Chinese semiconductor industry

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Overlord

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Since when did memory chips telecommunicate data content to its host nation?
West is working on china +1 supply chain stretegy, so they don't want high tech Chinese companies eat the share of current supply chain ( sk, japanese companies ) . If USA allows that then it would do same mistake as to what happened with solar panels.
 

siegecrossbow

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West is working on china +1 supply chain stretegy, so they don't want high tech Chinese companies eat the share of current supply chain ( sk, japanese companies ) . If USA allows that then it would do same mistake as to what happened with solar panels.

If that's the case then just say that it is to combat unfair trade practices by China. Using national security justification for every little thing just makes them look dumb. At the rate things are going even iphone chargers are going to be security risks.
 
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tphuang

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Alright, now both Biren and Inspur have posted their news release on this
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Note that the 8x BR104 version had 1.09 to 1.58 times the processing speed of A100.

When measured by power consumption, BR104 was twice as efficient as A100!
As they stated here, BR104 has already started large scale delivery to customers for testing/adaptation. The more powerful BR100 is coming
目前,BR104已经开始了大规模的客户送测和适配,性能更强大的BR100也已启动落地应用,我们对BR100系列未来的应用前景充满信心。

This is from Inspur, they tested BR104 with 4x GPUs and 8x CPUs through their server box NF5468M6. Keep in mind, BR104 in this set up has already been deemed sufficiently tested to go through this performance test. As such, one would imagine that Inspur is working pretty hard to start adopting it.
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Keep in mind, Inspur is that world's largest AI server provider. It has over 50% market share in the Chinese market for 5 years in a row. So, mass adoption of BR100/104 and kunlun-2 by Inspur will not only allow it to capture the Chinese market but also any overseas market that Inspur is in. Inspur has quite a large worldwide presence. I think that's the important part here. Any AI and server chips that we see get produced here will not only be deployed in China but also around the world. That's a huge problem for Nvidia (and eventually TSMC).

Even if we just look at the progress of Kunlun chips, we see how big this market is.
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The provinces/local government around China are all looking to add large AI training centers. 千万级 corresponds to over 1 petaflop of computing power. The most recent one at Yancheng was 200PFlops.
去年10月,昆仑芯拿下某省级司法体系千万级智慧检务综合平台项目。此前,昆仑芯AI芯片在湖北宜昌的“超级电脑”上应用部署,该电脑最大算力达51200万亿次/秒。今年3月,昆仑芯科技拿下了北京市实验室服务保障中心的千万级AI大单,助力北京市重点支持的新型研发机构“训练”大模型;9月2日,百度智能云-昆仑芯(盐城)智算中心在江苏盐城上线,算力规模达200P。
 
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ansy1968

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@henrik bro regarding your previous question about Chinese 5G RF, here is a YT video describing the progress China had made, It's one of the many dots to connect regarding the Return of The King in 2023.

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Recently Chinese technology companies said 5G RF chips have delivered some orders to cell phone companies, which is another Chinese RF chip companies after Zhuosheng Micro, Fu Man Micro and other chips to achieve mass production of 5G RF chips, highlighting the rapid progress of Chinese chips, proving that the U.S. approach will only accelerate the growth of Chinese chips. The P50 Pro released by Huawei in 2021 used the Kirin 9000 chip with integrated 5G baseband, but it could not support 5G. Industry sources pointed out that it should be because Huawei's stock of 5G RF chips had run out, resulting in the P50 Pro not being able to support 5G, at which point the industry suddenly realized that not only the cell phone chip might be constrained by the United States, but the 5G RF chip was also pinched by the United States. It is reported that the United States holds the 5G RF chip, because the United States and Japan monopoly of the key components - filter, the United States and Japan occupy 95% of the filter market share, due to the mastery of the key components of the RF chip, the United States was able to achieve a monopoly market position in the RF chip market.
 

Overlord

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If that's the case then just say that it is to combat unfair trade practices by China. Using national security justification for every little thing just makes them look dumb. At the rate things are going even iphone chargers are going to be security risks.
That's why apple have shifted some of it's iphone production to Vietnam and india which means to replace low tech part of their product with supply chain outside of china but high tech monopoly will remain with USA and their allies . It's all part of their china +1 strategy. They won't ditch Chinese supply chain because that means to loose their market ,but USA and their allies doesn't want china to eat the lunch of high tech product ( because it's dominated by west and their allies).

