Eight and a half years ago, I unboxed a pabyte of storage. It weighed over 150
pounds, required multiple servers, and used an ungodly amount of power. Theo
Joe asked me, "Why not simply use one pabyte drive?" We're not quite there,
but we're getting very close. Each of the Kiosia LC9 SSDs in my hand holds 245
terab of data. That means with just four drives, I can hold nearly a pabyte of
storage [music] in the palm of my hand. That's thanks to the chonyy thick NAND
packages that it uses that each contain a whopping 32 stacked dyes all wired
together with gold. And behind me is the Kioskia fab that made them alongside the
cutting edge nan flash that you might find in your other favorite electronics,
mobile devices, and memory cards. It is one of the most advanced manufacturing
facilities on Earth. And Kyogia was kind
enough to sponsor this video and give us unprecedented access to their facility
from the very top to the very bottom. I'm ready. Let's just see if Kyokia is
ready. [laughter]
Maybe I'm not ready.
We're going to be taking you step by step through Kyokia's sprawling [music]
Yokai plant that spans seven fabs over
694,000 m [music] and even has its own tennis
court. All so we can turn this into
this. Every semiconductor's story begins
with purified silicon. It gets melted in a vat into which a single seed crystal
is inserted. [music] The vat gets turned while the seed crystal is pulled out,
creating an enormous mono crystal. Now, the full-sized one would be too large
and too cumbersome for me to carry, but I've actually got the top of one where
you can see how a teardrop shape is formed as it is pulled out of the molten
vat until it gets wide enough to grind down into the 300 mm diameter wafers
that are used to make semiconductor devices. In the fab behind me are
thousands upon thousands of these wafers ripping around on automated tracks in
carrier pods called foops. Over the course of several months, each wafer
will travel many kilometers, often over skyways between completely separate
buildings and will go through thousands of manufacturing steps before becoming a
finished chip. These fads take years to build, cost billions of dollars, and
contain some of the world's most closely guarded secrets. The basics of
semiconductor manufacturing are wellknown. Branch Education has an
outstanding video on the subject. We'll have that linked down below. But what I
want to focus on today are some of the specifics that make this fab especially
tuned for crafting high density storage chips.
Welcome to Y7. It's one of the cleanest
places on the planet with so little airborne contamination that it would be
about like having a single bee in a giant baseball stadium. This is
incredibly important because just one single particle of foreign matter can
spoil months of costly work. To create their cutting edge Bix Flash Generation
8 memory cells, Kyioxia uses a process called plasma-enhanced chemical vapor
deposition or PECBD. This allows them to
turn chemical vapors in the vacuum chamber behind me into the 218
intricate storage layers that give these chips their incredible data density.
Plasma CBD operates at lower temperatures compared to conventional
chemical vapor deposition, allowing its use on substrates that can't withstand
higher temperatures. You probably noticed that this isn't the only machine
here. For mass production, semiconductor fabs contain hundreds of machines, many
performing the same functions, and they pack them in tight. That makes sense
because clean rooms are extremely expensive to both build and operate. So
the less you have to build, the more you save. So, how do they pack things so
tight? To find [music] out, we'll be going somewhere I've never been before.
Below the Fab.
We're in the belly of the beast. Now, you know what they say, behind every
great fab clean room is an almost as
clean subf that contains the ancillary
equipment that supports the manufacturing equipment above, including
power, chemical supply lines, and in this case, a dry pump that creates the
vacuum needed for our plasma CEVD machine that is right above us. But what
about sub subf to optimize the layout of
their fab? Kyokia is using an unusual second subfab which helps them avoid
spreading their ancillary equipment out so much which improves equipment density
and helps them avoid long ciruitous runs
that can make maintenance more challenging. In this case, we're looking
at gas neutralizing equipment, which treats the toxic gas that's exhausted
from the CEBD equipment that is above us before it gets vented. Since we're down
here, clean room air flow goes top to bottom. So fresh air comes in way up
above where our plasma CVD machine was, then down through the fab, the subfab,
and then ultimately gets drawn up down the sides of our sub subf before being
sent back up to be filtered and reused. Coming back up to the main fab floor,
we've got another really special treat for you guys. See, in traditional nan
flash, your seamos logic layers would be manufactured on the same wafer below the
flash memory cell layers. That sounds pretty good to me. Approved. But there's
a small problem. The best conditions for manufacturing high performance SMOS
circuitry and highdensity NAND are quite
different. Kioxia solution. What about
second wafer? That's right. [music] They produce the SMOS on an entirely separate
silicon wafer and then literally sandwich them together with a nice
shmear of copper that bonds the two layers together. It's called CBA or
SIMOS directly bonded to array. And thanks to some very complex and precise
engineering, Hya is able to create a lowresistance, high reliability bond,
providing increased data density and performance. But wait, with two wafers,
won't it be twice as thick? Yeah, it will. In fact, you can see it. And it's
even noticeable just picking them up with my hands. How's that going to help
with storage density? Don't worry, they thought of that. Once the two are joined
together, they quite literally grind off
the excess silicon on the top of the sandwich right down to [music] the flash
cells. And then the processing continues. Wait, what? Surely this has
got to go wrong [music] sometimes, right? Well, yeah. Let's visit the
factory narc, the scanning electron microscope, and talk about AI.
