Chinese semiconductor industry

tphuang said:

So I would love to hear input from others (@tokenanalyst @olalavn @PopularScience ). To the best my knowledge, the only chip makers that need DUV immersion scanners are
SMIC
HLMC
Huawei
CXMT
YMTC

CXMT and YMTC right now are stuck on expansion due to US sanctions. They probably have enough ASML scanners for near/medium term expansion plans Not limited by lithography machines, but limited by the progress of whoever is replacing KLA domestically.

HLMC's fab 6 is the only that requires DUVi scanners, but it's basically at capacity right now. A new fab has been speculated, but yet to be announced. Since a new plant is most likely 3 years away, I see no issue here. Things would have to be really crazy for SMEE scanners not to be ready by then.

Huawei's fab hasn't started production. Aside from ICRD, its foundry is likely the most dedicated at building an all domestic production line. As such, I think they will only start production once they are comfortable with their process. It's unlikely they will need that much capacity anyhow, so I don't think they will be bothered by longer time to put SMEE scanners in production. In fact, they might prefer it, since they will want to perfect their process first. They also are probably looking to build their own lithography machines.

Which brings us to SMIC. This is the question mark. We know they have a huge demand for ASML machines with the SMSC plants and also Beijing Capital and Lingang plants. We've also know they have been buying up a lot of ASML scanners recently (most likely to stock up). They will most likely only use ASML scanners for the advanced process at SN1 and SN2. I wouldn't be surprised if they are testing out their own process with SMEE scanner in their research facility or SMIC Capital plant. The question is if they will have enough ASML scanners to not suffer any interruption in their SMIC Capital and Lingang plant. I think it is likely they do (depending on how it goes with Dutch gov't). There is a chance they may be forced to slow down expansion if Dutch gov't imposes a strict sanction without any grace period and SMEE progress is slower than expected. That's the primary concern here. But if SMEE machines can actually be verified with production process and start mass production by Q3 and delivered before end of the year, I think the risks will be minimal.

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Yes the big issue is volume production to meet the demand, now looks like everything is on an smaller scale. The good news all the litho supply chain is being scaled up, the mass production facilities of high end optics, high speed dual wafer stages, parts and DUV excimer lasers is due to end next year. According to sources.

Zhengzhou Institute of Three Mills plans to build a new high-power MPCVD large single crystal diamond project (phase II)​

On December 26, Sinomach Precision Industry Co., Ltd. disclosed the 2022 non-public offering stock plan. The total amount of funds to be raised will not exceed 283.65 million yuan (inclusive), which will be used for the new high-power MPCVD large single crystal diamond project after deducting the issuance expenses. (Phase II) and supplement the working capital of listed companies.



Diamond is currently known as the material with the highest hardness, the best thermal conductivity, the lowest compression rate, the widest light transmission band, and the fastest sound velocity propagation. Extensive research has proved that diamond materials are the best thermal management materials for heat dissipation of high heat flux devices. At present, the application of foreign diamond heat dissipation materials in semiconductor devices has broken through the laboratory stage, while domestic diamond heat dissipation materials have not yet achieved mature application in the heat dissipation of high heat flux devices. The main reason is that there are still relatively large technologies in the preparation and application of diamond in China Barriers, low growth rate of diamond crystals, small growth area, high preparation cost, high growth defect density, difficult processing of large-size diamond sheets, large surface roughness, and difficulty in direct bonding are restricting the development of diamond preparation technology and the development of diamond The biggest obstacle in semiconductor device heat dissipation applications.

The core production technology to realize the application of diamond in emerging industries is MPCVD technology. In August 2016, Sinomach set up a project to implement the new high-power MPCVD large single crystal diamond project. After more than a year of research and technology research and development, it officially started the construction of the production line in 2018. After 4 years of hard work, the project was completed. Large single crystal diamond production line with an annual output of 300,000 pieces of MPCVD.



New high-power MPCVD large single crystal diamond project (phase II) project construction unit and implementation subject is Zhengzhou Abrasives and Abrasives Grinding Research Institute Co., Ltd., a wholly-owned subsidiary of SINOMACH. It plans to continue to carry out MPCVD on the basis of the first phase project The research on the key common technology of French diamond has improved the grade and process stability of existing gem-quality diamond products, and developed 2-3 inch diamond optical sheets and heat sinks, which are speeding up the industrialization, while further exploring the optical and thermodynamic properties of diamond. As well as functional applications in semiconductor and other fields, the third-generation semiconductor power device ultra-high thermal conductivity diamond material has been developed in a targeted manner, and industrial production will eventually be realized.




