Chinese semiconductor industry

Chinese mainland chip shares have surged in recent days following the visit of the US House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi to Taiwan, the home to the world's biggest chipmaker TSMC.

Among other strategic issues, Pelosi's visit is being seen as the latest attempt by the United States to block the Chinese mainland from accessing advanced techs after the push to set up the so-called Chip 4 Alliance, covering the US, Japan, South Korea and China's Taiwan.

The domestic chip industry is looking to meet surging demand in the Chinese integrated circuit market, which is still heavily reliant on imports. This brings opportunities for the domestic chip industry, analysts and investors said.

With strict (external) control and geopolitical uncertainty, "supply chain security" is crucial for the Chinese mainland's chip industry. "(The visit) is expected to accelerate research and development of domestic equipment and components and bring opportunities for their 'localization'," CITIC Securities said on Thursday.

Related chip shares have surged on the market.

Shares of SMIC, or Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp, the Chinese mainland's biggest chipmaker, rose 2.14 percent to 42.49 yuan (US$6.54) on Thursday, a 10.4 percent rebound from 38.50 yuan, its lowest price in August.

Shanghai-based SMIC, which offers made-to-order chips for smartphone and automotive firms, is also the top company by market value on the Shanghai STAR Market, a Nasdaq-like board which aims to boost innovation.

AMEC, or Advanced Micro-Fabrication Equipment Inc, a top chipmaking equipment vendor in China, expanded 2.03 percent to close at 136.00 yuan, also a 14.3 percent rebound from its August low. AMEC's clients include SMIC and Huahong, top domestic chipmakers.

National Silicon Industry, which offers silicon materials, closed at 21.86 yuan on Thursday, a 11.8 percent rebound from its August-low. Cambricon, an artificial intelligence chip designer, jumped 3.33 percent to 63.53 yuan, also a strong rebound from its lowest price of 58.00 yuan this month.

Comparatively, TSMC or the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Corp, closed at US$86.51, up 0.53 percent, on Thursday on the New York Stock Exchange.

Amid this volatile geopolitical environment, domestic firms have an advantage in terms of equipment delivery, especially response speed; service level; and ecosystem security, according to TrendForce, a Taiwan-based research firm.

Chips are often seen as the "brain" of various devices, from smartphones to electronics and cars to industrial machinery. They are an upstream supply for many industries in today's digitalized society. China has the world's biggest downstream market for the chip industry. This brings enough market space for related firms, industry insiders said.

In 2021, China's semiconductor equipment market reached US$29.6 billion, accounting for 28.9 percent globally, compared with 14.5 percent in 2017, according to SEMI, a global integrated circuit industry association.

The chip shortage, especially in the automotive industry, has already boosted investment on wafer plants to produce chips globally.

Earlier this year, the Europe Union issued the European Chips Act, offering a US$48-billion support package for chip research and manufacturing in the region. Japan and South Korea also launched similar plans in 2022 to support related chipmakers, including TSMC, Samsung and SK Hynix. In December, India approved a US$10-billion stimulus package for chip and display firms to invest in India, public statements and media reports suggest.

Prior to Pelosi's Asia tour, the US Congress passed a massive US$280-billion chip subsidy bill known as the Chips and Science Act. The new act, which aims to support the domestic chip industry and attracts firms to invest in the US, is expected to make the US more competitive with China.

"The Congress's gift to the semiconductor industry could make things worse," a Bloomberg opinion report claimed.

The proposed Chip 4 Alliance is also a part of the long-term US strategy to contain the Chinese mainland semiconductor industry, using chips with "military usage" as a ploy.

A growing number of Chinese high-tech companies have been added in the US "Entity List." As the most famous one, Huawei was hit by US sanctions after former president Donald Trump put it on an export blacklist in 2019 and barred it from accessing critical technology from the US.

Even with the tech bans, which cover gears for 14 nanometer or advanced chip manufacturing and 128-layer memory chip production, China has a booming chip market with strong demand, fundraising channels like the STAR Market, a complete ecosystem for mature technologies such as 28 nanometer and growing opportunities like AI chips, analysts said.

A total of 61 integrated circuit firms, including SMIC and AMEC, had been listed on the STAR Market by June, covering the whole chip industry chain from equipment, design, manufacture to assembly and testing.

The 428 STAR-listed firms had applied for more than 140,000 patents by June, including over 40,000 invention patents. The STAR-listed firms' patent density, meaning invention patent volumes for each 100 million yuan revenue, is nine times compared with those listed on the main board, according to researcher PatSnap.

Shanghai has designated AI, integrated circuits and biomedicine as three strategic industries in its long-term development blueprint.

Shanghai has ideal conditions for AI chip development, with huge investment, leading firms like Alibaba's chip unit and Cambricon and various adoption applications, said Song Haiyan, vice secretary-general of the Shanghai Integrated Circuit Association or SICA.

