Chinese semiconductor industry

Chinese 128-Core CPU World Record Expelled From Rankings: No Availability​

The SPEC Committee has expelled the Chinese-produced Yitian 710's world record result in the CPU 2017 benchmark, an industry benchmark for CPUs, from its ranking, citing availability issues. We were impressed when Alibaba introduced its 128-core processor made on TSMC's N5 node about a year ago. We were even more impressed when this CPU broke some records about five months ago. However, we felt a bit troubled due to the limited availability of preview samples, even in Alibaba's cloud.

"SPEC has determined that this result does not comply with the SPEC OSG Guidelines for General Availability and the SPEC CPU 2017 run and reporting rules," a statement by SPEC reads. "Specifically, the submitter has notified SPEC that General Availability requirements were not met."

We don't know whether the lack of availability occurred because of the United States' curbs against the Chinese semiconductor sector, but that could be the source of the issue.

Alibaba said the Yitian 710 can hit a 440 integer score in SPECint2017, which is comparable to the performance of a two-socket machine powered by Intel's 32-core Xeon Platinum 8362 (64 cores at 2.80 GHz). This remarkable score was allegedly obtained on hardware that was barely available even to users of Alibaba's cloud. The problem for Alibaba is that this level of performance is enough to fall under the new U.S. export rules.

(Image credit: Alibaba)
The Yitian 710 server SoC contains about 60 billion transistors, making it one of the most complex processors ever developed. TSMC makes it on one of its N5 (5nm-class) production nodes, which falls under the U.S. sanctions against Chinese semiconductor and supercomputer sectors.

And while American sanctions against the Chinese semiconductor industry are well-known, there is another wrinkle in this story — yields. A 60-billion transistor chip would be prone to poor yields, meaning that a higher percentage than normal of the chips produced will end up in the waste bin. Alibaba indirectly confirmed that its SoC doesn't perform up to the desired spec when it offered a selected few to try an underspecc'd SoC in its cloud. Perhaps yield issues are why it did not procure enough chips to deploy. The lack of availability appears to be why the Yitian 710 was expelled from the SPEC rankings.

PopularScience said:

Don't think they can slow down that much for 17nm dram. The bottleneck is equipment for more advanced dram like below 17nm dram.

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you are too overly confident. CXMT expansion plan will slow down until domestic WFE could drastically improve in the next two three years.

At the moment, domestic equipments are not good enough to support void left behind by LAM AMAT KLA to continue CXMT‘s D1x ramp plan. Domestic equipments are usable but has yet to reach parity with commonly accepted industry tools of record at D1x (D18)

tphuang said:

The article itself also never bothered asking the question of where its suppliers are. Clearly if it wants to double production, it needs new tools. Who are these mysterious non-American suppliers? Would ASML sell to Fujian Jinhua with its reputation?

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just type in "晋华集成电路" and you can see Jinhua is buying alot non-American equipment from Korea/Germany/Israel etc. As for the lithography machine，it's unclear where they get it. But they could get second hand ASML machines，brand new one is also feasible.

I saw two bidding of ion-implanter from a company called “浙江露语尔半导体设备有限公司”. I never heard of this company，I thought only CETC and kingston make ion-implanter in China

ansy1968 said:

Fully domesticated line, start from 28nm this year, then 14nm next year maybe a BIG maybe 7nm line in 2024.

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Any source to prove that？Or just one of those rumors circulating on internet？

tonyget said:

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just type in "晋华集成电路" and you can see Jinhua is buying alot non-American equipment from Korea/Germany/Israel etc. As for the lithography machine，it's unclear where they get it. But they could get second hand ASML machines，brand new one is also feasible.

I saw two bidding of ion-implanter from a company called “浙江露语尔半导体设备有限公司”. I never heard of this company，I thought only CETC and kingston make ion-implanter in China

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This company is reseller of Kingston ion inplanter.

tonyget said:

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

just type in "晋华集成电路" and you can see Jinhua is buying alot non-American equipment from Korea/Germany/Israel etc. As for the lithography machine，it's unclear where they get it. But they could get second hand ASML machines，brand new one is also feasible.

I saw two bidding of ion-implanter from a company called “浙江露语尔半导体设备有限公司”. I never heard of this company，I thought only CETC and kingston make ion-implanter in China

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JHICC’s initial batch of scanners from ASML is capable to support eBen high wafers per month than it has been pumping out. JHICC is still able to buy scanners from ASML. I don’t think ASML had ever stopped selling to JHICC.

hvpc said:

you are too overly confident. CXMT expansion plan will slow down until domestic WFE could drastically improve in the next two three years.

At the moment, domestic equipments are not good enough to support void left behind by LAM AMAT KLA to continue CXMT‘s D1x ramp plan. Domestic equipments are usable but has yet to reach parity with commonly accepted industry tools of record at D1x (D18)

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The good news is that the memory sector is at down turn cycle，major producers are cutting production，price dropped significantly. CXMT has few years time to wait domestic equipments to mature without worrying about expansion，hopefully by the time next memory upward cycle arrives，CXMT will be ready to expend with domestic equipments

CXMT needs to develop higher density memory and DDR5. And AFAIK China still has no GDDR manufacture of its own. But it might be problematic to do so because of patents.

Wanye Enterprise: The company is deepening its strategic transformation and accelerating its entry into the semiconductor field​

Jiweiwang news, on November 30, Wanye Enterprise stated on the interactive platform that the company is deepening its strategic transformation, accelerating its entry into the semiconductor field, and simultaneously doing a good job in the development and sales of existing real estate stocks, and there will be no new land reserves .

This year, Wanye Enterprises has been continuously creating growth points for its integrated circuit business. As of the end of August 2022, the orders in hand for the ion implanters of Kaishitong and Jiaxin Semiconductor's multi-category front-end equipment under Wanye Enterprises are nearly 1.1 billion yuan, and the "1+N" platform strategy is accelerating, combining upstream parts and components to participate The business layout of the company's Compart Systems is expected to enter the fast track of growth.

In recent years, various types of ion implanters independently developed by Keystone have passed the verification and acceptance of mainstream 12-inch integrated circuit chip manufacturers. In the first half of 2022, Kaishitong received purchase orders from 3 customers, among which many types of ion implanter equipment were repeated purchases and bulk orders from customers. At present, Kaishitong ion implanter covers important domestic 28nm technology nodes, batch orders are gradually being delivered, and it has entered the 1-N high-speed growth stage from the 0-1 stage. Kaishitong actively expands equipment categories, promotes the development of end users in an all-round way, strives to obtain more orders and accelerate market application, and further enhances the status and influence of Wanye Enterprise in the semiconductor equipment industry. Another subsidiary, Jiaxin Semiconductor, has begun to have the platform capabilities of various types of front-end equipment, and has won bids for various types of front-end equipment such as etching, thin film deposition, and heat treatment since the second half of the year. In October, the first CVD equipment of Jiaxin Semiconductor, a subsidiary of Jiaxin Semiconductor, was successfully delivered to customers, ushering in an important milestone of industrialization.

gelgoog said:

CXMT needs to develop higher density memory and DDR5. And AFAIK China still has no GDDR manufacture of its own. But it might be problematic to do so because of patents.

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i think tokenanalyst posted related GDDR. one domestic firm is capable to produce. waiting for his response. coz i can't find the information as this thread has now over 2000 pages.

tokenanalyst​