Chinese semiconductor industry

This article is not about China, but has some important stuff in there.
If you take a look at the charts near the bottom that compared different chips, you will see how much better Alibaba's Yitian-710 is compared to everything else. Only the Nvidia Grace CPU and a possible AWS Graviton 4 CPU in the next couple of years is likely to surpass Yitian-710's performance. they are leaps and bounds ahead of the typical AMD and Intel chips you'd find on cloud services. My personal experience on AWS is that ARMs are just higher performing than Intel Xeon chips. It looks like these custom server CPUs are even higher performing.

Here is the important part to consider:

Small wonder, then, that 48 of the top 50 spenders on the AWS cloud are using Graviton, considering that the cost per unit of performance on real workloads is 30 percent to 40 percent lower than X86 instances.

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so if we translate this to Alibaba. If it can get the production ramped up on Yitian-710, there will be huge demand for it from cloud customers. If they can continue to develop chips that are more powerful than other cloud service providers, they will be able to sell that to gain more customers.

It's unfortunate that Huawei got sanctioned, because Kunpeng-920 was truly extraordinary for its time. I'm sure server chips would be the first things they will want to get produced when SMIC moves to the more advanced nodes.

If Arm’s licensable technology is a parallel to the rise of RISC/Unix, then perhaps RISC-V, which has an open source instruction set and logic blocks, is analogous to Linux. Arm may be set up for a good decade long run in the datacenter, at the edge, and in our client devices, but watch out for RISC-V. Ten years from now, we might be writing the same story all over again, with one more historical ring wave added.

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I think China would be very happy if RISC-V could be where ARM is right now in 10 years.

gelgoog said:

It is good that Chery is going with a Chinese chip design. But it is annoying they are still going to rely on TSMC to make it.
TSMC 16nm is available in their fab at Nanjing but it is still annoying.

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SMIC fabs are probably booked by other companies. They were working at 100% capacity back in 2021.

european_guy said:

They never sleep....

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"Bringing a couple of thousand engineers to the United States would deny Chinese occupiers the full value of TSMC’s chip factories post-invasion and secure the sufficient talent to lead the herculean national effort to save the U.S. economy by crash-building a TSMC based in the United States."

"The U.S. government can identify Taiwan’s top engineers with unique knowledge gleaned from practical experience that only they have mastered <...> Washington would then engage with Taipei to gather the targeted engineers and quietly fly them to the United States"

"There is historical precedent for this idea. In Operation Paperclip immediately after World War II, the United States and its allies evacuated more than 1,500 scientists and engineers from Germany. German scientists were years ahead of their American and their Soviet counterparts in fields like rocketry, aeronautics, and synthetic fuels."

All these pearls all wisdom (/s) are from "The American Enterprise Institute", one of the many Washington, D.C.–based neocon think tanks.

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In some way, you can't really blame the Americans.

Europe self-destructed itself in the first half of the last century. As late as the 1920-1930's, the predominant language in the scientific community, at least in terms of publications, was German. Europe has now again been in rapid decline since the start of the century, particularly since 2008. Europe is being used as sacrificial lamb, willingly, to defend and sustain the center of the empire. There was once high hope for Europe to be a relatively independent pole, as reflected in Nord Stream 2 and CAI, as well as the amount and percentage of reserves that Russia held in Europe. Europe had the chance, it just blew it away.

Taiwan is also quickly turning itself into a prey and cannon folder. What's ironical is that TSMC and semiconductor industry may turn out not to be Taiwan's safeguard ("护国神山") as people in Taiwan has hoped, instead it might accelerate the process of being absorbed by mainland China, thanks to the US and its Taiwan policy.

FairAndUnbiased said:

New architecture also works. I'm not an expert in architecture but GAA doesn't necessarily need a dieshrink.

This paper shows 17-20 nm lateral CD, which is within DUV range.

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Compare to FinFET fin width for 14 nm which has 8-10 nm lateral width requirements.

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This paper shows 50 nm CD and deposition using Applied Materials Producer 200 and Centaur 200 which came out in the 1990s for 200 mm wafers. Etch was done on a Lam TCP 9400DFM from the 1990s as well.

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It is common for Samsung and TSMC to decrease that nm number when they change the transistor shape. It is among the reasons why we ended up with things like Intel 10 nm outperforming TSMC 7 nm.

weig2000 said:

In some way, you can't really blame the Americans.

Europe self-destructed itself in the first half of the last century. As late as the 1920-1930's, the predominant language in the scientific community, at least in terms of publications, was German. Europe has now again been in rapid decline since the start of the century, particularly since 2008. Europe is being used as sacrificial lamb, willingly, to defend and sustain the center of the empire. There was once high hope for Europe to be a relatively independent pole, as reflected in Nord Stream 2 and CAI, as well as the amount and percentage of reserves that Russia held in Europe. Europe had the chance, it just blew it away.

Taiwan is also quickly turning itself into a prey and cannon folder. What's ironical is that TSMC and semiconductor industry may turn out not to be Taiwan's safeguard ("护国神山") as people in Taiwan has hoped, instead it might accelerate the process of being absorbed by mainland China, thanks to the US and its Taiwan policy.

View attachment 98333

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I really don't want to go off topic, but because you refer to European politics, I have to say that while Chancellor Angela Merkel was in office, US was kept at distance, even under Trump. Unfortunately Merkel's successors are not as good as she was, indeed very few have been at her level in the past and nobody is at her level at the moment. With a weak Germany also Europe is weak.