The project plans to transform the existing production site and add self-made MPCVD equipment to build a gem-grade large single crystal diamond production line and a third-generation semiconductor power device ultra-high thermal conductivity diamond material production line each, becoming the leading MPCVD large single crystal production line in China Diamond material research and production base. The total designed production capacity of the project is 650,000 pieces per year, including 50,000 pieces of high-grade MPCVD ultra-high thermal conductivity single crystal/polycrystalline diamond and 600,000 pieces of gem-grade large single crystal diamond.

New YMTC products continue to go on sale despite certain Western brainiacs that they would not be operational in 3 months.

江波龙 (Longsys) has come out with 2 new products Longsys ORCA 4836 NVMe、Longsys UNCIA 3836 SATA, both made using 128 layers 3D TLC from YMTC

Keep in mind, Gloway and Xiaomi both came out with products that use YMTC in the past 2 weeks. That was preceded by YMTC releasing the 2TB version of TiPlus7100 3 weeks ago. YMTC is alive and kicking really hard.

regarding the SSA800 dry being used for 45nm... What is the optimum way of making 40nm microcontrollers in terms of reducing manufacturing price excluding the cost of buying the machines, just using dry arf or using arfi+arf? Does anyone know what bosch uses at their new (2021) 65nm fab in germany that. What does tsmc use for 40nm?

Chinese high-end chipmaker Suzhou Everbright Photonics will invest CNY1 billion (USD143 million) to build a facility for the research and development and production of compound semiconductors, which are made up of two or more elements, as well as laser devices to meet growing market demand.

The facility will produce compound chips, such as GaAs, GaN, and InP, which are essential to the information communication sector, optoelectronic applications and the new energy vehicle industry, because of their unique advantages in high power and frequency, the Suzhou, eastern Jiangsu province-based company said yesterday. The plant will have an expected output of 100 million chips a year.

The factory which will be located in Suzhou’s Taihu Lake Science City, will also produce five million laser devices a year, Everbright Photonics said, citing the investment deal it reached with the Suzhou Science and Technology City Management Committee on Dec. 27. Construction should start in 2023 and be completed in 2025.

The annual output value of the project will not be less than CNY600 million (USD86.1 million) upon reaching production, said the firm, which also makes high-efficiency lidar and 3D sensing chips, as well as high-speed optical communication semiconductor laser chips, devices and systems.

Unmoved by the news, Everbright Photonics’ share price [SHA:688048] closed down 1 percent at CNY96.87 (USD13.90) today.

Kunlun has come out with R100 accelerator card for edge computing needs using its Kunlun-2 XPU chips. This is 2.3 times as fast as first generation K100 accelerator card.
based on their product mix, looks like there is also a R300 accelerator card from AI Cloud training.

Kunlun-2 chip uses 7 nm technology and is not the most advanced chips out there compared to A100 or BR100, but it can be stacked together to have similar performances and maybe use a little more power. More than anything, it is well integrated into Baidu's PaddlePaddle framework and is widely used in Baidu AI cloud.

While Biren tech might have attracted the attention of natsec hawks, both Kunlun and Moore Thread GPUs appear to have more general purpose usage and are not violating any sanction threshold. They are also better integrated into the major tech firms' cloud infrastructure for not just AI training, but many other usage like cloud gaming, edge computing, data center computation and meta verse.

tonyget said:

On December 27, the entry ceremony of the first lithography machine of the first phase of the Ruishi Chuangxin filter production base project was held in Shuitu New City, Liangjiang New District, marking the basic completion of the first phase of the project’s filter chip production base and officially entering the equipment Debugging phase.

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Never heard of this company before. And in Chongqing of all places. These factories are popping up like mushrooms all over the place.
Good.

tphuang said:

New YMTC products continue to go on sale despite certain Western brainiacs that they would not be operational in 3 months.

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I heard similar retarded comments when Western sanctions on Russia started. I think it was MentourPilot on Youtube claiming Russian planes would stop operating in 3 weeks. Because that was the time between inspections of the engines or whatever. As if Russia does not have mechanics to do maintenance. It will be suboptimal but things will continue to work. If there are issues with parts. Those might be a problem. If the US really wanted to stop Chinese semiconductor fabrication on its tracks there would have been other ways to do it which would have worked better. In the short run at least. But that would have required them to convince their other "partners" to join them in the sanctions and thus far they have been failing to do so.

ultrasonic printing board helps develop the leap of Shantou's new generation of electronic information industry

In the 2022 IC world conference in Beijing, Empyrean commented that while China has made significant progress in EDA world, it only has 70% coverage at the moment and has 2% of the world market. There are only 7 EDA firms with more than 200 staff.

Looks like Empyrean will have a lot of room to grow in the next couple of years.

olalavn said:

Changhong independently developed the first batch of MCU chips to be installed and rolled off the production line, it uses 40nm process and RISC-V architecture

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Apparently, the MCUs here will be installed on an initial batch of 500k refrigerators by Meiling (which is a subsidiary?). Does anyone know who is producing their chips?