In 2021, Shanghai's AI industry revenue hit 280 billion yuan, 18.3 percent growth year on year, much higher than the city's GDP growth.

Click to expand...

Gona semiconductor wafer transfer equipment project signed and settled in Haining​

Even with restriction and one hand tie behind their back, the Chinese can still compete, the skill level is astounding....lol the surprise as describe below, they used domestic SMIC 14nm and able to match the latest the Collective West can offer...lol

This means that OceanLight has been built with technologies that have mostly been deprecated compared to that of the current

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and

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enthusiasts can get their hands on, let alone the cutting-edge manufacturing processes and technologies powering the likes of Frontier, which already employs AMD-made MI300 APUs.

OceanLight's supercomputing chops are impressive, especially when you take into account its technology. Besides being an exascale-class supercomputer, one of only a few in the world right now, OceanLight doesn't have the same amenities as those created outside of heavily sanctioned China. For one,

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

. This makes it wholly dependent on its internal manufacturing capabilities to provide most of the required components and technology that go into building such a massive machine.

The Conclusion we get, China 2022 had achieved self sufficiency in Exascale Supercomputer.

From Tom's Hardware

Chinese Exascale Supercomputer Faces Frontier in Gordon Bell Prize​

By published about 7 hours ago
There's a mysterious ocean light off the coast of China



(Image credit: National Supercomputing Center - Wuxi, China.)


OceanLight, the Chinese exascale supercomputer that , has once again surged to prominence as a finalist in the Gordon Bell Prize. A yearly award in recognition for "outstanding achievement in high-performance computing," the Gordon bell Prize awards a $10,000 fund to the winner, picked from a group of five finalists. OceanLight, operated by the University of Science and Technology of China, with crowning jewels of Western supercomputing achievement such as Frontier and Summit, as well as Japan's Arm-based Fugaku.

OceanLight's supercomputing chops are impressive, especially when you take into account its technology. Besides being an exascale-class supercomputer, one of only a few in the world right now, OceanLight doesn't have the same amenities as those created outside of heavily sanctioned China. For one, . This makes it wholly dependent on its internal manufacturing capabilities to provide most of the required components and technology that go into building such a massive machine.

This means that OceanLight has been built with technologies that have mostly been deprecated compared to that of the current and enthusiasts can get their hands on, let alone the cutting-edge manufacturing processes and technologies powering the likes of Frontier, which already employs AMD-made MI300 APUs. Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation (SMIC), China's homegrown CPU manufacturer, built OceanLight's exascale capabilities by leveraging a 14nm process for its SW26010-Pro CPUs.

According to , each SW26010-Pro CPU can deliver 14.03 teraflops of compute at either FP64 or FP32 precision and 55.3 teraflops at BF16 or FP16 precision. Extracting data from the previous Gordon Bell Prize entry the system took part in, it's estimated that OceanLight features a 107,520 node architecture with one SW26010-Pro per node, for a total of 41.93 million cores.

As each cabinet can support 40 nodes, that works out to 105 cabinets in total. And according to this year's Gordon Bell entry, the supercomputing workload that simulated as many as 2.5 billion atoms and their interactions called as many as 28.1 million of OceanLight's cores.

China's leveraging whatever technology it can to advance both its and supercomputing capabilities, and the country isn't shy of the increased power consumption (mostly coal-based) and materials requirement that comes from scaling older, less advanced technology. Once again, where there's will and state-backed pockets, there's a way to plow forward

ansy1968 said:

As each cabinet can support 40 nodes, that works out to 105 cabinets in total. And according to this year's Gordon Bell entry, the supercomputing workload that simulated as many as 2.5 billion atoms and their interactions called as many as 28.1 million of OceanLight's cores.

Click to expand...

You basically need an exascale computer to simulate just 1mm^2 of silicon atoms (210 pm). Still far from a Matrix type virtual reality but getting there.

shoot yourself in the foot

According to the Wall Street Journal, according to an analysis of trade data, the process of reviewing US technology exports to China led by the US Department of Commerce has almost all received approval requests, and some crucial technology exports have increased.

According to the U.S. Department of Commerce, in 2020, U.S. exports to China totaled $125 billion, and officials requested a license for less than 0.5 percent. In this segment, the agency approved 94 percent (2,652) of applications to export technology to China, the analysis showed. In 2021, the approval rate dropped to 88%, and rejections due to incomplete information or ineligibility did not count.

The survey also found that some key semiconductor manufacturing tools are exported from China in 2021, and the Ministry of Commerce will no longer control them. The export value of such advanced technology equipment has soared to $6.9 billion from $2.6 billion in 2017.

Others have warned, though, that tougher restrictions on U.S. tech sales to China will backfire as allies such as Germany, Japan and South Korea fill the void.

