Development and maturity
Of course, the research and development of chips can't produce works in three days. Although 5438+00 was formally established in June 2004, it took Huawei five years to produce the first mobile phone chip, named K3V 1, but due to its own research and development strength and market reasons, the first product was immature in many aspects and ended in failure.
In 20 12, Huawei released K3V2, claiming to be the world's smallest quad-core ARM A9 architecture processor. With the GPU integrated with GC4000 and 40nm process technology, this chip has been highly valued by Huawei's mobile phone department, and has been directly commercialized on Huawei P6 and Huawei Mate 1, which can be said to be highly anticipated. You know, Huawei P6 was originally positioned as a flagship product.
However, the chip was criticized by major netizens for its excessive calorific value and poor GPU compatibility. However, Huawei insisted on using this chip in several mobile phones under pressure. At that time, Huawei chips were ridiculed by everyone, and then Huawei began its own efforts.
After two years of technical precipitation, at the beginning of 20 14, Haisi released Kirin 9 10, and changed the chip naming method from here. As the world's first 4-core mobile phone processor, Mali-450MP4 GPU is used instead.
Kirin 9 10
It is worth mentioning that Kirin 9 10 integrated the Ba Long Balong7 10 baseband developed by Huawei for the first time, and the process was upgraded to 28nm, and Mali replaced the GPU. Kirin 9 10 was launched in P6s, an upgraded version of Huawei P6. This is the historical symbol of the turning point of Hisilicon platform and the foundation for the success of future products.
June 20 14, with the release of Glory 6, Huawei brought us Kirin 920, which is a great progress and a new milestone.
Qilin 920
As a 28nm eight nuclear soc, it also integrates audio chip, video chip and ISP, and integrates the first Balong720 baseband of LTE Cat.6, making Glory 6 the first mobile phone supporting LTE Cat.6 in the world. Also from Kirin 920, Kirin chip has gained so much recognition. Glory 6, which was equipped with this chip in that year, was on fire, and the sales volume has been proved.
In the same year, Hisilicon also brought a small upgrade of Kirin 925 and Kirin 928, mainly the improvement of the main frequency, and began to integrate coprocessors. 925 This chip was used in Huawei Mate 7, creating the history of Huawei Mate 7' s domestic high-end flagship with a price of 3,000 yuan, and its global sales exceeded 7.5 million. At this moment, Kirin chip finally caught up with the development pace of Huawei mobile phones!
huawei mate 7
Huawei Mate 7 was released in the same month as the new models of Apple and Samsung. At that time, Huawei did not have much confidence in rushing into the high-end market. I didn't expect Apple and Samsung to fall off the chain at a critical time.
Most famously, because of the Hollywood scandal, and because Apple didn't set up a server in China, no one knew where the information went, so it was suspected that there was a security risk. Of course, now it has set up a server in Guizhou.
Of course, in addition to the 9-series processor, in 20 14 12, Hisilicon brought us the mid-range 6-series and released the Kirin 620 chip. It is HiSilicon's first 64-bit chip, which integrates self-developed Balong baseband, audio and video decoding and other components.
This chip has been used in products such as Glory 4X and Glory 4C, among which Glory 4X became Huawei's first mobile phone with sales exceeding 10 million. Hisilicon tries to prove to the public that Hisilicon can not only make high-end chips with soaring performance, but also control mid-range chips with balanced power consumption.
Kirin 930
March 20 15, Kirin 930 and Kirin 935 chips were released. This series of chips don't have many bright spots, or 28nm process. However, Hayes cleverly avoided the immature A57 architecture and used A53 architecture with high energy consumption ratio to improve the main frequency. With the advantage of power consumption and the rollover of Qualcomm 8 10, Kirin 930 series made a beautiful turnaround.
In May of the same year, Kirin 620 upgraded Kirin 650 was released, and the world's first mid-range chip adopted 16nm process. Hisilicon's first all-netcom baseband SoC chip integrated with CDMA was launched at Glory 5C. Later, we also saw a slightly upgraded Kirin 650 and a polished Kirin 659.
