Chinese semiconductor thread II
- Thread starter vincent
- Start date
Hidden in the above article there was this little gem
It means that Huawei will buy AI chips from fabless companies, like for instance Cambricon, Moore Threads, etc. and then integrate those chips in their systems. It is the first time I read Huawei to not use own Ascend chips for their AI hardware solutions.
If confirmed, I would read the above together with the very recent open sourcing of CANN, their CUDA alternative AI software. Technically those non Huawei chips will very probably run on CANN too because they have to be integrated in the HW stack.
But apart from the techncal meaning, there is a clear strategic decision behind all this. A new strategic decision materializing only in recent months, a decision from China I guess, not from HW alone.
On a wider scope, the decision to open source AI models with related papers from mainly all Chinese big actors (Qwen-Alibaba, Bytedance, Tencent, Huawei,etc) goes along the same direction.
It seems that, to overcome the current unbalance in hardware access between China and US, 众人拾柴火焰高 is the way to go.
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looks like tariffs are forcing TI to raise prices. Silergy is sure to benefit from this amongst domestic chipmakers. Along with Novosense, BYD & others.
A lot of TI chips don't have domestic alternatives
most have domestic alternative..
Best Analog domestic chips coming from Hisilicon. range from MCUs to ADCs.
Black Sesame & Horizon have great ADAS and edge-related products.
then comes Novosense and BYD.
Micron will stop developing mobile NAND products worldwide
Goodbye Micron!
If confirmed Micorn will exit smartphone NAND market, leaving it to Korea (Samsung, SK) and China YMTC
After Chinese smartphone firms ditched Micron, the only potential customers remaining are Samsung and Apple, but Samsung uses its own NAND.
So Apple alone is not a good enough reason to keep the mobile NAND branch...we will see if this is finalized or Trump will make them change their mind (very possible).
Goodbye Micron!
If confirmed Micorn will exit smartphone NAND market, leaving it to Korea (Samsung, SK) and China YMTC
After Chinese smartphone firms ditched Micron, the only potential customers remaining are Samsung and Apple, but Samsung uses its own NAND.
So Apple alone is not a good enough reason to keep the mobile NAND branch...we will see if this is finalized or Trump will make them change their mind (very possible).
New Cambricon chip MLU 690
It seems Cambricon is currently in production with their new chip called MLU 690
- Current production is of 1000 wpm (wafers per month) at SMIC (probably on 7nm)
- According to rumors monthly volume is 20,000 units
It means 20 good chips per wafer and assuming a yield of 50% the tweet author extrapolated MLU 690 is nearly 900 mm2.
I have verified myself:
With yield of 50% it should be around 30 good pieces per wafer, so it can be MLU 690 is even bigger or yield is a bit worse.
Assuming 900 mm2 per chip and 20 good dies per wafer -> yield 35%
But apart from the yield, a new AI chip of 900 mm2 or even larger is quite big....very big indeed!
A 900mm2 NPU on 7nm node it means a lot of TOPS, a lot of computation power!
It seems Cambricon is currently in production with their new chip called MLU 690
- Current production is of 1000 wpm (wafers per month) at SMIC (probably on 7nm)
- According to rumors monthly volume is 20,000 units
It means 20 good chips per wafer and assuming a yield of 50% the tweet author extrapolated MLU 690 is nearly 900 mm2.
I have verified myself:
With yield of 50% it should be around 30 good pieces per wafer, so it can be MLU 690 is even bigger or yield is a bit worse.
Assuming 900 mm2 per chip and 20 good dies per wafer -> yield 35%
But apart from the yield, a new AI chip of 900 mm2 or even larger is quite big....very big indeed!
A 900mm2 NPU on 7nm node it means a lot of TOPS, a lot of computation power!
I find the original tweet to be quite suspect. His rumors are quite wild in general.
SMEE spin off AMIES announces that it has hit 500 deliveries of advanced packaging scanner. 90% domestic market share.
China lithography development is basically now a black box, the things we post here is the surface above the ocean.
Audio AI chip company Boros completes tens of millions of yuan in Series A financing
Shenzhen Polos Technology Co., Ltd. ("Polos") recently completed tens of millions of yuan in Series A funding, with Hanlian Semiconductor Industry Fund as the sole strategic investor. This round of financing will accelerate Polos' R&D and innovation in intelligent voice enhancement and intelligent voice interaction technologies, and promote the market penetration of its products in more sectors.
According to public information, Polos was founded in March 2018 and is a provider specializing in voice noise reduction technology and voice interaction solutions. The company's R&D team comes from the Chinese Academy of Sciences and industrial institutions and has many years of experience in algorithms and integrated circuits. Currently, Polos provides users with high-performance and cost-effective domestic audio chips and solutions through a product system with MCU+DSP+NPU three-core heterogeneous audio AI chips and acoustic signal processing algorithms, neural network noise reduction algorithms, duplex call algorithms and other technologies as the core. The company's products are widely used in AI hardware such as smart terminals, IPCs, AI PCs, AI toys, portable sound reinforcement, intercom equipment, etc. in various industries, effectively shortening the AI engineering chain and lowering the application threshold and development difficulty of AI technology.
Wei Xiangcheng, founder and CEO of Polos, stated that the company's core competitive advantages lie in: first, edge intelligence capabilities for on-device audio processing, enabling algorithm miniaturization on extremely small chips while ensuring accuracy; second, the integration of traditional acoustic signal processing and neural network noise reduction technology; and third, providing a full-link audio processing solution from audio pickup to playback. Furthermore, the company will also develop capabilities that integrate on-device and cloud computing to further enhance product flexibility and scalability.
Currently, Boros is one of the few companies in China that possesses full-stack AI audio processing technology, with cumulative shipments of audio AI chips reaching 30 million units.