Chinese semiconductor industry

dengyeye said:

What did you think of the whole situation?

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Micron had sued UMC/JHICC for stealing their IP. This is a fact. But Micron and DOJ’s claim that JHICC’s technology (developed and licensed to them by UMC) is largely based on Micron’s IP/trade secret is a whole bunch of crap). I know for a fact that UMC had mostly finished developing the process when they hired some Micron engineers that were proven to have downloaded sensitive Micron documents.

furthermore, I think UMC VP/JHICC senior management (forgot what his official title is at JHICC at that time is), Steven Chen filed a patent and a lawsuit in China against micron. The content of patent is a exact match of Micron’s trade secret.

so, even though their DRAM process know how is not from Micron….the IP theft and filing a patent with Micron’s IP/trade secret is what did them in. They were few years ahead of CXMT at that time…but because of this legal trouble they are stuck at producing maybe 5K wafers per month while CXMT is filling up their first fab and they expanding capacity for their second fab now.

so it’s unfortunate for JHICC and many technical personnel that moved from Taiwan to China…and I’m a bit peeved because all effort put in by my team could not translate to more business beyond the pilot line tools we sold them. THAT, is how I feel….disappointed and bit upset at the whole situation.

hvpc said:

I think only asml still work with them.

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Cymer.

tokenanalyst said:

Cymer.

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Is that a question or a rebuttal?

hvpc said:

Is that a question or a rebuttal?

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No, i forgot the question mark. How they deal with Cymer?

tphuang said:

I think hvpc has actually gotten a warmer reception here than I would've expected. I mean tinrobert comes here and post stuff in general without being condescending and share his knowledge and people give him a hard time. It wouldn't surprise me if hvpc works in semiconductor industry, but I wonder why a 50+ year old person with 30 years of experience would come on a military forum to spout off his knowledge. Seems like his projection is just what your typical industry person outside of China would think. Not that far apart from articles I read online of China's progress. Guess what, I also have a friend in semiconductor industry with contacts in China that thinks China will be able to catch up in many areas in a few years.

Nobody really knows. More importantly, it's important for Chinese domestic industry to underplay some of its capabilities to not attract more sanctions. And it's also important for them to try to unproven domestic technology, since the threat of a DUVL ban is very real. You obviously keep importing from ASML while you can, but you also have to spend resource working with a non proven SMEE solution.

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Getting information from different people is like asking several blind people what the shape of an elephant is like. Some are optimistic and others are pessimistic depending on which area they are directly involved with.

tokenanalyst said:

No, i forgot the question mark. How they deal with Cymer?

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first, not all scanners are outfitted with Cymer laser. I know for certain JHICC had both Gigaphoton and Cymer lasers on their scanners.
I think Cymer had setup factory or warehouse in Asia (Taiwan or maybe Korea) and was okay to service JHICC.
I know you’ll probably ridicule me, again, BUT this is what I heard. And again, the disclaimer, do check with your source to verify your what I (sorry, but for lack of ways to express myself) heard.

BlackWindMnt said:

Depend how easy it is to get the custom firmware onto the machines, in some industry it hilariously easy others not so much close to impossible.

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They won't need to modify the firmware in the machines. If need be, and if it comes to that stage, they can simply build a new hardware interface with its own firmware to interact with the machine's system modules, but I was really talking about the decoding of the application software (outside of the machine) of the lithography machine to unblock the password/license protection that some posters here were talking about.

hvpc said:

first, not all scanners are outfitted with Cymer laser. I know for certain JHICC had both Gigaphoton and Cymer lasers on their scanners.
I think Cymer had setup factory or warehouse in Asia (Taiwan or maybe Korea) and was okay to service JHICC.
I know you’ll probably ridicule me, again, BUT this is what I heard. And again, the disclaimer, do check with your source to verify your what I (sorry, but for lack of ways to express myself) heard.

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Lol no problem, So U.S. export controls are basically toothless with ASML with the exception of EUV? That will mean that the United states has not control over the most critical technology in the semiconductor industry, because if ASML is still allowed to do business with JHICC that is the case. I am missing something?

hvpc said:

first, not all scanners are outfitted with Cymer laser. I know for certain JHICC had both Gigaphoton and Cymer lasers on their scanners.
I think Cymer had setup factory or warehouse in Asia (Taiwan or maybe Korea) and was okay to service JHICC.
I know you’ll probably ridicule me, again, BUT this is what I heard. And again, the disclaimer, do check with your source to verify your what I (sorry, but for lack of ways to express myself) heard.

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@hvpc Bro I find that hard to believed! will ASML allow Gigaphoton to power their DUVL while owning Cymer? If that is the case then hypothetically they can sell China an EUVL without restriction since Gigaphoton had develop a 250W LPP.

siegecrossbow said:

Getting information from different people is like asking several blind people what the shape of an elephant is like. Some are optimistic and others are pessimistic depending on which area they are directly involved with.

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And some have never touched an elephant.