20 15, 1 1 month, Kirin 950 was released, which first appeared in Huawei Mate8. Different from before, Hisilicon adopts 16nm process, integrates self-developed Balong720 baseband, self-developed dual-core 14-bit ISP, integrated i5 coprocessor, and integrated self-developed audio and video decoding chip for the first time, which is a highly integrated SoC.
kirin 950
It is also the world's first A72 architecture and Mali-T880 GPU SoC. With its technical advantages, Kirin 950 has achieved excellent results, and won numerous praises from consumers in all aspects except GPU experience.
On June 201610/9, Huawei Kirin Kirin 960 chip was officially unveiled at the autumn media communication meeting held in Shanghai. Kirin 960 is equipped with ARM Cortex-A73 CPU core for the first time, A53 is a small core, and Mali G7 1 MP8 is a GPU. In terms of storage, UFS2. 1 is supported, but it is a pity that 16nm process technology is still adopted.
Qilin 960
However, since Kirin 960, Kirin 9 series has solved the shortcomings of GPU performance and greatly improved the GPU performance of Huawei /HONOR. In terms of game performance, it is no longer the short board of Kirin chip. Kirin 960 was launched in Huawei Mate9 series and also used in products such as Glory V9.
20 17 On September 2nd, at the German International Consumer Electronics Show, Huawei released Kirin 970, an artificial intelligence chip. This chip adopts TSMC 10nm process for the first time, which is the same process as the latest Xiaolong 835 chip in Qualcomm.
Kirin 970
However, integrating 5.5 billion transistors far exceeds Qualcomm's 36,543.8 billion transistors and Apple's A 10' s 3.3 billion transistors, which brings about a 20% reduction in power consumption. AI is the "brain" of Kirin 970, and the core of AI technology is to process massive data. The release of this chip makes Huawei step into the ranks of top chip manufacturers.
In the first half of 20 18, Huawei P20pro equipped with Kirin 970 was highly praised by the outside world for its excellent camera performance. At that time, P20 and P20 Pro had become the leaders in the field of mobile phone photography, and dominated the professional camera evaluation website DXO for a long time.
From now on, Kirin 980 processor, the world's first 7nm processor, has earned enough gimmicks. The highest frequency is as high as 2.6Ghz, and the fully upgraded CPU, GPU, new dual-core NPU and GPU Turbo blessing also make Huawei Mate 20 shine.
Of course, there are some HiSilicon Kirin chips that are not mentioned in this article. Here is the flagship chip of Kirin 9 series. The new Kirin 7 10 and 8 10 may be known to everyone. In a word, there is still a long way to go for Huawei's HiSilicon Kirin chip self-research, but in the foreseeable future, Huawei will continue to overcome difficulties and forge ahead.
Finally, the latest news. For all the pollen that pays attention to Huawei, there are two highlights in the second half of the year, one is the launch of Kirin 990, and the other is the release of the new flagship of Huawei Mate 30 series. Now, according to Huawei's official news, IFA 20 19 exhibition will unveil heavy new products on September 6, and Kirin 990 is no accident.
Huawei terminal official screenshot
According to the previous news, Kirin 990 will launch TSMC's 7nm EUV process, and it is very likely to integrate 5G baseband for the first time. Not surprisingly, Kirin 990 will continue to improve its performance on the basis of Kirin 980 in addition to the process upgrade. At the same time, it is expected to adopt the independently developed Da Vinci architecture NPU, and Kirin 8 10 has been adopted.
Write it at the end
Along the way, Hisilicon mobile phone chips have grown from scratch, and now they are among the forefront of the industry. They have invested heavily in R&D at all costs, and they have both honors and setbacks. I hope that more China enterprises can persevere and accumulate hard, just like HiSilicon Kirin, so as to make key technologies in their own hands as soon as possible.
We still don't know what bright spots will be brought to us by the upcoming Kirin 990 from Huawei, which will not be revealed until the press conference. Facing the unknown, we might as well look forward to it.