Is asianometry's videos often referenced here in this thread?

tokenanalyst said:

If we want to break through the most advanced DUV lithography machine, we can see from the name that the difficulty lies in the infiltration technology, which is one of the most critical reasons why our domestic lithography machine cannot break through 28 nanometers for a long time. However, recently, our domestic related company, Chier Electromechanical, has made relevant breakthroughs in lithography machine infiltration technology. In the high-end integrated semiconductor industry, it has also successfully iterated to the eighth generation, realizing high-precision control of liquid during infiltration. , which can be controlled to an error of 0.001 degrees, which is quite difficult.

And the related lithography machine research and development experimental base has also started mid-term testing and trial production. In other words, the development of DUV lithography machines is basically no problem, and the focus will be on yield and productivity in the future. Coupled with the technological breakthroughs made by Guowang Optical in the exposure system and lens provision of lithography machines some time ago, it can be said that the main technical difficulties in immersion lithography machines have been basically broken through.

In mid-April 2022, Professor Zhu Yu of Tsinghua University led the team and released public news, saying that with the joint breakthrough of the team and Huazhuo Jingke, the self-developed dual-stage lithography machine was successfully developed. The latter It is the top supplier of core components of lithography machines in China, and it can be regarded as breaking ASML's monopoly in the field of dual-stage lithography machines, becoming the second company and team in the world with this technology.
​

Click to expand...

Is this an original write up from you or is it one sources from elsewhere?

ansy1968 said:

Even with restriction and one hand tie behind their back, the Chinese can still compete, the skill level is astounding....lol the surprise as describe below, they used domestic SMIC 14nm and able to match the latest the Collective West can offer...lol

This means that OceanLight has been built with technologies that have mostly been deprecated compared to that of the current

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

and

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

enthusiasts can get their hands on, let alone the cutting-edge manufacturing processes and technologies powering the likes of Frontier, which already employs AMD-made MI300 APUs.

OceanLight's supercomputing chops are impressive, especially when you take into account its technology. Besides being an exascale-class supercomputer, one of only a few in the world right now, OceanLight doesn't have the same amenities as those created outside of heavily sanctioned China. For one,

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

. This makes it wholly dependent on its internal manufacturing capabilities to provide most of the required components and technology that go into building such a massive machine.

The Conclusion we get, China 2022 had achieved self sufficiency in Exascale Supercomputer.

From Tom's Hardware

Chinese Exascale Supercomputer Faces Frontier in Gordon Bell Prize​

By

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

published about 7 hours ago
There's a mysterious ocean light off the coast of China

(Image credit: National Supercomputing Center - Wuxi, China.)


OceanLight, the Chinese exascale supercomputer that

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

, has once again surged to prominence as a finalist in the Gordon Bell Prize. A yearly award in recognition for "outstanding achievement in high-performance computing," the Gordon bell Prize awards a $10,000 fund to the winner, picked from a group of five finalists. OceanLight, operated by the University of Science and Technology of China,

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

with crowning jewels of Western supercomputing achievement such as Frontier and Summit, as well as Japan's Arm-based Fugaku.

OceanLight's supercomputing chops are impressive, especially when you take into account its technology. Besides being an exascale-class supercomputer, one of only a few in the world right now, OceanLight doesn't have the same amenities as those created outside of heavily sanctioned China. For one,

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

. This makes it wholly dependent on its internal manufacturing capabilities to provide most of the required components and technology that go into building such a massive machine.

This means that OceanLight has been built with technologies that have mostly been deprecated compared to that of the current

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

and

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

enthusiasts can get their hands on, let alone the cutting-edge manufacturing processes and technologies powering the likes of Frontier, which already employs AMD-made MI300 APUs. Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation (SMIC), China's homegrown CPU manufacturer, built OceanLight's exascale capabilities by leveraging a 14nm process for its SW26010-Pro CPUs.

According to

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

, each SW26010-Pro CPU can deliver 14.03 teraflops of compute at either FP64 or FP32 precision and 55.3 teraflops at BF16 or FP16 precision. Extracting data from the previous Gordon Bell Prize entry the system took part in, it's estimated that OceanLight features a 107,520 node architecture with one SW26010-Pro per node, for a total of 41.93 million cores.

As each cabinet can support 40 nodes, that works out to 105 cabinets in total. And according to this year's Gordon Bell entry, the supercomputing workload that simulated as many as 2.5 billion atoms and their interactions called as many as 28.1 million of OceanLight's cores.

China's leveraging whatever technology it can to advance both its

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

and supercomputing capabilities, and the country isn't shy of the increased power consumption (mostly coal-based) and materials requirement that comes from scaling older, less advanced technology. Once again, where there's will and state-backed pockets, there's a way to plow forward

Click to expand...

Since SMIC now can make 7nm chips, are they going to make even faster supercomputers?

henrik said:

Since SMIC now can make 7nm chips, are they going to make even faster supercomputers?

