At the main forum of the annual meeting of the Chinese Association for Science and Technology (CAST) held in Hefei City, Anhui Province, China, on October 22, Wu Weiren, chief designer of China’s lunar exploration project, director and chief scientist of the Deep Space Exploration Laboratory (DSEL), and an academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering (CAE), introduced China’s plans for deep space exploration in the next 15 years.
Academician Wu revealed that in the next 15 years, China’s deep space exploration will demonstrate the implementation of ten major engineering tasks in three areas, including lunar exploration, planetary exploration, and transportation technology.
Specifically, these include: Chang’e VI/VII/VIII Lunar Exploration Project Phase IV, International Lunar Scientific Research Station, manned lunar landing, Magpie Bridge Teleconducting Remote Integrated Constellation System, Tianwen II Asteroid Sampling and Detection, Near-Earth Asteroid Defense, Tianwen III Mars Sampling, Jupiter Galaxy and Interplanetary Transit Detection, and Solar System Marginal Detection.
In the field of transportation, China will demonstrate the implementation of the heavy-lift launch vehicle project, breakthroughs in key technologies such as 10-meter-class rocket body diameter and high-thrust liquid-oxygen methane engines, so as to raise China’s near-Earth orbit launch capacity from 25 tons to 150 tons, laying a solid foundation for future deep-space exploration.
Among them, the defense of near-Earth asteroid party, will be for near-Earth asteroid impact on the Earth, a very small probability, a great danger of the event, a tens of millions of kilometers of asteroid implementation of kinetic energy impact, so that it changes the orbit, and on-orbit to carry out the assessment of the effect of the impact.
Prior to this, Chen Qi, director of China’s Deep Space Exploration Laboratory System Research Institute, had disclosed the development blueprint of near-Earth asteroid defense, planning to achieve a kinetic energy impact on an asteroid in 2030, and to realize the push-off deflection during 2030-2035, and to have preliminary asteroid orbit control capability before 2045.
Wu Yanhua, deputy director of the National Space Administration, said that China will begin to set up a near-Earth asteroid defense system to jointly respond to the threat of near-Earth asteroid impacts, contributing Chinese power to protect the Earth and human security.
China’s first near-Earth asteroid defense mission is expected to achieve three major scientific goals: The first is to reveal the dynamical evolution law of the impact target and detect the orbital characteristics of the target asteroid. The second is to reveal the intrinsic properties of the impact target and to detect the shape, size, composition and structure of the target asteroid. The third is to reveal the impact momentum transfer law, and carry out research on wall impact effects such as terrain changes and spatter distribution.
On September 27, 2022, NASA conducted the first asteroid defense exercise in human history, using a satellite named “DART” to impact a 160-meter-diameter asteroid 11 million kilometers away and change its orbit.
The Biden administration updated its export control regulations for artificial intelligence (AI) chips on Oct. 17, with plans to prevent companies like NVIDIA from exporting advanced AI chips to China. NVIDIA shares plunged nearly 5%, AMD shares plunged more than 2%, and Intel shares fell 1.7% after the news was announced. Under the latest rules, NVIDIA’s exports of chips to China, including the A800 and H800, will be affected. The new rules will take effect after 30 days of public comment. NVIDIA responded to CBN, “We comply with all applicable regulations while striving to provide products that support thousands of applications across a variety of industries. Given the global demand for our products, we do not expect (the new regulations) to have a material impact on our financial results in the near term.”
The restrictions will also affect chip sales to China by companies such as AMD and Intel, with chip equipment makers including Applied Materials, Panarin Group and KLA also implicated. This is due to the fact that the new measures expand the licensing requirements for exporting advanced chips to more than 40 other countries outside of China, and introduce licensing requirements for chip manufacturing tools for 21 countries outside of China, expanding the list of equipment that is prohibited from entering those countries.
