Chinese foundry SMIC has entered volume production of its latest 5 nm-class node, branded SMIC N+3, which is described as China’s most advanced semiconductor process manufactured without any extreme ultraviolet lithography tools. The company instead relies on deep ultraviolet equipment to produce its silicon, and a recent TechInsights teardown of the Huawei Kirin 9030 system-on-chip confirmed that this processor is fabricated on the new N+3 node. The move positions N+3 as a full generation ahead of the earlier SMIC N+2, which is a 7 nm-class node that Huawei has been using for its Ascend series of Artificial Intelligence accelerators and other infrastructure components.
The article explains that SMIC’s choice to continue with deep ultraviolet lithography introduces major technical hurdles as it pushes to smaller geometries. For advanced nodes, extreme ultraviolet scanners are said to provide more headroom because they operate at a wavelength of 13.5 nm, compared to the smallest deep ultraviolet immersion scanner wavelength of 193 nm. To compensate, SMIC is using aggressive deep ultraviolet multi-patterning techniques on N+3, which allows it to achieve 5 nm-class scaling despite the older lithography technology.
According to TechInsights, this deep ultraviolet-based approach to N+3 still comes with serious yield challenges, particularly around an aggressively scaled metal pitch on the new node. The analysis indicates that these manufacturing difficulties mean the Huawei Kirin 9030 system-on-chip is likely being produced at an operating loss, since a significant portion of dies must be discarded or reused for downgraded chips. While N+3 is presented as a step toward greater Chinese semiconductor independence at advanced process nodes, the report underscores that economic viability remains constrained by the technical limits of deep ultraviolet lithography at this scale.
