supercat
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Does the manufacturing of PCB need cutting edge high tech?
Chinese semiconductor industry
- Thread starter Hendrik_2000
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No. According to r/China anything that China can actually manufacture is low tech.
No. This is not a point of leverage.
The hits just keep coming. If this doesn't push the Koreans to go 100% at de-Americanizing their production line, then nothing will.
Basically, the Koreans and ymtc/cxmt are in the same place now, because ymtc actually stocked up tools for this exact scenario. The only difference is that the lam employees are still servicing the Korean fabs. If this causes samsung and so to sell their mainland fabs to china, it would be a huge gift to ymtc and cxmt.
Lol, a law aimed at kneecapping china ends up knee capping micron's competitors! Who said the American politicians are all fools. This is like 4d chess.
Seriously though, china need to be having conversations with Korean firms about how they can help each other to get through this period smoothly. One year is basically no time.
Do you have actual numbers on this n+3 that's different than what's posted earlier? N+2 improved is equivalent in transistor density and energy consumption as Samsung 4 nm based on the roadmap posted earlier this thread. N+3 is 3 nm process using euv. Do you have anything that states otherwise? I am really curious if there are better sources on this.
I thought it would be good to summarize the present state of the Chinese lithography industry at this point of YOOL 2022:
DUV:
DUV:
- The SSA800 has met expectations (or disappointed them, depends who you ask) and delivered to customers for 28nm production. It is roughly comparable to an ASML NXT:1980Di. China has achieved completely indigenous 28nm volume production.
- The SSA800 is expected to be used in 14nm production through multipatterning next year.
- A follow-on DUVL machine (name unknown) using a more powerful light source and improved workbench for single exposure production of 22nm and multipatterning of 7nm (perhaps 5nm?) is expected Soon™. Expected to be comparable to ASML NXT:2050i.
- There were some rumours of a 150W DPP EUVL tool supposed to be released around now. Obviously, no such thing has materialized, which means it's A) very secretive or B) as I suspect, DPP is not a viable path to commercial EUV.
- Everything about LPP EUV is a black box (at least in comparison to DUV). No word on the status of the CO2 laser, the optics, etc. All we "know" is that a machine should be ready around 2025.
- SSMB is a very interesting dark horse, but I don't think it's in the running for China's first generation EUVL. If it lives up to its promise, it would be a vast improvement over LPP EUVL and China would gain enormous advantages from getting to it first.
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There is not clear cut answer to that question, all depends the complexity of the PCBs you want to make and what volume you want. Very simple LDI single layers ones you can make a few dozens at a home with simple tools:
Complex multilayers HDI PCBs require.....quite of a lot of tools and the capital investment is not small, way more complex higher resolution lithography machines, bulk photoresist, copper plating tools, drilling tools, in some case microdrilling laser tools, automatic inspection tools, cleaning tools a whole lot.
As with packaging, PCB manufacturing is becoming quite complicated. some much that KLA just acquire a company just for that.
And then top of that you have ceramic PCBs that are really hard to work it and hybrid ICs, used in extreme applications like in Aerospace or communications , which the Chinese have made quite an investment. Those require even more complex manufacturing.
Etching is quite difficult in this type of boards.
Is not as impressive as Chip making but you can do microfabrication in a lab with laser-DMD lithography and with lab size deposition, etching, thermal processing tools if you want to microfabricate a few things too.
Saying PCB making is just low tech stuff is pretty much an underestimation. PCB-> packaging-> RF-> MEMs ->ICs, doesn't matter difficulty-cost increase with complexity, size, accuracy and volume.
I know that Chinese fabs are testing and verifying SMEE scanners, is all a black box, but It could be that the first batch of immersion scanners are going to Huawei to the new fabs that they want to make, in their website they say they are going to make 28nm chips and looks like they don't have a high volume output at the beginning.
All the EUV the patent and research paper information suggest that they are going either with LPP and/or SSMB as the light source, one interesting paper and a patent from CAS suggest trying to shorten the wavelength to 6.7nm using a new target material which could increase the resolution but require more power input. In term of high power lasers the Chinese laser industry is growing pretty fast. Research information says the CAS is working with a least two players to develop the high power lasers for EUV application.
That's been the case since 2021 (I believe the machines were delivered early 2021 or late 2020). If they still haven't ramped up production, that could indicate problems.
Could you post the source for this?
The charts you posted show encouraging progress, however, those are fibre lasers, not the CO2 MOPA laser used in LPP.