In addition, the new measures aim to prevent companies from bypassing chip restrictions through Chiplet’s chip stacking technology. U.S. Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo said the new measures are intended to “close loopholes,” and indicated that they will likely be updated at least annually in the future. The new restrictions will affect only a small portion of chip exports to China,” she said. Chips used in consumer products such as game consoles or smartphones will not be subject to export controls. Last October, the U.S. imposed bandwidth rate restrictions on AI chips exported to China, involving NVIDIA’s A100 and H100 chips. Since then, NVIDIA has offered Chinese companies alternative versions of the A800 and H800. some Chinese computer makers have gone public with details that the H800 servers are identical in every way to the H100 chips sold elsewhere in the world, except for a reduced transfer rate of 400GB per second. Despite U.S. export restrictions that have fueled concerns about NVIDIA’s chip access to the Chinese market, NVIDIA’s business is still surging in terms of earnings reports. This has been driven by demand for big AI model development so far this year. Earnings for the quarter ended July 30 showed that NVIDIA’s net profit for the quarter reached a record $6.7 billion, a year-on-year surge of 422%; revenues also surged 171% year-on-year to $13.5 billion; the company’s gross profit margin increased by more than 25 percentage points over the same period last year, reaching 71.2%. NVIDIA will announce its fiscal third-quarter earnings next month, and the company expects that third-quarter revenue will be about $16 billion, well above analysts’ expectations.
The news of October 10, India’s financial crimes agency, Tuesday arrested vivo arrested four industry executives, including a Chinese national industry executives, accused of suspected money laundering.
Vivo responded, said an employee was arrested, but did not specify the nationality of the arrestees. It also said, “The recent arrests by the Indian Enforcement Directorate (IED) are of deep concern to us. We will use all available legal means.” Enforcement Directorate is yet to respond to this. Earlier, sources close to the matter told the media that four Vivo employees were arrested and during the court hearing lawyers said that only one Vivo employee was arrested by the name of Guanwen Kuang.
The Indian law enforcement agency, asked for 10 days of detention, but the judge granted only three days. It is reported that this arrest of Vivo executives may be related to the 2022 case. In 2022, the Indian Enforcement Directorate, raided Vivo’s India office and accused it of money laundering. It also blocked 119 bank accounts related to Vivo’s India operations, but the court later quashed the move. Vivo has repeatedly denied the allegations, stating that “Vivo firmly adheres to its ethical principles and is committed to legal compliance.” The latest IDC data shows that Vivo is already the largest smartphone brand in India in Q2 2023 and has maintained its growth, capturing 16% of the market share.
It is ahead of Samsung, Apple, Mi. vivo Y series is the sales leader of vivo, vivo Y200 has already started its preview in India and is expected to be powered by Snapdragon 4 Gen 1 mobile processing platform, 6.67-inch FHD+ 120Hz screen and 64 MP OIS main camera. A lot of Chinese companies, in the last 18 months, have stepped on potholes in India. “The same end of the world” OPPO, millet, Lenovo, India naturally did not let go, anyway, glory has been running overnight. Mi Group is by far the worst loss, was frozen nearly 700 million U.S. dollars in assets. India, on the other hand, has claimed that OPPO, wrongly used the tariff exemption and is going to make OPPO pay Rs 43.9 billion in back taxes, which is about Rs 3.7 billion. In July this year, BYD had also wanted to spend $1 billion, to invest in India, and cooperate with Indian companies to produce electric cars and batteries in India. But in the end, India rejected BYD’s $1 billion investment plan to build a factory on the grounds of investment security. At the same time it also started an investigation into BYD, mainly due to suspicions that the company had failed to pay about 730 million rupees, or about 63.6 million yuan, in taxes. The problem is that BYD has only sold about 1,960 cars in India over the past two years, and its revenue doesn’t even come close to paying the tax. On September 27, several Indian media reported that due to the suspicion of tax evasion by Lenovo’s local company, in order to confirm the relevant information and collect evidence, Indian tax officials raided Lenovo’s local factories and offices. Lenovo said, “We are working with the relevant authorities and will provide all possible support.” In 2022-2023, Lenovo’s revenues in India amounted to $1.9 billion, or about Rs. 13.9 billion, or about 3 percent of its total revenues. India gets what it wants and kicks out companies that have helped. India is seeking to “Make in India”, to create a domestic science and technology industry, to reduce the dependence on imports of Chinese manufactured goods.
