Chinese semiconductor industry

FairAndUnbiased · Mar 18, 2022

hvpc said:
Question. What do they use to produce 28nm chips? not aware they have immersion system…perhaps they have ebeam litho system? Thanks.

E beam is far too slow for even rudimentary mass production. Only possible for super high value super low volume items like photomasks.

There's a lot of processes that are not used in the leading edge semiconductor plants that are used elsewhere, due to equipment limitations or to maximize productivity of old equipment, such as dry KrF double exposure. Here's a paper from Germany describing getting 100 nm out of a non OPC KrF equipment with double exposure.

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Hadoren said:
I feel that China should set up a domestic competitor to SMEE.

My disquieting fear is that SMEE becomes another COMAC. Endless delays, and the final product never materialises.

If you have domestic competition, the end result is usually better.

COMAC hasn't delivered a commercial product (mostly due to market share issues and being a late arrival to an industry that requires foreign approval) but SMEE already has decent market share in display, packaging and larger node lithography competing with Canon. If you set up a competitor to it then the logical thing for a company to do is abandon R&D to focus on what already makes money.

Competition = high performance is just another form of market fundamentalism no less destructive than religious fundamentalism. See what happened to Russia and especially Ukraine.

gadgetcool5 · Mar 18, 2022

Bltizo said:
That is implying that the key determinant of success for industries like civil airliners or semiconductor equipment is "competition" rather than "accumulated technology and competence".

Competition is only useful if you have sufficient technology and competence in the overall industry to circulate in the first place.

Yes, and in order to gain competence one needs know-how and thus practice. Yet we have no information about the sales and market share of the SSA600 lithography machines they already have (which have supposedly been on the market since 2016).

tokenanalyst · Mar 18, 2022

FairAndUnbiased said:
COMAC hasn't delivered a commercial product (mostly due to market share issues and being a late arrival to an industry that requires foreign approval)

And they should wait, the worst thing that can happen to China's commercial aviation industry is an accident due to a rushed project.

FairAndUnbiased said:
SMEE already has decent market share in display, packaging and larger node lithography competing with Canon. If you set up a competitor to it then the logical thing for a company to do is abandon R&D to focus on what already makes money.

I think that is what ASML was planning to do with SMEE in 2017 probably help them to become even more competitive against Canon in niche markets such as packaging, mems, iot, power, discrete, analog and TFT while ASML focuses on the lucrative FEOL market against Nikon. Sanctions probably derailed all of that. At that time some technologies for the immersion project where approved and the U-Precision subsystem vendor's dual wafer stage was approved. They may had got nervous. Just speculating.

March 14, 2017 Shanghai News - Shanghai Microelectronics Equipment (Group) Co., Ltd. (SMEE) is a company specializing in R&D and sales of advanced semiconductor manufacturing equipment. Today, SMEE and the world's leading manufacturer of chip manufacturing equipment ASML (ASML) signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) for strategic cooperation, laying the foundation for further potential cooperation between the two parties.

According to this memorandum of cooperation, ASML and SMEE will explore the possibility of purchasing specific modules of ASML lithography systems or related products for the semiconductor industry.

“The global IC industry is actively pursuing a technology roadmap to further reduce chip size and provide commercial and consumer users with more powerful, yet energy-efficient electronic components. The effective execution of this technology roadmap requires sophisticated manufacturing techniques that can only This is achieved by bringing together knowledge and experience from leading companies, research institutes and universities to form an effective collaborative network," said Paul van Attekum, Senior Vice President of Corporate Strategy and Marketing at ASML. "The purpose of our partnership with SMEE is to Enhance and strengthen the existing knowledge network in semiconductor lithography, which will benefit all our customers in China and around the world."

tokenanalyst · Mar 18, 2022

tokenanalyst said:
And they should wait, the worst thing that can happen to China's commercial aviation industry is an accident due to a rushed project.

I think that is what ASML was planning to do with SMEE in 2017 probably help them to become even more competitive against Canon in niche markets such as packaging, mems, iot, power, discrete, analog and TFT while ASML focuses on the lucrative FEOL market against Nikon. Sanctions probably derailed all of that. At that time some technologies for the immersion project where approved and the U-Precision subsystem vendor's dual wafer stage was approved. They may had got nervous. Just speculating.

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tokenanalyst · Mar 18, 2022

gadgetcool5 said:
Yes, and in order to gain competence one needs know-how and thus practice. Yet we have no information about the sales and market share of the SSA600 lithography machines they already have (which have supposedly been on the market since 2016).