And regarding Nord Stream 2 and to be an independent pole, well President Putin definitely didn't help us with his idea to invade Ukraine. After Russian tanks entered in Ukraine, everything turned for the worse.

Hymuxing's first batch of Micro LED mass transfer equipment was successfully shipped​

According to Weinet news, on September 26, Hymson Laser announced that recently, Hymson’s first batch of Micro LED mass transfer equipment has been successfully shipped to customers, which means that Hymson has successfully mastered the mass of Micro LED. Transfer technology and make important breakthroughs in the field of new displays.

Since 2020, Hymstar has started to lay out the laser mass transfer technology, including in-depth analysis and research on ultra-high-precision automatic alignment platform, high-stability light source and projection system, and transfer of key materials, so as to explore how to gradually Solve the problems of huge number of transfer chips, strict requirements on transfer process yield and precision, and low fault tolerance.

This year, after breaking through technical bottlenecks such as high-speed positioning, precise alignment, and laser technology one by one, Hymuxing has completed the construction of the first batch of mass transfer equipment. It is understood that the Micro LED mass transfer equipment can not only meet the application requirements of ≤ 50μm Micro LED, but also have the characteristics of excimer light source and projection system, high-precision automatic alignment and full-scale equipment compatible design.

Haimuxing pointed out that with its profound research and development background and rich experience, Haimuxing’s massive transfer equipment has the feasibility of large-scale production under the premise of effective cost control. In the future, it will gradually deploy equipment for mass production to help Micro LED realize mass production applications.

tokenanalyst said:

The neocons live in a bad action movie.

- TSMC needs a constant input of special raw materials and equipment, parts and services from abroad just to function, at the moment this damn idiots neocons provoke a shooting war in Taiwan strait, those fabs are gone, will be better off for the Chinese to convert them into malls and you can say goodbye to a lot of the world chip supply and most of the world high end chip supply, the price of electronics will go through the roof for years or decades.
-They can bring whatever quantity of Taiwanese engineers to the U.S., won't make a difference, is a question of culture, is very difficult to replicate the Taiwanese chip model in the West. In China? maybe, in South Korea? maybe, in most of the West? Very very difficult. Most of those engineers are going to do everything else except chip manufacturing. Like I say before any shooting war that this D.C. neocons provoke will have catastrophic repercussions on the chip supply for years and even decades.

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From what I know about Taiwanese corporate culture based on some Chinese American ABC friends who worked at Taiwanese companies, neither China and South Korea have it, but US definitely 200% doesn't have it. Taiwanese corporate culture is like 1960s Showa Japanese with a healthy dose of pressure, brainwashing and putting work over everything else. It makes South Koreans look lenient from what I heard.

Once the Taiwanese get a taste of relatively free American (or Chinese/Korean for that matter, why did Liang jump ship to Samsung then SMIC?) working culture they're gonna quit and go elsewhere or to a new industry altogether.

FairAndUnbiased said:

From what I know about Taiwanese corporate culture based on some Chinese American ABC friends who worked at Taiwanese companies, neither China and South Korea have it, but US definitely 200% doesn't have it. Taiwanese corporate culture is like 1960s Showa Japanese with a healthy dose of pressure, brainwashing and putting work over everything else. It makes South Koreans look lenient from what I heard.

Once the Taiwanese get a taste of relatively free American (or Chinese/Korean for that matter, why did Liang jump ship to Samsung then SMIC?) working culture they're gonna quit and go elsewhere or to a new industry altogether.

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I think another huge issue is the crap pay. I mean, Taiwan had to essentially build a "Berlin wall" in hiring to stop Taiwanese engineers from leaving to China... pretty bad look if you ask me.

tokenanalyst said:

The neocons live in a bad action movie.

- TSMC needs a constant input of special raw materials and equipment, parts and services from abroad just to function, at the moment this damn idiots neocons provoke a shooting war in Taiwan strait, those fabs are gone, will be better off for the Chinese to convert them into malls and you can say goodbye to a lot of the world chip supply and most of the world high end chip supply, the price of electronics will go through the roof for years or decades.
-They can bring whatever quantity of Taiwanese engineers to the U.S., won't make a difference, is a question of culture, is very difficult to replicate the Taiwanese chip model in the West. In China? maybe, in South Korea? maybe, in most of the West? Very very difficult. Most of those engineers are going to do everything else except chip manufacturing. Like I say before any shooting war that this D.C. neocons provoke will have catastrophic repercussions on the chip supply for years and even decades.

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I am adding. It makes sense for China to disable TSMC and UMC facilities on the first day. Considering that how many think tanks are, including influential ones, giving Taiwan an importance it doesn't deserve just because of those fabs, it makes sense for China to disable them.

No amount of fab technology will make up for the economic consequences of conquering Taiwan. The technology is not critical unless China falls behind by a substantial margin, which is not happening at all. And you can not take over TSMC's technology by conquering the land they have their fabs on. But a lot of political writers are writing things like "we can not let China manufacture most of the world's chips". If we account for weird decisions the US congress took regarding the topic (signifies a lack of knowledge), it is highly that those fabs will be a motivation for intervention. Considering how useless they will be post-conquest, it makes sense to attack them at the beginning.

xypher said:

I think another huge issue is the crap pay. I mean, Taiwan had to essentially build a "Berlin wall" in hiring to stop Taiwanese engineers from leaving to China... pretty bad look if you ask me.

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Forgot to mention they get paid like 1960s Showa Japan too, and live in cities that look like 1960s Showa Japan.