Chinese semiconductor industry

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Eventine

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I'm curious what the Chinese government has done lately to advance the cause of technological self-sufficiency in semiconductors? In the recent interview article from Asia Times, a Harvard expert on Chinese policy, William Overholt, made the following observation:

And what’s going to happen on the Chinese side? In China, industrial policy has an implicit switch with one setting of business as usual. Barry Naughton of the University of California, San Diego, has a wonderful organization chart of how the government subsidies usually get to the final users: a crazy-looking flow chart that guarantees wasted money. So far, perhaps US$150 billion went to the Chinese semiconductor industry and they didn’t catch up an inch.

The other setting of the switch: Emergency! Important! The nation depends on this! The space program success is a leading example. You clear out local interests, you clear out seniority, you clear out party politics, you hire the best people, you pay them whatever it takes.

You bring in whatever expertise you need from anywhere in the world and you build one hell of a program very fast. I think Biden’s sanctions will lead China to flick the switch to the emergency setting and then China will succeed.

In short, decades of "business as usual" subsidies to the semiconductor industry did not succeed in China because the money was essentially swallowed by special interests, corruption, waste, etc. But if the Chinese government goes into crisis mode and declares a national emergency, then there's a solid chance of success, as with satellites, nuclear weapons, and the space program.

What signs are there that the Chinese government is going into crisis mode for the semiconductor industry? I remember a wave of activities around 2017 when Trump first started targeting Huawei, but it feels as though efforts have slowed down recently? Shouldn't the Biden sanctions be setting off national emergency mode?
 

tonyget

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Shuoke Zhongkexin: The domestic substitution of ion implanters speeds up the pace of
original Zhao Yuanchuang core ideas1 week ago



On June 15, 2020, Shuoke Zhongkexin announced that the 12-inch medium-beam ion implanter has been successfully moved into the large integrated circuit production line, which marks a new step in the marketization process of domestic ion implanters!


zkx-1.webp.jpg

The development of CMOS technology has greatly promoted the development of ion implantation (Ion Implantation) technology. It can also be said that the continuous maturity of ion implantation technology has further improved the quality of integrated circuit products, especially the performance of CMOS products. When the line width enters sub-micron , ion implantation has become an indispensable process in the entire pre-manufacturing process of integrated circuits.

In the chip production process, multiple ion implantations are required, and the implantation times are different for different chip types and process nodes. With the rapid advancement of the CMOS process, the number of ion implantations also increases rapidly. For example, in the 1970s, only 6 to 8 injections may be needed to process an n-type metal oxide semiconductor (NMOS), but now 40 injections or even more are required for 28nm logic devices.

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In the actual manufacturing process, the requirements for ion implantation are also different, such as junction depth (the energy given to ions during implantation), dose (the amount of impurities required for implantation), uniformity, repeatability, etc. All have different requirements. Generally speaking, the dose of ion implantation depends on the beam current value and time, and the implantation depth depends on the accelerating electric field. In order to meet these different needs, ion implanters with different processing capabilities are required in different links, including Medium Current ion implanters, High Current ion implanters, and High Energy ion implanters. injection machine.

There are relatively high competition barriers in the ion implanter industry for integrated circuits, and the industry concentration is relatively high. Overall, the entire market is dominated by American manufacturers. Applied Materials, Axcelis, and Advanced Ion Beam Technology (AIBT) together occupy 80% of the global market.

Driven by various policies, the research and development of ion implanters in my country has also made significant progress. A few days ago, the Beijing Science and Technology Award Work Office announced the results of the 2019 Beijing Science and Technology Award evaluation committee project evaluation results. Ion implanter suppliers Shuoke Zhongkexin and Kaishitong joined hands to participate.

Shuoke Zhongkexin focuses on the R&D and manufacturing of ion implanters for integrated circuits, and has always been committed to solving the problem of independent controllability of key technologies of ion implanters. It has formed medium beam, large beam, high energy, special applications and third-generation semiconductors. It has a full range of ion implanter product systems, has a post-doctoral scientific research workstation, and has established an ion implanter industrialization platform that meets the requirements of SEMI standards. The annual production capacity reaches 30 units. The products are widely used in world-renowned chip manufacturers and are highly recognized by customers.



The 12-inch medium-beam ion implanter delivered this time has excellent functions in terms of angle control, dose control, and equipment process capabilities, and the overall performance of the machine has reached the international level of similar products.