Tsinghua University has officially announced that a team of Professor Wu Huaqiang and Associate Professor Gao Bin from the School of Integrated Circuits at Tsinghua University has developed the world’s first fully system-integrated amnesia memory-computing chip that supports highly efficient on-chip learning (where machine learning can be accomplished directly on the hardware side) based on the memory-computing computing paradigm. The results have been published in the latest issue of Science.
According to the article, the team of Qian He and Wu Huaqiang has been on a long march for 11 years, from amnesia devices to prototype chips to system integration, to solve the bottleneck problem of AI arithmetic, and to overcome the “neck” of the key core technologies, and the results involve the amnesia integrated chip, the integrated system, the accelerator of ADAM algorithm, and the system of storage and calculation. system, ADAM algorithm gas pedal …… It is expected to promote the development of artificial intelligence, automatic driving, wearable devices and other fields.
It is understood that in 2012, Qian He and Wu Huaqiang team began to study the use of amnesia for storage. Memristor is the fourth basic component of circuit after resistor, capacitor and inductor. In 2020, the team built a complete storage and computation system based on multiple arrays of amnistors, which runs the convolutional neural network algorithm efficiently and successfully verifies the image recognition function, which is two orders of magnitude more energy-efficient than the graphic processor chip. The system runs the convolutional neural network algorithm efficiently and successfully verifies the image recognition function, which is two orders of magnitude more energy-efficient than the graphic processor chip, dramatically increasing the computing power of the computing device and realizing the completion of complex computation with smaller power consumption and lower hardware cost.
On-chip learning is important for edge smart devices to adapt to different application scenarios. Current techniques for training neural networks require moving large amounts of data between computing and storage units, which hinders the realization of learning on edge devices.
In this research, Qian He and Huaqiang Wu led a team to innovate and design a new generalized algorithm and architecture STELLAR for efficient on-chip learning applicable to amnesia storage-computing integration, which includes its learning algorithms, hardware implementation, and parallel conductance tuning scheme, and is a generalized approach to facilitate on-chip learning through the use of amnesia cross-gate arrays.
The chip is known to perform tasks such as motion control, image classification and speech recognition. It consumes only 1/35th of the power consumption of an ASIC for the same task, while promising a 75-fold improvement in energy efficiency.
“The integrated on-chip learning can effectively protect user privacy and data while realizing lower latency and smaller energy consumption.” Yao Peng, one of the first authors of the academic paper and a postdoctoral fellow, introduced that the chip can realize fast “on-chip training” and “on-chip recognition” of different tasks with reference to the bionic brain-like processing method, which can effectively complete the incremental learning tasks in edge computing scenarios and adapt to new scenarios and learn new knowledge to meet users’ personalized needs with extremely low power consumption. It can effectively accomplish incremental learning tasks in edge computing scenarios, adapt to new scenarios and learn new knowledge with very low power consumption to meet users’ personalized needs.
Google Pixel 8 and Pixel 8 Pro have already been released, and the third member of the series, the Pixel 8a, has now been revealed.
As you can see from the renders, the Pixel 8a has a very similar design style to the Pixel 8, Pixel 8 Pro with very rounded corners.
According to reports, the Google Pixel 8a measures 152.1 x 72.6 x 8.9 millimeters. This means that its dimensions are almost identical to its predecessor, the Pixel 7a, which measured 152 x 72.9 x 9 millimeters.
According to benchmarks revealed in August, the Pixel 8a will come with a downsampled version of Google’s latest Tensor G3 chipset, which is also used in the other two Pixel 8s.
