How many chips can be cut into a wafer

This depends on the size of your die, the size of your wafer, and the yield.

At present, the so-called 6-inch, 12-inch or 18-inch wafer in the industry is actually the abbreviation of wafer diameter, but this inch is an estimate. In fact, the wafer diameter is divided into three types: 150mm, 300mm and 450mm, and 12 inches is about 305mm, so it is called 12 inch wafers for convenience.

If you simplify the formula, it will become:

X is the so-called number of wafers that can be cut (DPW die per wafer).

How many chips can be produced on a single wafer?

In reality, wafers are 8 inches, 12 inches, 18 inches, and so on.

The larger the wafer size, the smaller the chip process, and the current chips with 14nm or below process are actually manufactured with 12-inch wafers, so the shipping area of 12-inch wafers is as high as 65%. So let's calculate how many chips a 12-inch wafer can produce.

The surface area of the 12-inch wafer is about 70,659 square millimeters, while the chip area of the Kirin 990 5G is square millimeters. Of course not, because the wafer is round and the chip is square, cutting the square chip on the round wafer will produce some leftovers, so it is not right to divide the wafer surface area by the chip surface area, the correct formula should be to divide the wafer area by the chip area and then subtract the wafer circumference divided by 2 times the chip area.

The diameter of a 12-inch wafer is 300 mm, and substituting it into the formula can be calculated to be about 640 chips.

But what? However, this process also needs to consider issues such as yield, that is, there will be defective products, so there are only about 500 chips that can actually be produced.

Just recently, news about China's semiconductor field has emerged one after another, whether it is Huawei being suppressed by the United States in the semiconductor field, or China's latest semiconductor industrial policy, it all revolves around China's semiconductor industry. Recently, there has been a new news, that is, a wafer factory in Japan is going to give 60% of the equity of our country's semiconductor company, which is not all out. This company has a total of 11 wafer production lines, which are 8-inch and 12-inch production lines, and this acquisition is good news for our country, because there are too few 12-inch wafer production lines in our country, and it happens that 12-inch wafers are also the most important.

The current chips below 14 nanometers must use 12 inches, so this fully reflects the importance of the 12-inch production line.

This acquisition lies in the production capacity of raw materials in China's semiconductor industry chain has been solved, as the saying goes, the soldiers and horses have not moved, and the grain and grass go first is this truth, even if you have the ability to manufacture no materials, this is also a clever woman who is difficult to cook without rice, and she can't rely on imports to do it all, that is, it will be stuck in the neck of others, and Huawei's experience is a lesson in blood.

Then some friends will ask, why the larger the wafer, the lower the chip manufacturing process. In fact, the advanced technology of this chip is not directly related to the size of the wafer, the reason why chips below 14 nanometers need to use 12-inch wafers, mainly because chips below 14 inches use 12-inch wafers to save wafer materials to the greatest extent, and saving materials is to save costs. Take Huawei's Kirin chip as an example, using 12-inch wafers to produce Kirin 990 chips, about 400 chips can be produced.

However, if you use 8-inch production, you will have a lot of leftovers. This results in a lot of waste.

Therefore, wafers are very expensive materials, and there is no room for waste, which is why the more advanced chips are used, the larger the wafers.

According to the data released on TSMC's official website, TSMC's annual production capacity exceeded 12 million pieces of 12-inch wafers in 2019. When converted to a monthly output, the monthly output is about 1 million pieces.

In fact, there are three types of wafer diameters: 150mm, 300mm, and 450mm. So the final calculation is about 640 pieces, but considering the yield rate and other issues, the actual chips that can be produced are about 500-600 pieces.

The number of wafers that can be cut into a wafer is determined by the size of the die, the size of the wafer, the muyou and the yield, which is calculated by formula.

Wafer refers to the silicon wafer used in the production of silicon semiconductor integrated circuits, which is called wafer because of its round shape; It can be processed into various circuit component structures on silicon wafers, and become IC products with specific electrical functions. The raw material of the wafer is silicon, and the surface of the earth's crust is useful for an inexhaustible supply of silica. The silica ore is refined by electroosmotic pure arc furnaces, chlorinated with hydrochloric acid, and distilled to produce high-purity polysilicon with a purity of up to.

Wafers are the basic materials for manufacturing semiconductor chips, and the main raw material for semiconductor integrated circuits is silicon, so it corresponds to silicon wafers. Silicon is widely found in rocks and gravel in the form of silicate or silica in nature, and the manufacturing of silicon wafers can be summarized into three basic steps: silicon refining and purification, monocrystalline silicon growth, and wafer molding.