SMIC Shanghai is older fab that actually operational with 28nm process.
Wuhan Xinxin is more interesting. When YMTC was found, he bought Wuhan Xinxin along with the stacking technology. This is the foundation of YMTC’s X-Stacking technology.
Chinese semiconductor industry
- Thread starter Hendrik_2000
- Start date
- Status
Wuhan Xinxin is more interesting. When YMTC was found, he bought Wuhan Xinxin along with the stacking technology. This is the foundation of YMTC’s X-Stacking technology.
What is the DSP? This was one of the bottleneck in year 2018.
I think they call DSP the Allwinner T3 due to its video encoding/decoding capabilities
The whole process of domestic EDA to make up for shortcomings, Huada Jiutian (Empyrean EDA) plans to acquire digital design and wafer manufacturing tool maker Xinda Chip
Jiutian intends to acquire 100% equity of Xinda Chip Technology Co., Ltd. through its wholly-owned subsidiary Shenzhen Jiutian for US$10 million in cash, which is engaged in the development of memory/IP feature extraction tools, which are digital design and wafer manufacturing tools. One of the key link tools in the field. This investment will help BGI to make up for the shortcomings of digital design and wafer manufacturing EDA tools. Which EDA companies are currently laying out point tools in China, and which ones are laying out the whole process?
Electronic Engineering Album News, on the morning of October 18, Huada Jiutian stated in an announcement that it plans to acquire 100% equity of Xinda Chip Technology Co., Ltd. through its wholly-owned subsidiary Shenzhen Jiutian for US$10 million in cash. After the investment is completed, the target company will become A wholly-owned subsidiary of Shenzhen Jiutian.
According to the data, Xinda Chip Technology Co., Ltd. is registered in Hong Kong, China, and was established on June 6, 2018. It is engaged in the development of memory/IP feature extraction tools, which are one of the key link tools in the field of digital design and wafer manufacturing. one. The 100% shareholder before the acquisition was Zeng Qingqi.
According to the announcement, the financial data of Xinda Technology in the past two years shows that the operating income in 2020 is 0, and the net profit is -751,300 yuan; in 2021, the operating income is 1,036,400 yuan, and the net profit is -1,344,400 yuan.
Huada Jiutian said that the technology of Xinda Technology has a leading advantage in the industry, and has complementary and synergistic effects with the company's existing products, which can improve the technical level of the company's feature extraction tool R&D team, and build an internationally leading feature extraction tool for the company. Tools are positive. This investment in Xinda Technology will help the company to continuously enrich EDA tools, complement the shortcomings of digital design and wafer manufacturing EDA tools, and conform to the company's development strategy.
No. 1 in analog design in China
With China's emphasis on the semiconductor industry, related industry chains have flourished. As an essential tool in the upstream of integrated circuits, EDA tools have achieved full coverage of all types of chips and links, but the market share of both domestic and global markets is mainly shared by the three giants Synopsys, Cadence and Siemens EDA.Liu Weiping, chairman of Huada Jiutian, once described the current situation of the EDA industry in an interview with the media as: "The first place eats meat, the second eats soup, the third licks the bowl, and there is nothing after the third."
At present, domestic EDA companies mainly include Huada Jiutian, Core Vision, Xinhuazhang, Xinhe Technology, Guangli Microelectronics, Blue Ocean Microtechnology, Okas Microelectronics, Gelun Electronics, Guowei Sierxin, etc. Among them, high-quality local manufacturers represented by BGI Jiutian are gradually gaining more market say, and have landed or planned to land in the secondary market one after another.
write at the end
With the listing of several domestic EDA giants, the gap between Chinese and foreign manufacturers at the talent level is gradually narrowing, while the gap at the product level is partially breaking through, especially in some segments that can establish "Chinese standards", local Chinese EDA manufacturers There is a better chance of achieving a local lead.From the perspective of the historical development path, although the three major overseas EDA giants have different development history, they have all experienced continuous expansion through mergers and acquisitions, which has formed their leading position today. At present, most of the domestic manufacturers are in the development stage and have not yet reached the integration stage. Only after each main product reaches a certain maturity stage, the follow-up extension M&A can be considered.