The Tensor G3 features a 9-core CPU design based on Samsung’s 4nm process, consisting of 1 x Cortex-X3, 4 x Cortex-A715, and 4 x Cortex-A510.
In addition, the Pixel 8a will come with 8GB of RAM and being a phone launched by Google itself, it also ships with the latest Android 14.
Tsinghua University announced that the team of Professor Huaqiang Wu and Associate Professor Bin Gao from the School of Integrated Circuits at Tsinghua University has developed the world’s first fully system-integrated amnesia memory-computing chip that supports highly efficient on-chip learning (machine learning that can be accomplished directly on the hardware side) based on the memory-computing computing paradigm. The results have been published in the latest issue of Science.
According to the article, the team of Qian He and Wu Huaqiang has been on a long march for 11 years, from amnesia devices to prototype chips to system integration, to solve the bottleneck problem of AI arithmetic, and to overcome the “neck” of the key core technologies, and the results involve the amnesia integrated chip, the integrated system, the accelerator of ADAM algorithm, and the system of storage and calculation. system, ADAM algorithm gas pedal …… It is expected to promote the development of artificial intelligence, automatic driving, wearable devices and other fields.
It is understood that in 2012, Qian He and Wu Huaqiang’s team began to study the use of memristors for storage. Memristor is the fourth basic component of circuit after resistor, capacitor and inductor. It can still “remember” the passing charge after power failure, so it is used as a new type of nanoelectronic synaptic device. 2020, the team built a complete storage and calculation system based on multi-array amnesia with all hardware components, which efficiently operated the convolutional neural network algorithm, and successfully verified the image recognition function, which is two orders of magnitude more energy-efficient than the graphic processor chip. The system runs the convolutional neural network algorithm efficiently and successfully verifies the image recognition function, which is two orders of magnitude more energy-efficient than the graphic processor chip, dramatically increasing the computing power of the computing device and realizing the completion of complex computation with smaller power consumption and lower hardware cost.
On-chip learning is important for edge smart devices to adapt to different application scenarios. Current techniques for training neural networks require moving large amounts of data between computing and storage units, which hinders the realization of learning on edge devices.
In this research, Qian He and Huaqiang Wu led a team to innovate and design a new generalized algorithm and architecture STELLAR for efficient on-chip learning applicable to amnesia storage-computing integration, which includes its learning algorithms, hardware implementation, and parallel conductance tuning scheme, and is a generalized approach to facilitate on-chip learning through the use of amnesia cross-gate arrays.
The chip is known to perform tasks such as motion control, image classification and speech recognition. It consumes only 1/35th of the power consumption of an ASIC for the same task, while promising a 75-fold improvement in energy efficiency.
“The integrated on-chip learning can effectively protect user privacy and data while realizing lower latency and smaller energy consumption.” Yao Peng, one of the first authors of the academic paper and a postdoctoral fellow, introduced that the chip can realize fast “on-chip training” and “on-chip recognition” of different tasks with reference to the bionic brain-like processing method, which can effectively complete the incremental learning tasks in edge computing scenarios and adapt to new scenarios and learn new knowledge to meet users’ personalized needs with extremely low power consumption. It can effectively accomplish incremental learning tasks in edge computing scenarios, adapt to new scenarios and learn new knowledge with very low power consumption to meet users’ personalized needs.
In 1999, Microsoft was interested in entering the gaming industry in order to execute its “living room strategy” and stop the invasion of Sony’s PS (PlayStation) console in the computer field, so it first proposed the idea of acquiring Nintendo to the then Nintendo of America president Minoru Arakawa (the son-in-law of the third-generation Nintendo president, Pu Yamauchi).
In 2000, then-Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer had the then-small Xbox team meet with Nintendo to see if they were interested in being acquired, as recalled by Kevin Bachus, Xbox’s director of third-party relations. “Nintendo just laughed their asses off. Like, imagine for an hour these people just laughing at you. That’s how that meeting went.” Bachus said.
