This will speed up production output three times.
As specified Nikkei Asian Reviewby October of this year, the Japanese company Rapidus should complete the main stages of construction of its enterprise on the island of Hokkaido, in the buildings of which serial production of 2-nm chips for third-party customers should be established by 2027. Pilot production should be launched next year. It is characteristic that at this enterprise Rapidus will also carry out chip packaging using advanced technologies, and the corresponding operations should be well automated.
Image source: Nikkei Asian Review
Rapidus President Atsuyoshi Koike explained in an interview with Nikkei that chip testing and packaging operations typically involve a high degree of manual labor, and the company will aim to increase the productivity of the future facility by highly automating the relevant processes. This will speed up the production of chips and attract customers for whom time is a valuable resource.
In addition, Rapidus intends to combine the efforts of Japanese suppliers of equipment and materials in the field of chip packaging in order to bring closer the creation of some unified industry standards. This will simplify production processes and reduce the cost of production, although it will require a certain openness from market participants in the area of intellectual property exchange. The company expects that it will need to invest about $14 billion to begin production of the first prototypes of 2-nm products in 2025, and in general, the launch of the enterprise by 2027 will require about $35 billion. The Japanese authorities have so far provided less than $7 billion in subsidies, but they are ready to vouch for the company to commercial banks so that they will provide Rapidus with loans for the development of the young business.