I'm not talking no content slop. It's actually super legit. I probably don't
have to tell you guys that one of these wafers is worth a heck ton of money. So
minimizing defects is the difference between huge profits and happy customers
and rapid bankruptcy. That is where AI
data analysis comes in. Kioxia is collecting data around the clock about
35,000 data points per second and analyzing all of that manually is
impossible. So, they've been using AI since well before the current trend to
gain insights into how to improve their processes and maximize quality. Let's
have a look at how this works. On this laptop are some example defects from the
scanning electron microscope grouped up by AI according to their type. I'm going
to try and guess what caused them. Wormhole fragments.
>> Okay. Easter bunny tears.
>> Dodo dandruff.
Unfortunately, the real answers are very critical to Kyopsia's operations. So,
they shall remain a mystery. You win this time, AI, this time. But next time,
I'll challenge you to show me a seahorse emoji. Then, we'll see. Anywh who, by
using this information about defects, [music] Kyokia can simulate fixes in
their Fab's digital twin and then roll that into production to improve their
product quality. Enough about the small stuff, though. I think the most
impressive aspect of this facility is how big it is. We're standing on one of
the Y7 FAD loading dock where FAD equipment can be lifted up to seven
stories on cranes for deployment inside.
It's 3 million square ft. And [music] that's not enough. They've already got
plans to add even more capacity. [music] Mind-blowing. Of course, when you're
operating at this scale, you run into all kinds of challenges that most people
don't even need to think about. Below me, for instance, [music] is their on-site storage and management of gases
and chemicals for semiconductor fabrication. Smells kind of like nail
polish. And this is one of their on-site solar panel deployments that's part of
Kioxia reaching their goals for green energy and sustainability. This one
deployment has over 7,000 solar panels
and can reach a peak power generation of over 2 and 12 megawatt. Another major
environmental consideration for Kioxia is water. It's not the most intuitive
thing in the world, but semiconductor manufacturing uses far more water than
you'd think. And not just any water. In this glass is some of the purest water
on the entire planet. It is so pure, in fact, that it is classified as a
solvent. And in large enough quantities, it will actually extract minerals from
my bloodstream. I asked Kyokia if I could drink some. And even though small
quantities are unlikely to cause permanent damage, they forbade me. I was
forbaded. So what do they use it for? Well, kind of everything from cooling to
wet etching to the many, many washing steps. If you need computer chips, you
need ultra pure water and you need ultra
lots of it, which sadly means an ultra lot of waste.
This is what it looks like after it's been used. The water behind me is full
of acids, solvents, heavy metals, and
all kinds of nasty things. But here's the thing, water is expensive, and also
the environment is pretty cool. So, Kioxia puts a lot of effort into water
reclamation. This tank is actually part of their
older water filtration system for their older fabs, but it's a little bit more
uh visual, so we thought we'd take you through it. This first stage agitates a
mixture of waste water, biochemicals, and soil to facilitate easier filtration
in the following stages. You know, they said I couldn't drink the ultra pure
water, but they never said I can't drink this.
No, no, I I I won't. I won't. The next
stage is this gigantic mechanical skimmer vat that features a conicle
shape, allowing all of the sludge to easily make its way towards the bottom
while taking off the purest water at the top. And it's amazing what a difference
it makes. This is the before, which you just saw me scoop out. And this is the
after, which we pull right out of the
edge of this tank. Next, it goes through a second stage of mechanical filtration
where it becomes so clean that fish can
live in it. But don't take my word for it. Take their word for it. This is the
same water that is coming from that filtration station. And as you can see,
there are koi living in it right now. Sort of like water canaries living in a
silicon coal mine. But as cool as the old water treatment system is, the
reclamation rate is only around 80%.
which is okay, but it's not nearly as good as the new system that came
alongside the new Fab. It's all enclosed, so we can't really show it to
you, but it reclaims over 90% of all the
water that's used that can be sent back into production for various purposes.
Now, let's jump back inside. So, now that it's out of the fab, our wafer is
done and ready for human consumption, right? Well, not so much. See, using
Kyokia's Bix Flash Generation 8, this little square right here is up to 2
terabt of storage, which means that if
we wanted to make an 8 terbte package
like their latest dies, we would need 32 of these stacked on top of each other,
which would get pretty thick pretty fast. That is where [music] backside
grinding comes in. We take this wafer and put a protective layer on top of it
to keep all of our precious nan flash safe. Then we put it in the machine
behind me and grind away the back until
it goes from being stiff like this to being middle-aged like me. In total, we
go from about8 mm down to anywhere from
30 to 40 microme depending on the process. Much better for stacking.
Stacked on what, you might ask? On the substrate, of course. On the bottom of
this is what will ultimately be the BGA interface that will allow this nan flash
to be soldered to a phone or laptop or SSD. And then on the top is where we're
going to create stacks of these dyes up to 32. Oh my god, it's beautiful.