At the time, Microsoft, which was trying to enter the game industry with money in hand, was described as “whimsical” in every way, and even requested that it stop developing its own consoles after acquiring Nintendo altogether, and instead develop games for the Xbox, which Pu Yamauchi described as “not understanding the game industry”.
However, many people did not expect that 20 years later, Microsoft would once again consider the “amazing feat” of acquiring Nintendo.
Those who are concerned about the game industry should know that Microsoft’s acquisition of Activision Blizzard has been subjected to strict scrutiny by regulatory agencies in many countries, and in recent times Microsoft has been required to submit relevant confidential documents to the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC).
Just recently, Microsoft uploaded a large number of confidential documents into the public domain in a misstep, including new ideas for acquiring Nintendo and V (Valve, Steam’s parent company), plans for a new Xbox console, upcoming games, and a slew of internal emails.
Gamers are probably more shocked by the idea of Microsoft buying Nintendo and V than Activision Blizzard.
According to leaked documents, Microsoft Xbox head Phil Spencer expressed his interest in acquiring Nintendo in an email exchange with Takeshi Numoto, Microsoft’s executive vice president and chief commercial officer. Originally discussing the acquisition of TikTok’s U.S. business, Numoto volunteered why Microsoft wouldn’t go after a company like Nintendo.
PS: In 2020, when the U.S. government declared that it was considering “banning TikTok,” Microsoft released an official statement saying that after discussions between Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella and President Trump, Microsoft was prepared to continue negotiations to acquire TikTok in the U.S., with the goal of completing the negotiations by September 15th. (The latter ended without a hitch.)
Spencer actually endorsed Numoto’s idea and said he was committed to buying Nintendo. He believed that if he could push Microsoft to acquire Nintendo, it would be the pinnacle of his career. And in Spencer’s opinion, Microsoft’s acquisition of Nintendo would be a win-win move for both companies, and Nintendo’s future shouldn’t be limited to its own hardware platform.
Intriguingly, Spencer also emphasized that ValueAct, a former key member of Microsoft’s board of directors, has been acquiring a large amount of Nintendo’s stock, which could ‘create an opportunity’ for it, and that Microsoft’s board of directors would give its full support regarding the acquisition.
Spencer understands that Microsoft wants to buy Nintendo is not an easy task, how to convince the other side is one aspect, and considering that Nintendo is also sitting on a huge amount of cash, any hostile takeover is not a wise move, in the short term if there is no major opportunity to buy is unlikely to be a success.
Compared to the acquisition of Nintendo, Microsoft has not yet seen more specific ideas for the acquisition of V, but the Xbox business and Steam are likely to produce more direct and greater synergies. Steam’s influence on PC players around the world has been self-evident for a long time, as the largest digital distribution platform in the field of PC gaming, countless players have chosen to buy games on Steam, and Steam has accumulated a large number of developers and gamers. Steam has also accumulated a large amount of supporting software for developers and players.
But whether it’s the acquisition of Nintendo or V, it’s destined to cause a huge change in the landscape of the gaming industry, even more so than Activision Blizzard. In other words, Microsoft’s acquisition is bound to attract even more scrutiny from regulators, and considering that Activision Blizzard is having such a hard time moving forward with its acquisition, it will be even harder for Microsoft to acquire Nintendo and V.
Considering that the Xbox Series X/S releases in 2020, it’s not just Nintendo’s new console that’s actually a concern, but also gamers who have been concerned about when Microsoft’s half-generation upgrades and even next-gen consoles will arrive.
In this leaked document from Microsoft, a roadmap for Xbox consoles in April 2022 has been leaked, showing that Microsoft plans to launch half-generation upgraded consoles in 2024, and a whole new generation of “next-generation hybrid gaming platforms” in the 2028 fiscal year.
Two of the half-generation upgrades will be a high-end console codenamed Brooklin, replacing the current Xbox Series X, and an entry-level console codenamed Ellewood, replacing the current Xbox Series S. The new consoles will have the same core performance as the current Xbox Series S, but will have the same core performance as the current Xbox Series X.
