The chip is actually very simple because we didn't pay special attention to it.

The United States regularly restricts Huawei. In this way, Huawei's high-end Kirin chips will not be produced, and mobile phones will not be made. This is a very sad thing for Huawei users, Huawei and the mobile phone industry in China.

The question is, what is the chip? Why can't China produce this Huawei-designed chip?

The chip is an integrated circuit. What? You don't know what an integrated circuit is? We assume that it is a logistics transportation system composed of many criss-crossing roads.

How is the chip made? At present, the advent of chips requires three basic steps: ① chip design; (2) core making; ③ Packaging and testing.

In order to show that chip manufacturing is not a mysterious thing, let's say, for example, if we have 2 million immigrants who need centralized resettlement, then we need to build a resettlement area. Making chips is the same as making resettlement areas.

Chip design

What Huawei is doing is the design of Kirin chip. So how to design a chip? What are the difficulties in chip design? Designing a chip is to figure out what to do, formulate chip specifications according to technical requirements and laws and regulations, then design business and operational logic according to technical specifications, then convert these logics into circuit schematic diagrams composed of various logic gates, and finally determine the packaging forms and placement positions of all involved electronic doors, as well as their direct connection methods. This is the three-dimensional layout diagram of the chip. Although there are few words in this process, it will undoubtedly increase the difficulty and cycle of chip design if there is no efficient and intelligent automatic aided design tool (EDA). Knocking on the blackboard: EDA tools are very important in the era of highly intelligent design!

This process of chip design is the same as the design placement area mentioned above. According to the number of immigrants who need to be resettled and the laws and regulations of the Party and the government to protect people's well-being, it is necessary to solve the problems of food, clothing, housing and transportation and medical care, and plan roads, hospitals and schools. And convert it into the design drawings of the resettlement area.

Core manufacturing

In the core-making stage, according to the three-dimensional layout output in the design stage, it is necessary to carve on the wafer like a sculptor carving a city on a piece of wood. A wafer is a round cake made of monocrystalline silicon (the bigger the cake, the harder it is to make). Many chips can be carved on it, and then these chips are separated, and the chip making process is completed. At present, Huawei's 5nm Kirin chip needs to engrave those gate circuits on the wafer with a 5nm mask aligner. Knocking on the blackboard: At present, there is no mask aligner that can carve 5nm gate circuits in China!

This core-making process is the same as road construction, school and wood carving, but the size of the carving knife used is different. Excavators are used to build roads, and mask aligner is used to build cores.

Packaging and testing

After the etched wafer is cut into bare chips, it needs to be protected by clothes. This is packaging, just like a completed community needs to be fenced. However, in order to make the chip communicate with the peripheral circuits, it is necessary to lead the interface circuit of the chip out of the coat in the form of pins, just as there are several doors that can be accessed in each community.

It is necessary to test whether the function of the chip is normal after packaging. At this time, we can adjust the chips slightly according to the test results, and finally produce chips with different specifications from the test assembly line according to different acceptance standards, just like Kirin 9000 and 9000 E.

The same is true for building communities. Finally, electricity and water should be connected and checked by experts. It can only be delivered to the owner after inspection.