Japan backs Rapidus push

Japan just added another ¥631.5 billion to a chip startup that did not exist four years ago, pushing public research support for Rapidus to about ¥2.354 trillion as Tokyo tries to build a domestic maker of advanced processors instead of buying all of them from abroad. (reuters.com) Rapidus is the company Japan set up in August 2022 to get back into the front rank of logic chips, the brains that run servers, phones, and artificial intelligence systems. Its backers included Toyota, Sony, SoftBank, NTT, NEC, Denso, Kioxia, and MUFG Bank. (rapidus.inc) The target is not old-fashioned memory chips or car microcontrollers. Rapidus is trying to manufacture 2-nanometer logic chips, the tiny, leading-edge kind that pack more transistors into the same space and are now the benchmark for top-end computing. (rapidus.inc) That is the hardest part of the chip business to enter because the factory is the product. A modern foundry needs extreme ultraviolet lithography machines, ultra-clean rooms, and process know-how that usually takes decades and tens of billions of dollars to build. (rapidus.inc) Japan used to dominate semiconductors in the 1980s, when its companies held roughly half the global market, but it lost ground for years as Taiwan and South Korea pulled ahead in advanced manufacturing. Rapidus is Tokyo’s attempt to reverse that slide with one national champion instead of a dozen fragmented efforts. (csis.org) The company’s first plant, called Innovative Integration for Manufacturing 1, is in Chitose on the northern island of Hokkaido. Rapidus says it launched a pilot line there and had already demonstrated operation of gate-all-around transistors, the transistor design used for 2-nanometer-class chips. (rapidus.inc) Rapidus is not building this alone. It has been working with International Business Machines, better known as IBM, on 2-nanometer process technology and on chiplet packaging, which is the method of snapping several smaller chips together like Lego blocks inside one package. (ibm.com) The new money is tied to customers as much as to machinery. Reuters reported that Japan’s ministry is also backing design projects by Fujitsu and IBM Japan, and Bloomberg reported the latest subsidy is meant to support work Rapidus is doing for Fujitsu as Tokyo tries to line up real demand before mass production starts. (reuters.com) (bloomberg.com) Fujitsu’s piece of the plan is an artificial-intelligence inference chip, which means a processor built to run trained models in servers rather than train them from scratch. Trade reports say Fujitsu wants that chip made in Japan on a 1.4-nanometer generation process at a future Rapidus fab, with construction targeted for fiscal 2027 and first production around 2029. (electronicsweekly.com) Rapidus still has to clear the brutal part: turning prototypes into high yields, which means getting a high share of usable chips off every wafer. The company says it wants mass production of 2-nanometer chips in fiscal 2027, and Jiji reports the new funding will go mainly toward refining prototypes on that path. (rapidus.inc) (sp.m.jiji.com) So this is Japan spending like a country that thinks chips are now infrastructure. Cars, cloud servers, defense systems, and artificial intelligence all run on the same supply chain, and Tokyo is betting that owning one piece of the most advanced end is worth more than another decade of dependence. (reuters.com) (csis.org)