Forget about Trade practice because WTO is almost dead, USA does whatever they want and even their allies benefits with high tech monopoly , that's why support is coming for chips 4 act and USA want to cultivate more or bigger market outside of china. That's why they are wooing so much to ASEAN and India.
 

siegecrossbow

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That's why apple have shifted some of it's iphone production to Vietnam and india which means to replace low tech part of their product with supply chain outside of china but high tech monopoly will remain with USA and their allies . It's all part of their china +1 strategy. They won't ditch Chinese supply chain because that means to loose their market ,but USA and their allies doesn't want china to eat the lunch of high tech product ( because it's dominated by west and their allies).

Forget about Trade practice because WTO is almost dead, USA does whatever they want and even their allies benefits with high tech monopoly , that's why support is coming for chips 4 act and USA want to cultivate more or bigger market outside of china. That's why they are wooing so much to ASEAN and India.

Do you have reading comprehension issues?
 

tphuang

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I'm still not sure how Huawei has been able to push out a new phone that uses Snapdragon CPU. I thought they are banned.

Anyways, taking a look at the much larger market of CPU market. So far, we've seen them able to produce very competitive AI chips using 7 nm technology that SMIC can produce (if needed). I see market size by revenue in the future as

mobile CPUs > Industrial CPUs (smart cars is the biggest one here) > desktop CPUs > server CPUs

It seems to me that the hardest one to crack is mobile market due to the push for the most advanced process. Over the next 3 years, they best they can do is probably designing chips using 5/7 nm process that non-premium phones use. On the other hand, there is probably not a lot of national security issues around that. Industrial sector is growing and might become the second largest one in a few more years. Especially with smart cars requiring 1000 TOPS for L4 driving. It seems like desktop and server market are the most concerning for national security (due to possible backdoors) and also the ones that are moving the slowest. It's doubtful Intel will be pushing out 3 nm chips for PC anytime soon. This is just a look at how much progress Phytium is making in desktop CPU market.

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Just focusing on these key points. The most important part of Phytium, Huawei or Alibaba is to mass produce enough desktop and server chips so that the Chinese government and the the major companies can use them and don't get hacked into. I will post some evidence of this, but I see a lot of major corporations switching to Phytium chips. 2 million in one year is not bad for just inside of China. It seems to me that they really just produce CPUs,
This strategy is being carried out in three steps. First, China is nurturing a self-reliant market in the relatively closed government and Party-related sphere valued at dozens of billions of dollars. Then, domestic replacements will expand to key state-owned sectors, including telecommunications, rail, electricity, health care, aerospace and energy. This market could be four to five times bigger. The last step is to cover the consumer market, which includes consumer phones, that is worth hundreds of billions of dollars.
2 million in one year for desktop/server CPUs are not bad, but still peanuts compared overall 10 million in server CPU sales per year and probably 100 million in desktop CPU sales per year. So at this point, they are mostly just supply step 1 and 2.
Phytium Technology, the absolute leader among China's self-developed processor chip companies tailored to government entities, delivered 1.5 million chips in 2020 and expects to ship over 2 million chips this year.
Here is the important part. Back before Huawei was blacklisted from TSMC, Hisilicon expanded so much in 2020 that Qualcomm revenue almost got cut in half! Just think what would happen to Intel/AMD/Qualcomm/Nvidia when China actually can be competitive in this area. Huge loss of revenue for them and TSMC.
American companies are getting hurt too. Qualcomm's shipments in China shrank 48.1% year-on-year in 2020 as Chinese phone makers sought to diversify their supply network.

Even with Alibaba/Baidu's success with their own chipmaking arms, they still invested in Phytium.
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Intel even with their 12th gen CPU is still using 10 nm process. Basically, the very capable Intel engineers have been handicapped by their own fab division. AMD Ryzen 9 CPU is using 7 nm process. Although, their Zen4 CPU will be using 5 nm process by TSMC. As such, SMIC's N+1/N+2 process is sufficient for Phytium/Zhaoxin to achieve competitive CPU design. I'm sure you don't need to be leading edge in desktop computing to satisfy the demand of government or state run enterprise employees.