The person in charge of Shuoke Zhongkexin said that catching up with the mainstream is only the beginning, and the goal is to achieve domestic substitution in a system. The series of ion implanters independently developed by the company have run a total of 6.5 million pieces on the customer's production line, stably supporting the customer's mass production. In addition, a professional after-sales service team has been established to implement a 7X24 On Call response mechanism to continuously improve customer experience and accelerate the process of localization.

Firstly,you forget to provide the link of the source. Secondly,the date of the article is June 15, 2020,that's more than two years old,it's not even "news",why you posting it now?
 

KYli

Brigadier
China's successes in solar, winds, and EVs are due to the fact that these are new techs. Chinese government entered these areas very early and made a ton of investment and gave out a ton of incentives. After the survival of the fittest game that resulted in a few national champions, China became an undisputed leaders in these new industries.

However, semiconductor industry is an old industry that required a lot of investment. The West and SK, Taiwan and Japan enjoyed the first mover advantage and technological edge. So no matter how much the Chinese government tried to invest in this industry, the result is slow and ineffective.

Most Chinese companies just don't have the incentives to invest in semiconductor and would prefer using the cutting edge chips from the West or Taiwan. Without the support of the domestic players, the Chinese semiconductor industry development is slow. However, everything changed after the Trump sanctions and subsequent Biden sanctions. Due to the fact many top Chinese companies fighting for their survival, the Chinese semiconductor industry is having its renaissance.
 

bzhong05

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Not sure if this has been shared before, but more developments on the counter-sanctions front:
  • China has enrolled tech giants Alibaba Group Holding Limited and Tencent Holding Ltd to aid its efforts in designing
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    on Softbank Group Corp-owned Arm.
  • Arm, headquartered in the U.K. but has significant operations in the U.S., is seen as vulnerable to any ramping-up of U.S. sanctions, Financial Times
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    .
  • The Chinese government has established a consortium of companies and institute Beijing Open Source Chip Research Institute
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    .
  • The group used Arm's rival Risc-V, an open-source chip design architecture, to create Xiangshan, a high-performance Risc-V computer-processing chip aimed at matching Arm's IP and boosting the development of a Chinese chip design market.
 

latenlazy

Brigadier
I'm curious what the Chinese government has done lately to advance the cause of technological self-sufficiency in semiconductors? In the recent interview article from Asia Times, a Harvard expert on Chinese policy, William Overholt, made the following observation:



In short, decades of "business as usual" subsidies to the semiconductor industry did not succeed in China because the money was essentially swallowed by special interests, corruption, waste, etc. But if the Chinese government goes into crisis mode and declares a national emergency, then there's a solid chance of success, as with satellites, nuclear weapons, and the space program.

What signs are there that the Chinese government is going into crisis mode for the semiconductor industry? I remember a wave of activities around 2017 when Trump first started targeting Huawei, but it feels as though efforts have slowed down recently? Shouldn't the Biden sanctions be setting off national emergency mode?
Most foreign economists don’t actually understand Chinese industrial policy. It’s not that the industrial policy spending didn’t generate results. China has been closing the gap incrementally but consistently for over two decades now. Where China wasn’t closing the gap, it was building deep pipelines of technical competence and human capital so that when they did go for a product category they weren’t starting with bare basics. These economists only know how to measure progress by marketshare and you can’t understand technological development only gauging commercial success. Commercial success is always the last phase of industrial catch up, and just because you don’t see it happening in a market context yet doesn’t mean there isn’t real progress being made.
 
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gelgoog

Lieutenant General
Registered Member
In short, decades of "business as usual" subsidies to the semiconductor industry did not succeed in China because the money was essentially swallowed by special interests, corruption, waste, etc. But if the Chinese government goes into crisis mode and declares a national emergency, then there's a solid chance of success, as with satellites, nuclear weapons, and the space program.
It is hard for that not to happen when your country has limited expertise in the area to begin with. It is easy to get hoodwinked when you don't know anything about the sector you are investing in. A lot of local governments fell into this trap. Because of lack of domain knowledge you will also see waste. But those will get under control once the sector reaches critical mass and as is we are already getting there I think. There are loads of semi companies with fabs in China right now and loads of them are producing chips. It is not all vaporware.

You are also starting to see second generation investments. For example Simon Yang who was already at both XMC and YMTC. And some are even making third generation investments. Like Richard Chang moving from SMIC to CanSemi and now to SiEn.
 
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tokenanalyst

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Firstly,you forget to provide the link of the source. Secondly,the date of the article is June 15, 2020,that's more than two years old,it's not even "news",why you posting it now?
On June 15, 2020, Shuoke Zhongkexin announced that the 12-inch medium-beam ion implanter.

The article just refer to an past event that occurred in June 15 2020.
 
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