Chinese semiconductor industry

Canuck place said:

In the end though the author of the quoted report did say they China is not going to challenge the US preeminence anytime soon, which I don't think is surprising. Although I was hoping that in AI, china could at least give the US a run for its money so that was slightly disappointing.

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"Anytime soon" to these people is within months/a year max. Anyone who's looked into this issue knows that it will take at least 5 years for China to be a serious player in this space (semiconductors as a whole, not just AI chips). The plan is called "Made in China 2025" after all.

What does it mean that China has to reflect over AI because some article says China is actually behind? China should give up because the US’s is better?

I remember when AI talk first started and which countries are ahead, China was nowhere in the picture. I remember there was a graph of which specific countries where experts on specific fields regarding AI. It covered all the major Western countries and Russia but no China. Then all of the sudden China was alone with the US up at top of whose "God" was going to take over the world? I remember back then I said to myself, how did that happen from getting nowhere to up there at the top? It's because they simply didn't have the data and assumed with all their prejudices. Ironic.

They didn't explore EM Drives simply because they couldn't get past that it defied the Laws of Newton so they didn't touch it. They only dared to explore it after Chinese scientists confirmed it. The stereotype is the Western world is more open and China is closed. Who is the one more likely to discover things when they don't explore? They said how the J-20 side weapons bay worked was too simplistic and not sophisticated like on the F-22. Yeah, I guess if you value making the Rube Goldberg device of side weapons bays where if anyone of those added unnecessary parts breaks down, it doesn't work at all is a plus then knock yourself out.

One is only the best until they're not. It was also assumed that the US was ahead in facial recognition technology. If Apple's facial recognition on their iPhones couldn't distinguish different people within different races, that's because they didn't bother with algorithms covering people of other races. iPhones are an international product from the start and they didn't bother...? Maybe they didn't bother because everyone else looks alike? By default, Chinese facial recognition technology is far superior because it's already commercially being used and seems to be able to distinguish Asians faces from one another to which US facial recognition cannot. And look how Chinese AI along with that advanced facial recognition technology spotted a wanted criminal at a sports stadium.

Another stereotype going on today because they're uncomfortable that China has the only rival to Silicon Valley in the world is they say China is only good at hardware not programming. Facial recognition is about programming. Tiktok is about programming. The US is in fear about Chinese apps being consumed by their citizens. They wouldn't be worrying if they were inferior because people wouldn't then choose to use them especially over domestic apps.

So which one is it that China lacks? The hardware or the programming? This is like Obama claimed China was never going to an innovative power because it lacked the freedoms to foster innovation. And within his term as President he raised the alarms over the Made in China 2025 initiative. If it’s impossible for China to be innovative, why did Obama sound the alarm over Made in China 2025? It’s either because China is freer than they say or you don’t need freedom to be innovative. China is exploding with innovation now and now they’re upset with that. It’s all about how you get there not the best way to get there. It’s the way where they’re the ones in control. They want the Chinese to ask permission first and more importantly they’re the ones that get to decide if you go further.

They wouldn’t be in fear of China technological prowess if it’s inferior to theirs? If they're worried, then what they believe is a bunch of bull.

Rettam Stacf said:

US semiconductor market research company IC Insights reports that HiSilicon’s sales surged 54 per cent year on year to about US$2.67 billion in the first quarter, placing it in the 10th position in global sales for the first time.

Huawei’s HiSilicon also recently surpassed Qualcomm to become the number one smartphone processor supplier in China for the first time, according to an earlier report by Chinese research firm CINNO.

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Wondering whether HiSilicon also sell Kirin chips to other companies ? if they do what are they?

UCB Prof. Chenming Hu was awarded the 2020 IEEE Medal of Honor for contribution to the development of FinFET devices.

antiterror13 said:

Wondering whether HiSilicon also sell Kirin chips to other companies ? if they do what are they?

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I thought there were like hints for them to do so, but I have not figured out exactly who and what. I thought the first thing might have something to do with smart TVs.

As for now, it just seems like Huawei is soaking up demand for all of HiSilicon. I am not talking about 5G, phones, and routers. Even Huawei makes smart TVs too.

antiterror13 said:

Wondering whether HiSilicon also sell Kirin chips to other companies ? if they do what are they?

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The Kirin series mobile SoC is generally not for sale, but Hisilicon sells many other chips to outside companies.