Click to expand...

Bro to answer I gave you an article from FT and see the Cope and despair the impact of SMIC 7nm had created....lol , we have to forgive her since she knowns nothing about SEMICONDUCTOR, a matter of fact our @Loveleenkr can even teach her about the intricacy of China IC since she learned a lot from this forum....lol

On a serious note TSMC had done it with their first generation 7NM DUV why would SMIC can not, the 7nm yield process can be improve as there is a huge demand and with Liang Mong Song at the helm, this 7nm chip and the future 5nm is his baby, he want to have his name etch in history as the person Who bring SMIC in particular and China in general at the forefront of chip technology.

By an opinionate article from FT

A breakthrough by China’s largest chipmaker revealed last month triggered a gasp of surprise among observers outside the industry. But the move by Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation to start shipping advanced “7 nanometre” semiconductors had only been a matter of time. The more interesting question now is how much time and money the company is willing to sink into producing them at scale using a method their international rivals have abandoned for a more efficient one. That development, expected to unfold over the coming year, will show whether Chinese chipmakers are really ready to prioritise the political cause of making their country self-sufficient over the business case of making money. For starters, 7nm — the marketing name for a technology process for making chips — is one generation behind the most advanced in mass production. It trails the 5nm generation of chips offered by industry leaders Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company and South Korea’s Samsung. And 7nm is just the minimum required for the high-performance computing chips that rapidly process large amounts of data in everything from servers to smartphones. Since hiring former TSMC veteran Liang Mong-song as its co-chief executive in 2017, SMIC has made advances in mastering manufacturing technology generations such as 16nm and 10nm. But the company’s problem is that the US is blocking exports of extreme ultraviolet machines to China. Such lithography equipment, which can put integrated circuit patterns on a wafer surface by exposing it to light only once, has become the mainstay for making chips with the 7nm process and more advanced technology since 2019. “The furore over SMIC’s progress is quite overblown — they are using extra exposure to make up for the lack of EUV,” says Douglas Fuller, an expert on the Chinese semiconductor industry. “But it is understood that the yield is terrible.” SMIC has been open about its quest for 7nm technology. In early 2020, the company said it was developing an “n+1” process “comparable to 7nm”. In October that year, Chinese chip company Innosilicon announced that it had completed final design and testing for a product that would use this process. SMIC has also said it aims to bring the technology to mass production next year. However, as SMIC cannot secure EUV equipment, it relies on using deep ultraviolet machines. This equipment is a generation behind EUV which can finish 7nm chips only through three or even four rounds of patterning. Driven by concerns that Chinese chipmakers could get around the US’s EUV ban this way, Washington has in recent months discussed with equipment makers such as ASML of the Netherlands and Japan’s Nikon the option of stopping delivery of DUV machines to China as well. But analysts believe China has bought enough of the equipment to protect it against such a risk. However, the technical challenges of transitioning to 7nm have plagued many other chipmakers. Intel struggled for years to move below 10nm technology. And even if SMIC succeeds, competing with global rivals will be an uphill battle give the extra costs and time required using DUV machines. Whether that is a fight SMIC wants is an open question. Liang and his co-CEO Zhao Haijun have been in disagreement over what price the company should pay to continue its push to catch up with international peers. While Liang wants to continue pushing forward with the development of cutting-edge technology, Zhao has advocated focusing on expanding less advanced capacity to gain market share. Just last Friday, he told investors that SMIC would flexibly allocate capacity to less advanced technology generations to respond to strong demand in areas like industrial use chips. Beijing’s past attempts to push breakthrough innovation in semiconductor manufacturing have been hampered by chipmakers’ reluctance to risk using little-tested homemade solutions. SMIC is now at a crossroads over this priority. Constrained by the US restrictions on chip technology exports to China, the company’s reliance on its home market has risen by more than 10 percentage points over the past four years to almost 70 per cent of revenue. But industry experts say that does not equal acquiescence to prioritising national industry goals. A semiconductor executive says: “Their true ambition is to be a technologically strong and profitable company. The moment they are forced to give that up, that is the moment China is truly decoupling from the world.”

ansy1968 said:

By

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an opinionate article from FT

Washington has in recent months discussed with equipment makers such as ASML of the Netherlands and Japan’s Nikon the option of stopping delivery of DUV machines to China as well. But analysts believe China has bought enough of the equipment to protect it against such a risk.

Click to expand...

This is the only valuable piece of information I was able to find in the article.

If it is true it means ASML will anyhow deliver the already sold machines, even in the worst case where it will eventually refuse to take new orders.

This is not a small detail.

We can assume SMIC, YMTC and CXMT have already bought the needed litho machines for their current expansion plans (they would have been very incautious if they didn't), and the other Chinese manufacturers are on 28nm node or above anyhow, so no impact on them.