Back in 2020, when they unveiled their product plans, D3000 and E3000 (their next gen desktop and embedded applications chips) were still planned around 14 nm process. Neither have been released thus far.
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This part is important. Phytium was forced to use 16nm process for S2500 back in the days, because TSMC's leading edge production is occupied by "more important" American companies.
Phytium’s latest 64-core FT-2000+/64 and Tengyun S2500 processors are made by TSMC using its 16nm process technology, to a large degree because leading-edge production capacities at the world’s largest maker of semiconductors are reserved years ahead by giant customers like Apple.
So, it made a lot of sense even back then for them to go with SMIC 14 nm process for D2000/3000. It made even more sense after they got put on entity list.

Given that they are probably running low on S2500 processors, by now, I think the SMIC N+1 production is likely to be for server chip. It will be interesting to see if N+1 production will be high enough for desktop CPU market.
 
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siegecrossbow

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I'm still not sure how Huawei has been able to push out a new phone that uses Snapdragon CPU. I thought they are banned.

Anyways, taking a look at the much larger market of CPU market. So far, we've seen them able to produce very competitive AI chips using 7 nm technology that SMIC can produce (if needed). I see market size by revenue in the future as

mobile CPUs > Industrial CPUs (smart cars is the biggest one here) > desktop CPUs > server CPUs

It seems to me that the hardest one to crack is mobile market due to the push for the most advanced process. Over the next 3 years, they best they can do is probably designing chips using 5/7 nm process that non-premium phones use. On the other hand, there is probably not a lot of national security issues around that. Industrial sector is growing and might become the second largest one in a few more years. Especially with smart cars requiring 1000 TOPS for L4 driving. It seems like desktop and server market are the most concerning for national security (due to possible backdoors) and also the ones that are moving the slowest. It's doubtful Intel will be pushing out 3 nm chips for PC anytime soon. This is just a look at how much progress Phytium is making in desktop CPU market.

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Just focusing on these key points. The most important part of Phytium, Huawei or Alibaba is to mass produce enough desktop and server chips so that the Chinese government and the the major companies can use them and don't get hacked into. I will post some evidence of this, but I see a lot of major corporations switching to Phytium chips. 2 million in one year is not bad for just inside of China. It seems to me that they really just produce CPUs,

2 million in one year for desktop/server CPUs are not bad, but still peanuts compared overall 10 million in server CPU sales per year and probably 100 million in desktop CPU sales per year. So at this point, they are mostly just supply step 1 and 2.

Here is the important part. Back before Huawei was blacklisted from TSMC, Hisilicon expanded so much in 2020 that Qualcomm revenue almost got cut in half! Just think what would happen to Intel/AMD/Qualcomm/Nvidia when China actually can be competitive in this area. Huge loss of revenue for them and TSMC.


Even with Alibaba/Baidu's success with their own chipmaking arms, they still invested in Phytium.
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Intel even with their 12th gen CPU is still using 10 nm process. Basically, the very capable Intel engineers have been handicapped by their own fab division. AMD Ryzen 9 CPU is using 7 nm process. Although, their Zen4 CPU will be using 5 nm process by TSMC. As such, SMIC's N+1/N+2 process is sufficient for Phytium/Zhaoxin to achieve competitive CPU design. I'm sure you don't need to be leading edge in desktop computing to satisfy the demand of government or state run enterprise employees.

Back in 2020, when they unveiled their product plans, D3000 and E3000 (their next gen desktop and embedded applications chips) were still planned around 14 nm process. Neither have been released thus far.
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This part is important. Phytium was forced to use 16nm process for S2500 back in the days, because TSMC's leading edge production is occupied by "more important" American companies.

So, it made a lot of sense even back then for them to go with SMIC 14 nm process for D2000/3000. It made even more sense after they got put on entity list.

Given that they are probably running low on S2500 processors, by now, I think the SMIC N+1 production is likely to be for server chip. It will be interesting to see if N+1 production will be high enough for desktop CPU market.

For now they are banned from 5G chips/Hisilicon chips.
 
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