There are companies that develop MOPA lasers in China, like Raycus, so working with those to develop a high power system is maybe path. There could be other pathways, just because someone did it in some way that doesn't mean is the only way.
There it is folks, TSMC will not allowed themselves to be harvested, they're anxiously waiting for Xi to fulfilled his promise of peaceful co existence (huge Chinese market) and to liberate them from American yoke by means of a Chinese EUVL. 
TSMC
Apple supplier TSMC believes that US efforts to rebuild chip manufacturing at home are doomed to fail, as it finds itself caught between China and the United States in a tech cold war.
Morris Chang founded TSMC in 1987 when Taiwan recruited him from the US to help build an electronics industry. The contract manufacturer rose to become the top chipmaker in the world, commanding 20% of global wafer fabrication and 92% of advanced chip capacity.
US share in global chip manufacturing shrunk from 37% in 1990 to 12% in 2020, but the country wants to regain its dominance. In particular, US Department of Defense is worried that the country's dependence on Taiwan could put chip supplies for the defense industry at risk.
In response, President Biden signed the into law on August 9, 2022. It provides over $52 billion to help US companies build new semiconductor facilities, fund research, and expand existing manufacturing.
Taiwan isn't happy about the move because it sees its semiconductor dominance as a "silicon shield." The government believes that if China were to attack the country, the US would come to its aid to prevent China from seizing the industry.
Market share for countries in semiconductor manufacturing
When US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi visited Taiwan in August, she met with Morris Chang and Mark Liu, chair of TSMC. Chang told Pelosi that Washington's efforts to rebuild its chip manufacturing were doomed to fail, Financial Times.
But the United States may not have much choice. Analysts at investment bank Credit Suisse have estimated that if the world loses access to Taiwan's chip plants, it will disrupt the production for everything from computers to cars.
Apple would be impacted too, as it relies heavily on TSMC for chip production. While it has expanded some of its manufacturing to other countries such as and , those moves do not diversify Apple's chip supply at all.
Still, TSMC remains a major supplier for Apple and other companies, and its future between the US and China is uncertain.
"The monopoly in semiconductor production creates instability," said Brad Martin, director of the National Security Supply Chain Institute at the Rand Corporation. "If the US is faced with a need to make a decision between protecting its economy and defending Taiwan, that starts to become a very stark decision."
TSMC has made some efforts to help the US by planning a semiconductor facility , the first such chip facility it will develop outside of its home country. TSMC expects it will reach its production start in early 2024.
TSMC says efforts to rebuild US semiconductor industry are doomed to fail
| Oct 24, 2022TSMC
Apple supplier TSMC believes that US efforts to rebuild chip manufacturing at home are doomed to fail, as it finds itself caught between China and the United States in a tech cold war.
Morris Chang founded TSMC in 1987 when Taiwan recruited him from the US to help build an electronics industry. The contract manufacturer rose to become the top chipmaker in the world, commanding 20% of global wafer fabrication and 92% of advanced chip capacity.
US share in global chip manufacturing shrunk from 37% in 1990 to 12% in 2020, but the country wants to regain its dominance. In particular, US Department of Defense is worried that the country's dependence on Taiwan could put chip supplies for the defense industry at risk.
In response, President Biden signed the into law on August 9, 2022. It provides over $52 billion to help US companies build new semiconductor facilities, fund research, and expand existing manufacturing.
Taiwan isn't happy about the move because it sees its semiconductor dominance as a "silicon shield." The government believes that if China were to attack the country, the US would come to its aid to prevent China from seizing the industry.
Market share for countries in semiconductor manufacturing
When US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi visited Taiwan in August, she met with Morris Chang and Mark Liu, chair of TSMC. Chang told Pelosi that Washington's efforts to rebuild its chip manufacturing were doomed to fail, Financial Times.
But the United States may not have much choice. Analysts at investment bank Credit Suisse have estimated that if the world loses access to Taiwan's chip plants, it will disrupt the production for everything from computers to cars.
Apple would be impacted too, as it relies heavily on TSMC for chip production. While it has expanded some of its manufacturing to other countries such as and , those moves do not diversify Apple's chip supply at all.
Still, TSMC remains a major supplier for Apple and other companies, and its future between the US and China is uncertain.
"The monopoly in semiconductor production creates instability," said Brad Martin, director of the National Security Supply Chain Institute at the Rand Corporation. "If the US is faced with a need to make a decision between protecting its economy and defending Taiwan, that starts to become a very stark decision."
TSMC has made some efforts to help the US by planning a semiconductor facility , the first such chip facility it will develop outside of its home country. TSMC expects it will reach its production start in early 2024.
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