Of course, before we can do that, we need to cut them up. And that's where
dieing comes in. The thinned wafer gets mounted to one of these frames. And then
a diamond blade is used to cut out all the individual dyes. Now, let's talk
about wiring them up. Every one of those stacks is connected using dozens of tiny
golden wires, about a quarter of the
thickness of a human hair. It's fed off
of a spool like this, into a tiny sewing
needle-ike capillary that touches every contact point. You barely bake out what
it's all connected to with the naked eye. So, I won't try. Kioska helpfully
provided this microscope to give us a much much better look. And you can see
[music] where every wire connects to the substrate. And then look at this. We
turn it this way. Wow. We get a really good view of the stack. That's
incredible. Incredibly fragile. How do we keep this safe?
Inside this machine, trays get loaded with resin. It starts in a powdered form
like this. Then our bonded dyes go face
down onto the resin and the whole thing gets moved into these high temperature
waffle irons. Then after a short cooling cycle, our now resin protected die
stacks are shoved out the front of the machine. In a mass production
environment, these would move to the next stage in an automated fashion. But
this is a small scale prototyping lab. So, our trays of very expensive
bookmarks comes out of the machine onto the cart and then off to our next step.
Behind me is a shaker tray that's full of these tiny little solder balls. This
vacuum head comes over it, sucks up
solder balls, and then carries them back to the backside of our substrate,
precisely placing them on what will be the contact points where our nan flash
will be soldered to a board. The solder balls get melted in the oven behind me.
Then our trays get cleaned and dried.
Laser engraving. Every one of these packages gets etched with the batch
number except oh, one of them is actually missing its markings. That's
because at some point that package was tested and found to be defective.
Whether it's one of the dyes, one of the stacks, or one of the wire bonds, we
don't know. But it's no bueno. So it doesn't get a name. These machines are
wild. They can do a whole one of those trays in 60 seconds.
Now it's party time. This machine slices, she dices, she cleans with ultra
pure water, and even takes the dice packages and arranges them nicely on a
tray. Pretty much ready for final delivery. What about the bad ones with
no engraving? They get dumped down the garbage shoot
right here. See you later.
Now, it's time to turn our tray of packages into a final product. Now,
these could go directly onto the motherboard of, say, for example, a
phone or a laptop, but in this case,
it's going onto a high-performance SSD.
Step one, we load in our blank PCBs. Then, it goes through the PCB cleaner
and into this bad boy, which lowers a metal screen over top of the PCB and
then slides a squeegee across it, depositing just the right amount of
solder paste onto all of the pads. Next, it goes into this machine for a machine
vision inspection. You can actually see it spotted one little tiny error in the
solder paste. So, that's no big deal for this kind of thing. We can just pull it
out and run it through again. Once our paste is perfect, our board goes into
this line of pick and place machines. And they said, I can press the start button. They're not the latest on the
market, but they'll do about 2,000 components in 10 minutes, which is fine
for the prototyping line that we're looking at today. And you can actually
see where the reels of tiny surface mount components are fed in and then
placed rapid fire. Down at the end, we find the biggest components. So, right
here we have our DRAM caches. And then in these two bays are trays of nan
flash. Now, it's time for another inspection before our boards go into
what I call the world's fanciest pizza oven. This mamajama has 10 heat zones
slowly ramping up and then towards the
end ramping down. This is because rapid changes in temperature can make BGA
solder joints more brittle and a brittle solder joint is a bad solder joint. Next
comes the pizza cooler. Then a third machine vision inspection. Finally, the
finished boards come over to assembly where you load your chassis onto the
assembly jig and zippity zappity fancy
SSD. But there's one other environmental consideration for Kyia and it's a big
one. Earthquakes. With such high precision manufacturing, how do they
deal with the roughly 1,500 earthquakes that hit Japan every year? To find out,
we've ventured all the way down to the basement of one of the FABs to take an
in-person look at the gigantic footings that suspend the entire building above
the ground. They're made out of four different types of materials. This one's
made of natural rubber, I think, and these softest ones go around the outside
perimeter of the building. And [music] then there are three other kinds that
play different roles in maintaining the seismic stability of the entire fab
because you never know what kind of earthquake you're going to get. Some are more up and down, some are more side to
side, and you got to be ready for anything. The building we're under is
supported by nearly 400 of these footings that allow it to move up to 60
cm or about 2 ft in any given direction.
Now, obviously, they're going to have to recalibrate their equipment to make sure everything's running correctly, but it's
meant to dramatically reduce the impact. Maybe the coolest part though is if you
look carefully in the basement, you can see a little slit of daylight. And this
is where it's coming from, where this entire building is completely decoupled
from the foundation by those dampers here. Check this out.
You can't see it, but I moved it a little bit. Like just a little. Massive
thanks to Kioxia for having us out here. It really puts into perspective the hard
work that goes into bringing these products to life. I don't think I'll
ever take for granted the performance or storage density of Nan Flash ever again.
If you guys want to learn more, you can check them out at kioxia.com. We'll have
them linked down below. If you guys are looking for another video to watch, why
not check out the time we collaborated with Kyia to break a Guinness World
Record calculating more digits of pi than anybody ever has before.