Chinese semiconductor industry

Hongguang Semiconductor and GCL Group cooperate to develop the application of GaN power chips in the field of new energy​

According to the strategic cooperation framework agreement, Hongguang Semiconductor and GCL Group intend to carry out close cooperation in the application of gallium nitride (GaN) power chips in the field of new energy, including: GCL Group or its subsidiaries will invest in Hongguang Semiconductor or its subsidiaries. Equity, the two parties will establish in-depth cooperation; the two parties will establish a new energy joint venture company in China to lay out the application of GaN chips in the new energy field, including but not limited to charging/exchange technology and equipment, energy storage technology and its facilities, distributed photovoltaic inverters devices, etc.; Hongguang Semiconductor will provide technical support to the joint venture to jointly develop silicon-based power chips and third-generation semiconductor applications; and GCL Group, based on its leading position and comprehensive layout in the new energy industry, will assist Hongguang Semiconductor and joint ventures to enter the new energy industry supply chain market.

tphuang said:

At some point, they are going to run out of customers if they just build more 28 nm and above fabs. Pretty soon, I think China will be able to produce all the industrial chips it needs for its consumption. The expansion is pretty aggressive.

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China currently has capacity of 3.1 Million wpm of [200mm wafer equivalent]

So if you think about it, 5 years for 15 megafabs (@100K wpm) only works out to 3.3 Million of [200mm wafer equivalents].

Yes, China has doubled fab capacity, but it's still less than 25% of global semiconductor production.
After another 5 years at that rate, it is still less than 30% of global semiconductor production.

That's still only half of Chinese semiconductor consumption of 60% of global semiconductors.

AndrewS said:

China currently has capacity of 3.1 Million wpm of [200mm wafer equivalent]

So if you think about it, 5 years for 15 megafabs (@100K wpm) only works out to 3.3 Million of [200mm wafer equivalents].

Yes, China has doubled fab capacity, but it's still less than 25% of global semiconductor production.
After another 5 years at that rate, it is still less than 30% of global semiconductor production.

That's still only half of Chinese semiconductor consumption of 60% of global semiconductors.

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You do realize that China won't be adding just mega fabs right? They have over 30 fabs under construction and only 3 are 100k wpm 12-inch foundries. I'd have to look around for some data sources to see how many under construction are 8-inch and how many are 12-inch and the capacities for them. It seems to me that only SMIC has the resources right now to build 100k wpm megafabs. They are building 3 and only have 1 in operation. Everyone else is just building like 30k here and then expand 30k later and so forth. Also, we are about to hit a major global recession.

But if they have 20 8-inch fabs of average 50k wpm + another 12 12-inch fabs of average 40k wpm under construction -> that would be about 2.2 million 8-inch wpm. That's quite a bit of capacity coming online every 2 years. With an impending global recession, demand is also not going to grow at same rate as the last couple of years.

And how do you measure %? Are you measuring by revenue, # of wafers, # of chips? You get a lot more chips and revenue from a 7 nm wafer than a 28 nm wafer.

I did some calculations over the weekend and found that China can get all of its Server chips (for super computers and data centers), AI chips and fully homegrown desktop CPU needs with just 10k wpm of N+1 node. So, the capacity of advanced nodes wafer may matter more than capacity overall.

gadgetcool5 said:

This would be huge news so I looked it up. Turns out it's false.

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Too much fake stuff being pumped up by wishful thinking

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someone is blowing it at weibo, since the Chip Kirin 720 appeared in June... but Mate 60 is a completely different story

SMIC "7nm" ("N+1") is nowhere near what some articles hyped it to be....

GodRektsNoobs said:

What if, just what if in a few months there might be a Mate 50/50 Pro 5G? An entire year seems a bit too long for Mate 50 4G to be in the market, especially when 5G RF chips are now in mass production? When that happens just give existing Mate 50 4G buyers a free 5G case.

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I know a few guys who order their entire family to buy Huawei only in the consumer segments that Huawei is in. Sort of another type of "revenge shopping" in the Chinese retail markets. US media is still full of "down with Huawei" propaganda. I have no idea how the real American or EU competitors cope when Huawei has domestic 5G RF on top of domestic 14nm/7nm ASICs. I guess there might be a "revenge comeback" in the high end smart electronics segments. When that happens, Huawei would have a decent shot at Samsung and Apple for the title of the leading electronics OEMs. In that context, the 14nm/7nm race is so important to China in general and Huawei in particular. 5G RF and baseband is a lot easier, IIHO. I have been long pitching US to change the course. But the Biden admin has obviously doubling down and tripling down. After everything said and done, I am afraid the US economic balance of power will be hurt more than a few down years in Huawei. Ohh elected politicians, ......

China is building an average of about 100 new chip production lines every year as part of the great industrial expansion to strengthen the safety and stability of its supply chain, according to Xiang.

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The rest of the article is irrelevant on this topic. Tho this is the only interesting part of it.

escobar said:

SMIC "7nm" ("N+1") is nowhere near what some articles hyped it to be....

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1569343390403231745

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a custom bitcoin mining chip that was made to spec is not as advanced as intel/apple chips!!! It must be Xi's fault.
how can china ever recover from this?
for indians, they can just shit on the street to cope. That's not an option for chinese, sadly. I don't think China can recover from this.

NightFury1818 said:

Working prototypes have been already created? Is it an LPP or SSMB?

If i remember correctly Tsinghua had said they'd be able to deliver an SSMB euv prototype only by 2025/26

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There's been an EUV prototype for well over 10 years at CIOMP. This is more of an R&D project than what you would normally call a prototype associated with some sort of pre-commercial product. They've been experimenting with the components for years but there's been a lack of news on this front. The last update I heard about this was from 2017, linked below.



There has been news involving SSMB as an EUV light source as well as EUV component testing at the SSRF. As far as I know, an SSMB EUV prototype is still in the distant future. Phase II SSMB testing is wrapping up this year with its focus on achieving highly repeatable, high power tunable EUV wavelengths. Phase III is what is supposed to be the basis for an SSMB EUV prototype for a fully integrated lithograph machine. My personal speculation is that the ongoing research at the SSRF will eventually be merged with both the SSMB and LPP EUV light source programs for dual track parallel R&D. What I know for sure is that LPP research is far ahead of SSMB R&D and is already on track for some sort of low output commercialization. This was not certain until not so long ago when rumors came out that China had a working MOPA CO2 laser in the ~30kW range. If true, then it's likely that an LPP EUV machine will be here in the next few years.

tokenanalyst said:

They have CO2 lasers, multilayer mirrors, equipment to make those, maglev wafer stages, EUV sensors, I have seen research on EUV photoresist, they have laser plasma producing devices, debris cleaning devices, EUV mask, I have yet to see Vacuum equipment fit for EUV but probably is there. The difficult part is to combine those to make a machine.

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what specific vacuum equipment for EUV? as long as they don't use diffusion pumps the cleanliness of maglev turbopumps is pretty good.

I may or may not have a tangential participation in an ASML related study on introduction of dilute hydrogen atmospheres to EUV instruments to reduce graphitic carbon buildup on optics from EUV photopolymerization, what they call "ultra clean vacuum" vs. "ultra high vacuum". That'll require a different type of pump since turbos don't have good throughput tolerance, they like as close to 0 load as possible.