It was informed on the 10th that eight companies including Toyota Motor, Sony Group, and NTT have established a new company to produce next-generation semiconductors for supercomputers and artificial intelligence (AI) in Japan. Next-generation semiconductors are regarded as important materials closely related to economic security, and the new company will promote technology research and development and strive to achieve mass production. The government plans to subsidize 70 billion yen (about 3.5 billion yuan).
The new company is called "Rapidus". In addition to three companies including Toyota, SoftBank, NEC, Denso, Mitsubishi UFJ Bank, and Kioxia will also contribute. The smaller the semiconductor process, the stronger the performance. The new company will develop and produce next-generation semiconductors below 2 nanometers, and strive to achieve it in the second half of the 2020s.
The establishment of the new company was spearheaded by Tetsuro Toshiro, the former president of Tokyo Electronics, and others. The total investment of the eight companies is approximately 7 billion yen. In addition, efforts will be made to cultivate talents who support the semiconductor industry.
At present, Japanese companies can only produce semiconductors with a process of about 40 nanometers. The government plans to cooperate with the United States to establish a design and production base in Japan in the second half of the 2020s to develop semiconductors smaller than the 2-nanometer process.
The Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry announced in July this year the establishment of a new organization to carry out joint research on next-generation semiconductors between Japan and the United States, with the participation of the Institute of Industrial Technology and the University of Tokyo. According to relevant sources, a technical research group with legal personality will be established in the near future. In the second supplementary budget for 2022, a total of about 1.3 trillion yen is included including other semiconductor support projects.
It is expected that the new companies participating such as Toyota will also join hands with technical research groups to promote the development of next-generation semiconductors.
