Japan's Rapidus Preps 2nm Foundry Process And Chiplets

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An executive from the Japanese foundry startup discusses the company's strategy, including its efforts to develop a 2nm gate-all-around (GAA) process.

marklapedus.substack.com, Mar. 13, 2025 – 

By Mark LaPedus

Henri Richard, general manager and president of Rapidus Design Solutions, sat down with Semiecosystem to discuss the company’s foundry strategy and its efforts to develop its first process--a 2nm gate-all-around (GAA) technology. Rapidus Design Solutions is the U.S. subsidiary of Japanese foundry startup Rapidus Corp.

Semiecosystem: Who is Rapidus and what is the company’s charter?

Richard: Rapidus is a Japanese semiconductor foundry established by 14 semiconductor experts, including two veteran semiconductor executives, Dr. Atsuyoshi Koike, CEO, and Tetsuro Higashi, chairman of the board. Rapidus’ founding mission is to establish Japan as a leading provider of logic semiconductor foundry services. We’re completing the construction of our advanced Innovative Integration for Manufacturing (IIM-1) foundry in Chitose, Hokkaido with the support of the community, government and local universities.

Semiecosystem: Where is your fab located and what is the status of your fab? And what are the company’s capital spending plans for 2025 and perhaps beyond?

Richard: Rapidus IIM-1 is a ‘mega fab’ conveniently located a few miles from the New Chitose International airport. To give a sense of the scale, the project site is larger than Disneyland Japan with the fabrication clean room larger than the Tokyo Dome. IIM-1 is scheduled to start pilot production in April 2025. The fab will integrate both front-end and back-end capabilities to provide customers with best-in-class turnaround time and optimized engineering for manufacturing feedback.

Semiecosystem: Can you discuss your roadmap? Who is your technology partner?

Richard: The first node will be based on a high-performance GAA 2nm technology developed by IBM in Albany, N.Y. We are now developing mass production technology together with IBM, having dispatched over 150 engineers from Japan to Albany.

Semiecosystem: Will Rapidus integrate a backside power delivery network (BSPDN) technology for the first version of your 2nm GAA process? Or will you bring up BSPDN later?

Richard: BSPDN will be provided shortly after the start of our mass production in 2027 and is an integral part of the roadmap going forward.

Semiecosystem: Why does the semiconductor industry need another leading-edge foundry vendor? Is there room for another vendor like Rapidus in the marketplace? After all, TSMC provides a large percentage of the world’s leading-edge foundry business. Samsung also competes in this segment with Intel waiting in the wings.

Richard: The current surge of AI-based applications is creating an unprecedented demand for leading-edge semiconductors. Beyond the geopolitical challenges, the industry is desperately in need of more capacity from a diversified supply chain and a streamlined foundry process. Rapidus is ideally positioned to address the main concerns of any company needing a new partner in the foundry business.

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