The core performance of the two new consoles will remain the same, with upgrades focusing on better wireless capabilities; expanded internal storage; a refurbished exterior design, with the Xbox Series X featuring a cylindrical design; and a new gamepad with gyroscopic acceleration support, which is expected to be released by the end of this year.
By the way, neither of the two new consoles will come with an optical drive; Microsoft said in the document that the new consoles will go all-digital, just like the Sony PS5 Digital Edition, which doesn’t support the loading of game discs and can only be purchased and downloaded via subscription or in digital stores. And for now, the Xbox Series X is equipped with a Blu-ray drive.
Pricing remains unchanged, with the two new consoles maintaining the current $499 and $299.
Meanwhile, Microsoft is also planning a ‘next-generation hybrid gaming platform’ that will combine local and cloud computing to ‘enable performance beyond the capabilities of the hardware itself’.
In terms of chips, the CPU is not only considered AMD Zen6, but also ARM64; the GPU will be co-designed with AMD or designed on its own based on AMD licenses (Navi5 core). In addition, the new Xbox will support technologies such as forward-compatible and next-generation DirectX ray tracing, dynamic global illumination, machine-learning-based super-resolution and micro-polygon rendering optimization.
What’s more, according to Microsoft’s plan, the next-generation Xbox console will allow for the ‘complete convergence’ of cloud gaming platforms and physical hardware to provide ‘cloud hybrid gaming’, potentially becoming a transitional route before the arrival of cloud gaming, or even a completely new evolutionary route. Additionally, Microsoft has included a reference to ‘consumer-grade or handheld devices’ under $99, allowing gamers to use some sort of handheld device to play cloud-powered games.
As of now, the next-generation Xbox is still in the hardware design phase, but if Microsoft is still on track with last year’s plans, we should see the next-generation Xbox go on sale in Microsoft’s fiscal year 2028 (natural year June 2027-June 2028), with a focus on cloud-converged gaming.
In addition to the above, the leaked document actually mentions a number of games that are scheduled for release before the 2024 fiscal year: The Elder Scrolls 4 Annihilation remastered, Doom Year Zero and DLC, Fallout 3 remastered, Shame 3, and more.
This Microsoft leak is arguably one of the biggest leaks the gaming industry has ever seen, but it’s something that Microsoft will have to break its teeth on – and swallow back.
According to an order shared by the FTC, the responsible party for this leak was identified as Microsoft itself. The court had previously asked all parties involved to submit a link to a secure cloud containing the deleted information for public access. Microsoft voluntarily provided this link on September 14, but it contained a significant amount of non-public information.
By the time Microsoft responded back, notified the court and quickly deleted the files, they had already circulated on the Internet, causing irreparable damage.
Interestingly, the FTC’s order also mentions that this week Microsoft will resubmit the much-disputed evidence, this time with a written certification signed by all parties confirming that all content has been reviewed and contains only public information.
At last month’s Citi analyst conference, Intel CFO David Zinsner revealed news of next year’s Windows update, suggesting that consumers may upgrade their PCs in response to a new version of Windows.
“We think 2024 is going to be a pretty good year for the PC market, particularly driven by Windows updates,” it said at the conference. “Existing Windows PC hardware is relatively old and will probably be heavily updated next year.” According to outside analysis, Zinsner refers to the “Windows update” is most likely Windows 12.
Intel has announced its Meteor Lake mobile chip, which will be released in December. It’s Intel’s first processor to have a small chip in each component, and the first to use Intel’s 4 process, in addition to having a dedicated AI co-processor built in.
And as previously reported, hardware leaker @leaf_hobby had posted details about Intel’s Meteor Lake desktop platform. Although the tweet has been deleted, it can still be expected that this processor is meant for the next generation of Windows (most likely Windows 12).
While Microsoft hasn’t officially announced anything about Windows 12, it’s still not hard to deduce that Windows 12 will perhaps be integrated with AI features to spur user demand for updates. In an interview with The Verge website this year, Microsoft’s head of consumer marketing, Yusuf Mehdi, said, “When we start working on future versions of Windows, we’ll think about where AI should play a natural role in the experience.”
