Chinese semiconductor industry

gelgoog said:

ICRD is not intended to be a production facility. It is basically a research lab. It is basically the Chinese equivalent of IMEC from what I understand. As for CXMT they should have taken into consideration after Fujian Jinhua that the same thing might happen to them.

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gelgoog said:

Not surprising. The same thing happened to Fujian Jinhua.


I would not be surprised if there were 3rd party companies which would take up that task. The Chinese government needs to put in place laws so these companies can reverse engineer parts and software to service the Lam machines Chinese factories bought and paid for.


A lot of Chinese companies not in the list will continue to buy Lam products until Chinese products ramp up I think.
There is a fab huge ramp up in progress in China right now and the sanctioned companies are only a part of that even if a significant part.


I doubt there are no replacements for a lot of these tools made by TEL or someone else. TEL still can sell to Fujian Jinhua I think.


Makes sense that the Koreans and Taiwanese have their own way to get spares, after Korea got hit with the Japanese export ban on certain materials some years ago they probably want to at least have their materials supply. And a lot of people might not know about this, but Taiwan does have its own machine tools industry. So I doubt they could not make simple parts on their own if they wanted to.


ICRD is not intended to be a production facility. It is basically a research lab. It is basically the Chinese equivalent of IMEC from what I understand. As for CXMT they should have taken into consideration after Fujian Jinhua that the same thing might happen to them.


Nah. That is overly optimistic. The US also had a 10 to 20% criteria on exports to UAC at one point for the MC-21, then they changed the criteria so that if something has any US component in it, even if it is a single screw, it cannot be sold to UAC. The fact is the US can change the criteria any way they want. The only way out is to exclude them from the production chain.


It is worse than that. Chinese tool makers need more tool production, more products for more categories, and they need to make the products they produce competitive in terms of production rate. All at the same time.


I think the US jumped the gun by putting these sanctions into place before they could get the other players to agree on the CHIPS4 meeting to make their own sanctions. If Japan balks out of the sanctions companies like AMAT and Lam are toast I think. But Japan is basically a US colony so I doubt they won't cave in.

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FairAndUnbiased said:

The parts are not necessarily Lam IP, they are often bought from OEMs, and it is indeed acceptable to replace them with your own parts. Lam does have a subsidiary that produces their own parts but they can source externally if needed. Also, 3rd party servicing and OEM parts replacement has always been a thing, which is how 30 year old 200 mm tools from the 90s are still up and running.

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theorlonator said:

So who is ICRD and what's the fully Chinese line capable of in terms of most advanced node?

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tphuang said:

Not sure how accurate this is, but this is apparently a Q&A with a Lam employee that served YMTC and CXMT

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There are a few important things he talked about:
- No support from Lam is available for Chinese fabs after October 12th
- All staff have to withdraw and cannot further assist local Chinese fabs. They can't offer replacement or servicing. Which brings up the point that employees from Lam and others are likely to be let go and join local companies. For example, Lam has several hundreds employees helping YMTC.
- So even though Lam can't service YMTC/CXMT anymore, their ex-employees can be hired to do that job. However, updates and spared will not be possible.
- Seems like even for equipment that does not hit the threshold, you'd need to sign an agreement that those equipment will not be used to assist military or other strategic areas. There is no way SMIC/YMTC/CXMT would sign those agreement. Seems to me that Lam is completely finished in China
- I think this guy is a little inconsistent. They asked him if SMSC (basically the SN1/SN2 fab) had Lam employees even though they couldn't get any 14nm or below technology before. He said even though it products 7 nm and 14 nm chips, SMSC fab somehow still had a few Lam employees. well, I guess that confirms people in the industry knows that SMIC is producing 7 nm chips and that it doesn't use American tools (for the most part)
- Really pessimistic about US citizens. Green card holders are not effected, but citizens are. They have to either give up their citizenship or their career. I think this is an important one. I don't think the heads of these companies will give up their company, but maybe a few of the lower level people will.
- Said no Americans can help Chinese firms from anywhere. lol, okay, i think this guy is a little more emotional here, but I'm sure some of these guys are calling their lawyers right now for advice.
- Asked about how Fujian Jinhua started production again. He just said they got some machines before the ban and some second hand tools after. Refuses to admit that Fujian Jinhua just bought Chinese made tools.
- Said that Fujian Jinhua was able to get parts and spares from Korea and Taiwan, not everything for those machines are produced in America. Again, this guy is intentionally been difficult imo. First he says that YMTC/CXMT might have trouble with spares/parts for their existing production line down the road, but then he says Fujian Jinhua was able to get them.
- Then he says CXMT's biggest trouble is that expansion might be hard in the short term. First, he said that it is hard to replace all the American parts. Then, he said ICRD Jiading was able to be all domestic, but then says ICRD line hasn't reached mass production.
- Says that ICRD has 2 production lines: 1 fully Chinese and the other is western.
- Then he thinks ASML is a problem, but then admits that if a non-American machine contains only 10 to 20% American parts, then it cannot be prevented from being sold to China.

So, it seems to me that he was overall quite defensive about the entire thing and thinks it will hit Chinese fab expansion (not existing production). He freely admits that China can replace a lot of the Lam products, but refuses to admit that AMEC can replace everything Lam produces.

It seems to me there are a few obvious outcomes here:
1) Chinese tools makers need to expand their production quickly. There is so much demand
2) Lam/KLA/AMAT are done in the Chinese market. They will be letting go of many people and that will help their Chinese competitors. At minimum, there are skilled technicians that have worked in this industry that can service NAURA/AMEC machines. I'm sure there are engineering talents too.
3) US passport holders will have a hard decision to make. This is where Chinese gov't really needs to step up. They need to grant these people expedient citizenship and allow dual citizenship I think. A lot of these guys want to have their family in Western countries. Even if they give up their US citizenship, they will still want to have their family in Canada, Australia or Singapore or somewhere else.
4) Looks like the precious SMIC and HLMC have found a way to expand their production without American tools. I see no reason why China cannot further ramp up their advanced node production.

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PopularScience said:

ICRD is a production line, albeit a small one. The purpose is to test domestic equipment in an actual production environment.

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