Russian microelectronics for the military-industrial complex and not only



    For a long time I wanted to see how and where they produce the element base for our weapon, famous all over the world. It seemed that these were terribly closed objects, which they would not let me into a sniper shot. I remember when I was in NIIAR in Dimitrovgrad , everything was serious there, the military with machine guns, barbed wire, roadblocks. Nothing of the kind here. As it turned out, getting to such an object is quite simple. The Milander company vividly responded to my request to make a photo report about them, and as soon as free time appeared, I went to the Russian Silicon Valley - the city of Zelenograd.



    The Milander company was established in the early 90's, but until 2003 it was only engaged in the sale of microcircuits. But by the beginning of the 2000s, there was an understanding that you couldn’t go far to buy-sell. Therefore, it was decided to acquire our own production, and most importantly, our own development, as it is now fashionable to say R&D.

    There are 4 classes of microcircuits, by application. The simplest is commercial. On the one hand, this is the widest market, on the other, there are the most elementary requirements for reliability. In fact, such microcircuits should work normally at room temperature, under normal conditions. The next class - industrial - the requirements for working conditions are more stringent. Already more stringent requirements are imposed on military class microcircuits both in temperature and in many other parameters. And aerobatics - space class chips - for space applications.

    The Milander company mainly operates in the military class, but not much in two neighboring areas. For example, their microcircuits are in GLONASS satellites - this is space. The company also enters the commercial market, especially now it is developing in the electricity metering market, cooperating here not only with Russian companies, but also with foreign ones. There are developments in other areas, for example, special speed sensors for tachographs, which allow taking into account the operating time of truck drivers. This is necessary so that they do not process, such control can reduce the risk of accidents.

    Another direction of the company's development is the informatization of medical institutions. An automated system has been introduced in one of Zelenograd polyclinics.

    But the main direction is the military-industrial complex. The company is especially proud that the microchips manufactured by Milander are in the newest Russian fighter jets, and the memory produced by the company is used in air defense systems.

    The company also licensed ARM cores, which allows it to expand its presence in the microcontroller market, create complex systems on a chip.

    The market for “military” microcircuits in Russia is about 3 billion rubles. Almost all of it is occupied by our companies and the Belarusian Integral. “Milander” is still a small player here - a little less than 200 million rubles. But the company works profitably, develops new directions, and has the main thing - its own development department. Now the company has more than 400 customers.

    The production process is structured as follows:

    * The microelectronic device is being developed by the company's engineers at the development center.
    * Further, design documentation is transferred to one of the outsourcing factories where silicon wafers are created using 0.18 micron technology.
    * Unmeasured semiconductor wafers come back, here on the company's equipment they go through the rest of the technological operations: scribing, landing in the case, sealing, testing, measuring parameters, marking, etc.



    Of course, it is a pity that not all stages are implemented at the enterprise. It doesn’t make sense to establish crystal production at home yet, due to the high cost, huge areas required, and, in general, economic inexpediency for the company at this stage of development. But on the other hand, the production of microcircuits using 0.18 micron technology is, by today's times, not known what kind of high technology. For the market in which the company operates, especially for the military-industrial complex, more is not needed. Need a more modern process technology? This is not a problem, just order. There is no dependence either, it’s not a problem to choose any factory - including in Russia, if someone suddenly refuses to cooperate. The remaining technological steps - the company takes care of.

    The life of the chip begins here.



    This is the Integrated Circuit Design Center. The situation, I must say, is home. I had a different idea, but it turned out to be little different from my workstation :) I
    must say that the center develops microchips not only for itself. The company also sells intellectual property for export.

    Further, a clean room is a



    general view of assembly and measuring production
    general view of the assembly and measuring production.

    This is a measurement room, here it passes testing, testing and certification of products. The hall is equipped with modern equipment, almost all operations are automated. We will come back here, and now the production department. Here there is a cutting of plates on crystals, landing in the body, etc.

    diamond cutting plates
    Diamond cutting of plates

    semi-automatic equipment for planting a crystal in a case
    Semi-automatic equipment for planting a crystal in a case

    sealing roller installation
    Roller-sealed installation of sealing.





    Pin connection
    Connection of terminals.

    Next, the crystals should be tested and tested. Since this is a product for the military, the requirements are cruel.

    Automatic probe installation for testing semiconductor wafers. There are two of them.



    Installation "Thermostream". Here the chips are tested at different temperatures. The installation allows you to change the temperature from + dofig to -dofig in a couple of minutes.





    Here is a spectacular shot.




    After many operations, and mockery of microchips, we get about such products



    This is a memory. 512 Kbyte Chip Compared to consumer memory modules, chips of this size were installed on memory slats in the 98th year. 8 on the one hand and 8 on the other. The result was a SIMM bar of 8 megabytes. Do you remember? That's just this chip is able to work in such conditions that are not dreamed of that consumer goods that are in your computers. But it costs ... 8 500 r apiece. And they take it!





    However, this particular chip costs so much. There are microchips for the consumer market, in plastic cases, at 165 rubles.

    These products take care of our calm sleep and peaceful sky above our heads.

    Well, the rumors about the death of our microelectronic industry were greatly exaggerated.

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