What difficulties does Huawei need to overcome if it wants to develop its own chips?

It is still a long and difficult road for Huawei to realize the self-research and self-production of chips. Mainly due to professional software and hardware development and the monopoly and blockade of top technology, it is extremely difficult to independently develop and produce chips.

A chip is an integrated circuit composed of billions or even billions of transistors. The production of chips is mainly composed of design and manufacturing. The design part also includes front-end design and back-end design, which are completed by different companies. At present, only Intel and Samsung can independently integrate design and production. First of all, EDA technology is the main constraint of chip design, which can get rid of the constraint of manual drawing of integrated circuit diagram through code compilation, greatly reducing the time and cost of chip development. At the same time, it also needs a mature manufacturing process, that is, technology. The smaller the process, the smaller the transistor and the better the chip performance. At present, the most advanced process in the world is the 5nm process. In this situation, more than 65% of the chips in the world are in the hands of EDA software giants, including Xinsi Technology, Kenteng Electronics and Ming Dow International. These three companies have mastered 95% of the monopoly market in China. Huawei's research and development of its own EDA technology and process technology is the first step to realize self-research and self-production of chips. Secondly, the core machine of chip production is mask aligner, and this kind of instrument requires high precision. In the first step, it is required to form an extremely accurate covering layer, and the average thickness should be controlled within plus or minus 2nm. The hardest thing is the light source. How to find a light source with short wavelength and realize the process within 20nm needs further exploration. At present, 7nm EUV technology is mainly used in the market. At the same time, mask aligner also needs a strict vacuum environment to ensure that the light source does not absorb other substances; An extremely flat reflector requires that the thickness difference between the lowest point and the highest point should not exceed the thickness of a hair. Under such strict requirements, there are only more than ten enterprises in the world that can produce mask aligner. Therefore, the production of mask aligner has also become a major problem for Huawei to independently develop chips. To sum up, solving EDA technology, process technology and mask aligner production technology will be a major breakthrough for Huawei to independently develop chips.