Their TV SoC's (recently branded the Honghu series) were used in a wide range of TV and TV boxes. The 8K capable version has a good presence in the high end market, can be found in brands such as Hisense, Skyworth, Sharp, and of course in Huawei and Honor TV series. They sold >10 million TV chips in 2016, I'm sure this figure is bigger by now.

If you just look at CPU and GPU you'll see that TV chips are quite a bit behind mobile chips, but they specializes in high resolution video decoding, MEMC (motion compensation) and various other sound and image enhancement techniques, so they have their own technical challenges.

Same goes with security camera chips, where the technical challenge lies in efficient encoding/decoding, image enhancement, and AI assisted (deep learning) surveillance. Hisilicon is very dominant in this field, providing both front end (on camera) and back end (recording server) chipsets and it owns the majority (>50%) market share in China. I don't know the worldwide market share, but it is not a small number for sure. In fact this is a major source of panic for those who believe the "huawei dangerous" stuff:


The Kunpeng series server and workstation processor is another product line that will be sold to outside companies. Huawei just announced last year that they will focus less on making entire servers and more on building the ecosystem, so system integrators like Inspur or Tsinghua Tongfang will also become downstream buyers of Hisilicon chips.

Huawei/Hisilicon is also entering the automobile electronics industry, not just in 5G and computing components (autopilot/communication/entertainment), but also in . They will be selling chipsets/modules/software solutions to existing car manufacturers, with current partnerships to Audi, GAC, BYD and maybe more that I couldn't remember. There were once rumors that Huawei would make their own car, but I don't think this is in their plan for now.

In terms of sheer number, I think what Hisilicon will sell the most to outside companies are smaller IoT chips. The type and number of IoT devices will grow explosively in the near future, so market potential is huge, that includes both consumer products and industrial applications (e.g. PLC-IoT). I heard their chips are already quite dominant in powerline , though I'm not familiar with the details.

Servers with China-made processors account for 20% of China Telecom's latest procurement



On May 6, China Telecom released its 2020 server procurement announcement. China Telecom released China Telecom server centralized procurement project goods tender centralized pre-qualification announcement.


According to the announcement, this collection is divided into 8 bidding packages, totaling 56,314 units. Includes.


We purchased 17,829 computing servers (I series), 13,424 big data servers (I series), 5,450 distributed storage servers (I series), 3,697 cold storage servers (I series), 1,564 NFV servers (I series), 2,767 GPU servers (I series), 398 servers (A series) and 11,185 servers (H series).

These include Intel series servers, AMD series servers, and China-made servers that include Huawei Kunpeng 920 chips or Hygon Dhyana series processors.

Specifically, the I-Series refers to servers with CPU types that use either the Gold Series or Silver Series of second-generation Intel Core™ scalable processors.

A-Series refers to the CPU type as the second generation AMD EPYC 7002 series processors.

H-Series refers to CPU type as Kunpeng 920 series processor or Hygon Dhyana series processor.


According to this data, the proportion of servers with China-made processors (Huawei+Hygon) in this tender is expected to be nearly 20%.

Wangxi said:

Servers with China-made processors account for 20% of China Telecom's latest procurement



On May 6, China Telecom released its 2020 server procurement announcement. China Telecom released China Telecom server centralized procurement project goods tender centralized pre-qualification announcement.


According to the announcement, this collection is divided into 8 bidding packages, totaling 56,314 units. Includes.


We purchased 17,829 computing servers (I series), 13,424 big data servers (I series), 5,450 distributed storage servers (I series), 3,697 cold storage servers (I series), 1,564 NFV servers (I series), 2,767 GPU servers (I series), 398 servers (A series) and 11,185 servers (H series).

These include Intel series servers, AMD series servers, and China-made servers that include Huawei Kunpeng 920 chips or Hygon Dhyana series processors.

Specifically, the I-Series refers to servers with CPU types that use either the Gold Series or Silver Series of second-generation Intel Core™ scalable processors.

A-Series refers to the CPU type as the second generation AMD EPYC 7002 series processors.

H-Series refers to CPU type as Kunpeng 920 series processor or Hygon Dhyana series processor.


According to this data, the proportion of servers with China-made processors (Huawei+Hygon) in this tender is expected to be nearly 20%.

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20% is a rather small portion. And isnt Hygon Dhyana a dead product?

Huawei has shifted its 14nm chip order from TSMC to China’s SMIC

Wangxi said:

Huawei has shifted its 14nm chip order from TSMC to China’s SMIC

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1259136215376211970

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A small step of great significance.