Neither for any of their others products, they are not public company so they do not share sales numbers, Asianometry published a graph of sales that shows that they have sell quite some of their 110nm KrF scanners which is good but i haven't find the source of that one so is unconfirmed. But they could have been use for some non-critical applications and is really sure that their found their way to make military chips.

Blitzo · Mar 18, 2022

gadgetcool5 said:
Yes, and in order to gain competence one needs know-how and thus practice. Yet we have no information about the sales and market share of the SSA600 lithography machines they already have (which have supposedly been on the market since 2016).

Other people have already told you this before, that until recently, the impetus for buying domestic machines did not exist because they had access to foreign products.

Also, I do not see how this is a counter or an addition to what I wrote. Isn't it sort of implied that "accumulated competence" includes things such as researching, developing and building machines?

gadgetcool5 · Mar 18, 2022

Bltizo said:
Other people have already told you this before, that until recently, the impetus for buying domestic machines did not exist because they had access to foreign products.

Also, I do not see how this is a counter or an addition to what I wrote. Isn't it sort of implied that "accumulated competence" includes things such as researching, developing and building machines?

Certainly researching, developing, and building machines is important, but using what you built is also important.

That's the addition. Many articles have already stated that one of the big reasons why ASML and TSMC were so successful is that they both collaborated together. ASML built the machines, but TSMC used them and give useful feedback. Asianometry has a good chart of how jointly published research papers between the two companies surged after 2000. The same did not occur with Nikon and its consumers, like Intel.

I understand that "until recently" the impetus for buying domestic machines did not exist. But now that they do exist (and have, for at least a couple years, since it has been clear for a while that US sanctions were a threat; since at least 2020 if not 2019 or earlier) where are the numbers? Or when will we see numbers? That's the point. We don't have any. Words, posts, rumors, and arguments can only go so far until you actually have to bring out a result.

manqiangrexue · Mar 18, 2022

gadgetcool5 said:
where are the numbers? Or when will we see numbers? That's the point. We don't have any. Words, posts, rumors, and arguments can only go so far until you actually have to bring out a result.

What numbers? Sales numbers? It's abundantly clear on this forum to everyone who follows with a genuine desire to understand Chinese lithography that this is a long process in which China is making fast headway. I'm already amazed that there are news of which things have passed which phase and how things are going; I thought at the beginning, they'd want to keep it under wraps until it's ready and just emerges to blow up every American hope that China might fail. And you want, what? Sales and production numbers, after a handful of years when the West measures lightography advances by the decade? This request is either disingenuous trolling as usual or just plain stupid, not to mention mindlessly repetitive.

tokenanalyst · Mar 18, 2022

gadgetcool5 said:
I understand that "until recently" the impetus for buying domestic machines did not exist. But now that they do exist (and have, for at least a couple years, since it has been clear for a while that US sanctions were a threat; since at least 2020 if not 2019 or earlier) where are the numbers? Or when will we see numbers? That's the point. We don't have any. Words, posts, rumors, and arguments can only go so far until you actually have to bring out a result.

Then you will have to wait for them to go public, because even if they outselling ASML they don't have to show sales figures except to their private owners.

Blitzo · Mar 18, 2022

gadgetcool5 said:
Certainly researching, developing, and building machines is important, but using what you built is also important.

That's the addition. Many articles have already stated that one of the big reasons why ASML and TSMC were so successful is that they both collaborated together. ASML built the machines, but TSMC used them and give useful feedback. Asianometry has a good chart of how jointly published research papers between the two companies surged after 2000. The same did not occur with Nikon and its consumers, like Intel.

I understand that "until recently" the impetus for buying domestic machines did not exist. But now that they do exist (and have, for at least a couple years, since it has been clear for a while that US sanctions were a threat; since at least 2020 if not 2019 or earlier) where are the numbers? Or when will we see numbers? That's the point. We don't have any. Words, posts, rumors, and arguments can only go so far until you actually have to bring out a result.

I'm not sure why you've chosen my previous post to rewrite this tirade to.

We are all aware of your obsession of wanting numbers and information from western and English language sources. I'm sorry but you'll have to accept that semiconductor manufacturing equipment is now a fairly high security industry in China and that the best we can get are rumours and indirect indicators, and that any concrete information we receive will probably be delayed multiple months if not a couple of years after something has happened.

Apply the same principles of PLA watching to this, and you will find that might help you to recalibrate your expectations a little.

Chinese semiconductor industry

FairAndUnbiased

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gadgetcool5

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tokenanalyst

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tokenanalyst

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tokenanalyst

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Blitzo

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gadgetcool5

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manqiangrexue

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tokenanalyst

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Blitzo

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