TECH

The Russian billionaire plan for building semiconductors

State-owned company “Rostec” considered that almost 800 billion rubles should be invested in the development of Russian microelectronics. This amount appears in the passport of the state's “roadmap”, which was sent to the Ministry of Finance, Ministry of Industry and Commerce, Ministry of Telecommunications and Mass Communications and Ministry of Economic Development.
These investments must be destined to the creation of production lines for lithographic printing of semiconductor products according to technological standards 65 (55), 28 and up to 14 nm. In addition, it is planned to manufacture flash memory chips using 25 nm process technology for use in solid state drives.
According to the most advanced technical processes of 28 and 14 nm and, in the future, 7 nm, it is planned to organize the production of general purpose processors. It is planned to create four-core chips with domestic or open architecture for desktop systems, laptops and tablets, as well as high-performance 16-core processors for desktops. It is also planned to manufacture servers, graphics, mathematicians and other specialized processors. All of them must fully support the “main domestic production operating systems”
All production technologies and equipment are planned to be developed in Russia. The purchase of foreign lithographic scanners and other equipment is not foreseen. The project seems very ambitious, especially considering that it is designed for only four years - the "roadmap" foresees investments until 2024.



In total, according to Rostec's calculations, 798 billion rubles should be spent on developing the semiconductor industry in Russia, taking into account additional funding after 2024. Of these, Rostec itself is willing to invest “only” 30 billion , another 102.6 billion should be allocated from extra-budgetary funds and 615 billion from the state budget. The remaining resources, which will be spent after 2024, must be obtained from the revenues of the semiconductor industries created.
Thanks to the investments described, the volume of exports of Russian semiconductor products is expected to reach 20.4 billion rubles in 2024 and 2030 - 48.8 billion. The domestic market for new domestic microelectronics in 2024 is expected to reach 466 billion rubles.
It is true that several experts are very skeptical about Rostec's plans. Firstly, this is due to the fact that, in 2024, the specified technical processes can finally be considered obsolete. Even the "thinnest" of the planned technical processes - 14 nm, can no longer be called advanced. It is known for many thanks to Intel, which has not been able to “get out” of it for many years, and started using it in 2015. In addition, many flash memory manufacturers now produce chips using 10 nm class process technology , that is, less than 20 nm. On the other hand, owning semiconductor manufacturing can be very important, as the example of China shows. Especially for strategic electronic applications.

AVnews