Chinese semiconductor industry

hvpc said:

It's certainly preemptive measure. But not sure what the purpose it serves.

This was pre-payment or down payment for future scanner purchase. Any future US sanction on immersion scanners would certainly trump any down payment or an existing PO. SMIC had an outstanding EUV PO with ASML and also down payment, but they still weren't able to take delivery of the EUV system.

So not sure why it would be different this time around with the immersion systems. If US could coerce the Dutch government to block shipment of immersion scanner, even the $1.6B pre-payment will not guarantee SMIC could get ASML to honor the immersion POs.

I'm sure the $1.6B serves some purpose, I just personally don't quite understand what that purpose is.

Click to expand...

Because at the moment ASML can still ship DUV do China，and the Dutch is not responding to US call to halt DUV export to China as of now. Plus the lead time for DUV is shorter than EUV.

So SMIC is seizing this moment，betting that they will be able to receive the machine before they cannot.

tonyget said:

Because at the moment ASML can still ship DUV do China，and the Dutch is not responding to US call to halt DUV export to China as of now. Plus the lead time for DUV is shorter than EUV.

So SMIC is seizing this moment，betting that they will be able to receive the machine before they cannot.

Click to expand...

Are the cutting edge immersion lithography tools permitted for export to China? Somewhere I heard apart from EUV, some DUV machines are also restricted for export to China. So, no NXT 2100i and NXT 2050i???

Nvidia Shows Off Hopper MLPerf Training Benchmarks​

"When compared to A100 training scores from the current round, H100’s performance was an average of 1.9× better across the eight benchmarked workloads."

Just 2X in realistic benchmarks! This is what we are talking about.

NVIDIA has been forbidden to sell new AI chip to China, and this has been advertised as a fatal blow to China...here we are talking of a chip just short of 2 times more powerful than current one!

The US sanctions are going to have an impact alright. Once chips with GAA transistors start hitting the scene in 3nm Samsung or 2nm TSMC process power consumption is going to be 50% lower. And the US banned Chinese chip developers access to any tools which can work with GAA transistor. That is going to have a massive impact on datacenter power consumption for example.

Yes, I agree that the Chinese data centers will be a lot less efficient by using chips made with 14nm/N+1 technology, but I also think that's not a problem. They will still be a lot more energy efficient than the old data centers they have.

Anyhow, a little on SMECS. It's basically the little brother of SMIC working on MEMS and power chips. Now, it's looking to get 12.5 billion RMB from its IPO.
Originally, the JV put in 58.8 billion RMB.
Thus far, it's been running at a loss, but revenue is increasing rapidly. 270 million RMB in 2019 to 2.03 billion RMB in just the first half of 2022. Their margin has now reached -1.66%

2019年、2020年、2021年及2022年上半年，中芯集成实现营业收入分别为2.7亿元、7.39亿元、20.24亿元、20.31亿元，扣非净利润分别为-7.9亿元、-14.34亿元、-13.95亿元及-6.71亿元，三年半累计亏损42.9亿元；毛利率分别为-179.96%、-94.02%、-16.4% 及 -1.66%。

Click to expand...

According to this, the phase 1 of the project will finally breakeven in 2023 and phase 2 will breakeven in 2025 (and realize profitability in 2026)

中芯集成预计一期晶圆制造项目（含封装测试产线）整体在2023年10月首次实现盈亏平衡，预计二期晶圆制造项目于2025年10月首次实现盈亏平衡，在不进行其他资本性投入增加生产线的前提下，则预计2026年可实现盈利。

Click to expand...

To put things into perspective, Huahong Grace's fab 7 achieved revenue of $245 million in Q3 (and it had 65k wpm). Therefore, SMEC (probably around $150 million in Q2) is not that far off fab 7's revenue. So, it may already be doing 40k wpm of 12 inch wafers. The phase 2 of its wafer project has 11 billion RMB in funding, which is probably enough for another 40k wpm of production. They are also spending 6.6 billion RMB in what looks to be developing and improving their production and packaging technology.

latenlazy said:

He’s a lurker here. Just regurgitating what’s already been shared in this forum.

Click to expand...

Lei Gong is a lurker?

More promising comments out of Netherlands

Micky Adriaansens, the economy minister, said the Netherlands remained “very positive” about its relationship with China, saying Dutch businesses operating there were providing a boost to innovation and trade.
While the US is pushing its partners to tighten controls on exports of high-end semiconductor equipment to China, she insisted that the Netherlands and Europe “should have their own strategy”.

“We have to think this through — what are the risks of doing business with China with regard to specific products and value chains,” she told the Financial Times. “In general we in the Netherlands are very positive and always have been about good relations with China. We do a lot of business with China. A lot of Dutch companies are working there.”
The minister said the relationship was “really giving a boost to innovation and trade which is fundamental to Europe. We should cherish that also.”

Click to expand...

And she understands and I'm sure ASML has been telling her this. Beware of Chinese competition. Don't help your competition

She also warned that it might not be possible to prevent China gaining leading-edge technology. “The development cycle goes very fast in China. We should not be naive.”

Click to expand...

and of course, America has been hammering European industries with IRA and taking industries away. This has really made European economy ministers to be less receptive to their message.

Adriaansens said separate US measures to provide vast subsidies for green technology to domestic companies were of concern to The Hague

Click to expand...

tphuang said:

More promising comments out of Netherlands

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

And she understands and I'm sure ASML has been telling her this. Beware of Chinese competition. Don't help your competition

and of course, America has been hammering European industries with IRA and taking industries away. This has really made European economy ministers to be less receptive to their message.

Click to expand...

Time to root for the Netherlands against the US in this world cup hehe. If the Dutch win that should grant them the right to sell EUV machines to SMIC haha

I foresee Netherlands adding more sanctions than it currently has but less than what the US imposed on China

So instead of copying US' measures "1-to-1" it will be "0.5-to-1" and most likely with a grace period before those new sanctions are enforced

Same with Japan.

BDStar Navigation(北斗星通) is coming out with a new 12nm chip for communication with Beidou Navigation system. It uses only 10mW power and is one of the lowest energy consuming navigation chip in the world.

Back in early 2020, it came out with its first navigation chip using 22nm process. It's currently working on new generation product supporting access to GNSS and low-orbit satellites. also working on chips for cloud and chips with high positioning accuracy for autonomous driving.