Recently, Xinhuazhang's acquisition of Shunyao Electronics, a leading high-performance simulation software company, has attracted industry attention. Fu Yong, the founder of Shunyao Electronics, officially joined Xinhuazhang as the company's Chief Technology Officer (CTO). This may be a landmark turning point in the domestic EDA industry, and China's EDA industry will usher in a critical period of development.
In the long run, the suppression of China's semiconductor industry by Western countries led by the United States will also promote local chip design companies to actively adopt domestic EDA tools. The double increase in the scale and market share of the local EDA industry will be a certain future trend.
ASML's China business endangered by US sanctions
The collateral damage from Joe Biden's latest assault on Chinese technology may extend right into the Dutch town of Veldhoven. ASML, its most famous company resident, owed much sales growth to Chinese business when it published financial results for the first half of this year, deriving nearly a sixth of its revenues from China. All that could fade more quickly than a snipped tulip after the US announced sweeping restrictions last week designed to cripple China's technology industry.The legislation cuts Chinese companies off from various semiconductor technologies, tools and software, including the equipment that goes into factories. US dominance makes it a powerful weapon. Although semiconductor production is today concentrated in Asia, American firms remain at the forefront of chip design. They are also largely responsible for the machinery and software used in semiconductor production. Applied Materials, Lam Research and KLA Corp, three prominent US makers of fab equipment, will all be hurt by the new rules.
But ASML is another likely victim. The Dutch company specializes in lithography, the hi-tech process of etching mazy lines of microscopic circuitry into silicon wafers. Today, it monopolizes an advanced form of the technology known as extreme ultra-violet lithography (EUV). ASML's EUV machines are used in the manufacture of cutting-edge chips with transistors that measure as little as seven nanometers (billionths of a meter) or less. But they are not sold to China, despite ASML's best efforts.
The reason stems from something called the Wassenaar Arrangement. Featuring 42 signatories from democratically elected governments, it is intended to restrict the sale of technologies with dual civil and military uses. When ASML asked for an export license to sell EUV machines to SMIC, a Chinese fab, the Dutch government rejected its application, believing this would contravene the Wassenaar Arrangement. Lobbying by US officials in the Trump administration – then determined to restrict the flow of advanced chips to Huawei, a Chinese maker of smartphones and network equipment – is likely to have been a factor.
DUV down
The question now is whether even tougher US sanctions put sales of other products at risk. While stopped from selling EUV machines to China, ASML has been able to supply equipment based on deep ultra-violet lithography (DUV), an older form of the technology that still accounts for the bulk of ASML's revenues. For the first half of this year, ASML recognized revenues for just 15 EUV systems but as many as 127 DUV ones. China, as shown by ASML's sales figures, is a big DUV market.
Using those DUV tools, SMIC was apparently able to produce a relatively unsophisticated seven-nanometer chip earlier this year, according to research carried out by TechInsights, an analyst firm. If the DUV technology was not sold by ASML, it would have had to come from either Canon or Nikon, Japanese DUV rivals that lack ASML's EUV expertise. Japan, however, is also signed up to the Wassenaar Arrangement. And ASML's efforts to supply EUV technology to SMIC means suspicion naturally falls on the Dutch company.
At the time of writing, ASML had not responded to a question about the danger posed by the latest US sanctions. But analysts have voiced alarm. Richard Windsor, a former analyst at Nomura Securities who today runs Radio Free Mobile, noted in that some of ASML's core components are supplied by US companies, which "could mean a complete suspension of sales to China in all of the equipment that it sells." Already, he points out, "ASML has ordered its US staff to stop dealing with all of its Chinese customers."