However, with the recent departure of Panos Panay, head of the Windows division, to Amazon, it’s not clear if that will have any impact on the development of Windows 12.
Japan Broadcasting Corporation (NHK) reports that the Ishikawa Prefectural Government today (6th) confirmed that in August of this year, a total of 892 people from 18 prefectures in Japan suffered from food poisoning at the “Great Falls Sightseeing Ryuu Mizutaki” restaurant in Tsubatsuhata Town, Ishikawa Prefecture. The youngest person was just over a year old, and the oldest was in his 80s. 22 of the 892 people were hospitalized at one point.
According to the Ishikawa Prefectural Government, Campylobacter was detected in the spring water used to prepare food at the restaurant. People infected with the bacteria mainly show acute enteritis, such as symptoms of diarrhea, discomfort, fever, abdominal pain and bloody stools. In previous reports, Campylobacter infections are usually associated with ingestion of chicken, especially raw or undercooked chicken.
The county government is therefore calling for better water quality monitoring and management in restaurants that use well and spring water. The “Great Falls Sightseeing Ryumisui” restaurant has also announced that it will close down. Ryumizume is a Japanese noodle dish, also known as Ryumizume-nuri. The bamboo longitudinal cut in half, in the groove filled with water to let the noodles flow down, diners were waiting on both sides of the bamboo, with chopsticks to intercept the clip up, dipped in bonito sauce to eat.
In March 2023, the Russian Ministry of Industry and Trade ordered the development and exploitation of photolithography materials for microelectronics production, in particular the production of photoresists, and the ministry will allocate 1.1 billion rubles for this work.
According to RIA Novosti, researchers at St. Petersburg Polytechnic University have developed a “domestic photolithography compound” that can be used for the etching and production of maskless chips, which will make it possible to “solve the problem of Russian technological sovereignty in the field of microelectronics”. It is possible.
This will make it possible to “solve the problem of Russia’s technological sovereignty in the field of microelectronics”, the representative of the St. Petersburg Polytechnic University said. The equipment complex includes equipment for maskless nanolithography and plasma chemical etching. It is stated that the cost of one of the tools is 5 million rubles, and the cost of the other is unknown.
The first device can be used to obtain an image on a substrate without the need for a special mask. According to the developers, this technology is much more cost-effective, both in terms of cost and time, than conventional lithography, which requires the use of a specialized mask plate to obtain an image. The device is controlled by specialized software that allows for complete automation.
According to the representative, the complex was developed by the St. Petersburg Polytechnic University to create “nanostructures” necessary for the “operation of various microelectronic devices. The first stage of the process requires the use of a basic mask lithography, and the second stage requires the use of a silicon plasma chemical etching machine.
It is noted that the second device will use the image created on the substrate in the first stage. The device can be used to form nanostructures directly, but it can also make silicon films, for example, for shipboard overpressure sensors, RIA Novosti writes.
The authors of the project assured RIA Novosti that silicon membranes made on this machine “exceed in reliability and sensitivity those made by liquid or laser etching methods.” They also emphasized that this is a completely (Russian) domestic product.
Indeed, St. Petersburg Polytechnic University is not the only institution working on advanced domestic lithography solutions. As early as October 2022, the Nizhny Novgorod Institute of Applied Physics of the Russian Academy of Sciences announced that it had begun work in this direction, but with slightly different goals.
Publicly available information indicates that as of October 2023, Russia will be able to use up to 65nm topologies, a technology that was virtually phased out nearly 20 years ago, although Russia is now building a 28nm chip factory.
The Novgorod Institute of Applied Physics is said to be working hard to close the huge gap between Russia and the rest of the world, and their specialists are developing the first domestically produced photolithography machine capable of producing 7nm topology chips. However, this will still take several years, and full operation will not begin until at least 2028.
