Japan’s Rapidus is a step closer to realizing its semiconductor foundry ambitions.
In the shadow of ongoing questions around whether or not Intel will make big changes in its own foundry strategy, Tokyo-based Rapidus, whose investors include the Japanese government, as well as corporate giants like SoftBank, Sony, Denso, and Toyota, announced its 2nm gate-all-around (GAA) transistor has advanced to the prototyping stage at the firm’s Innovative Integration for Manufacturing (IIM-1) foundry in Japan.
The prototype wafers also have started to obtain their electrical characteristics, the company said. The announcement comes a little over three months after the company successfully completed Extreme Ultraviolet (EUV) exposure, approximately three months after the equipment was delivered in December 2024. Rapidus claims to be the first company in Japan to install EUV lithography machinery, which it said is important to the 2nm process
Rapidus also said it is developing a Process Development Kit compatible with IIM-1’s 2nm process, and will release it to advance customers by the first quarter of next year, while preparing an environment in which customers can start their own prototypes–custom chip projects being a key market opportunity for the company. These steps mark a rapid rise for Rapidus since its founding in 2022 as it aims for full production on 2nm by 2027.
Single-wafer front-end processing is a key to the company’s plan to make a name for itself in a global foundry market where TSMC remains dominant, Intel is mulling its options, and GlobalFoundries recently moved to acquire MIPS. It also represents Japan’s chess move in the global trend toward pursuing native chip manufacturing capability that many countries embarked on amid the worldwide supply chain issues that occurred amid the COVID pandemic.
Rapidus in a statement described its process: “In a single-wafer process, adjustments can be made to a single wafer, inspected and if successful, applied to all subsequent wafers. Single wafer captures more data, enabling AI models to be trained to improve wafer production and increase yields. Rapidus is one of the first companies that will commercialize fully single-wafer processing, which is central to its Rapid and Unified Manufacturing Service (RUMs).”