Trading on the Nasdaq, ASML's share price fell about 6.5% on Friday as investors weighed the implications of the US moves for the Dutch company. Sales to China rose 19% for the first half of 2022, to nearly €1.3 billion (US$1.3 billion), compared with the year-earlier half, while group sales were up just 7% over the same period. During a call with financial analysts in July, CEO Peter Wennink said he was counting on China sales to grow a tenth this year, noting China's criticality to the DUV sector.
"I think we need to realize that China is an important player in the semiconductor industry and especially in the more – let's say not mature nodes but in the more mainstream semiconductors," he said. "It's everything that has to do with deep UV, yes … And they're a very significant supplier of the global markets."
More boom and bust
Before last week's news, experts who track ASML were already worried about rising inflation and the possibility of a slump in demand next year as a recession bites. Both issues were acknowledged by Wennink back in July. Freight costs had "gone through the roof," he said, while labor costs in Asia were up 20% this year. "There is clear concern in the market regarding recessionary fears and the impact this could have on demand," said Wennink. "Of course, if we were to go into a significant recession, we would not be immune to this, but we don't expect our 2022 business to be impacted."
In his blog, Windsor said various semiconductor players had already reacted to the tightening of US sanctions by slashing outlook, with TSMC, a huge Taiwanese foundry, cutting its capital expenditure forecast this year by $4 billion, to $36 billion. "This is a big cut as one would have expected it to have already spent a good portion of the $40 billion," said Windsor.
Regardless, some observers have warned a capacity glut could swiftly replace the semiconductor shortages of the last year. Like many other stakeholders in the chip industry, ASML insists demand will be much higher in future as the planet becomes even more dependent on technology and a genuine "Internet of Things" takes shape. But the industry has been through numerous boom-and-bust cycles before. For many semiconductor firms, next year could be more of the familiar.
How motivated are allies of the United States to build supply chains as devoid of American components and any inputs as possible? Even though they might it extremely irksome that the United States is overbearing and willing to bully them into following US policies against their own commercial and indeed geopolitical interests, I do not believe that most of them have the courage to actually SAY NO when push comes to shove.
They can, and their components can be replaced with Chinese ones or other non US ones. Or they can starve. It's all the same. Either weakens US directly or weakens their allies just like the Ukraine War is doing. Just like WW2, fascists cannot help but fight 2 front wars.
meh, this is another incident of someone over-reading the situation. US gov't themselves said that they were not able to persuade other countries to join. So, people that want ASML to be banned from selling to China now look for other ways to spread that news. Sure, ASML's American employees can't service China. But guess what, they have 1500 employees in China. They are also a Dutch company, which means their core employees are not Americans. And on top of that, we already know gigaphoton can be used as light source. And anything with under 25% American content can still be exported to China. Now, the next step might be to change that to 0% but again this is where ASML and other companies are going to try to de-americanize their product in order to continue to sell to China.
Could ASML be stopped from selling DUVi to China? Sure. But we haven't reached that point yet. I think ASML themselves are still looking into what they can or cannot do.
It's pointless to speculate what kind of "courage" they might have. As long as these things are offered, you buy them. At the same time, you have to plan for the possibility that they might not get delivered. The reality is that China's domestic industry cannot stop itself just because the possibility that foreign companies might not be able to deliver.
US can insisted all it can want, but I think that it will have difficult time to argue for it. The whole "national security" argument put forth by Americans is overplayed. The semiconductor ban is about AI and supercomputing competition since most military technology use very old chip technology. With semiconductor industry is already in free fall, how much each country is willing to lose its already frail semiconductor industry to satisfy US supposed "national security".
Agree. To me, "Chip War" is like Trump led Economic sanction against China. It is mostly between US and China. Other country will comply the part they can so they won't violate US's rule, but they will not actively join the fight.
The whole "chip war" has been planned for at least a couple of years. So far US has not able to persuade others to join.
It is not point to speculate what could happen next.
- Status