Chinese semiconductor industry

WTAN said:

This equipment is for the production of 12 inch Wafers. This is significant as it means China can now make its own indigenous wafer production equipment.
SMIC has plans to build a 12inch wafer facility and this equipment will probably be used in the production process.

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Hi WTAN,

Thanks for the info, So this answer my question to you about China capability to produce a local 12inch wafer , hahaha!!!! Santa had been generous this year, a perfect Xmas gift for being a good person this 2020 , Aside from Gatekeeper gift from the other thread, this year Xmas is the best!!!!

antiterror13 said:

Would BOE also spy on people in the USA via the OLED panel on iPhone 12 ?

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Nanotech robots. Same technology used to turn people who uses Chinese vaccines into mindless zombies for Xi Jing Ping, or those who use big pharma vaccines into mindless zombies for Bill Gates and George Soros.

Weird things happen when you use your iPhone 12 with Tik Tok too much.

ZeEa5KPul said:

You seem to be the only person in this thread with anything even approximating relevant firsthand knowledge. When do you anticipate the first Chinese production-ready EUV lithograph being introduced?

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Since the Government has decided to spend more funds on the development of the Semiconductor Industry, there is talk that the EUVL could appear sometime in 2025.
With the development of the 28nm DUVL, the Chinese Academy of Sciences didnt really play a big part in its development. SMEE and a consortium of companies basically played a major part in its development which was why it took a little longer to produce the DUVL.
With the EUVL, the CAS is actually playing a bigger part in its development as much of the technologies are new and costly to develop.
The CAS has organised a EUVL Alliance to attract companies that want to be involved in this project.
Huawei is also involved in this EUVL Alliance.
ASML has a similar Alliance which comprises of TSMC, Samsung, Carl Zeiss etc.

Well having cheap silicon ingots would ensure production of all sorts of products from monocrystaline silicon wafers for solar panels to wafers for chips (i.e. logic and memory chips). I do notice though that the article focuses on the size of the ingot and purity, but not on the speed of crystal formation, which is one of the metrics that the industry uses.

Also silicon ingot production is extremely energy intensive. If anyone developed a process which was less energy intensive it could have major economic implications.

From what I understand SMIC N+1 process is ~10nm and N+2 is ~7nm but I think in that 'farewell' letter of the SMIC C*O he clearly described it. Both processes don't require EUV tools, only DUV. This is similar to Samsung 10nm and 7nm processes. Unlike TSMC 7nm which does use some EUV steps. He also claimed the process design at SMIC for 5nm and 3nm is already done and basically waiting on machines becoming available to SMIC to test further. I think he basically feels like he's wasting his process design skills since there is nothing left he can do.

The talk about chiplets is about innovations in packaging, not process design. Basically you split the one chip design into several smaller chips and place them in same chip package similar to AMD's latest Ryzen processors. This allows you to use the more advanced process for smaller portions of the die and thus require less usage of advanced processes in terms of die area to manufacture a given logic chip. This is supposed to cut down on costs as EUV tools have incredibly lackluster wafer productivity compared with DUV because of lack of light source power for EUV versus DUV.

I am unsure if the proposed new leader for SMIC would be the right person to lead that process since AFAIK he is older generation TSMC design lead so I am unsure if he has the technological expertise to deliver on something like improved chip packaging which is something which can be pretty complicated to do. AFAIK TSMC didn't even offer that great of a package technology until recent years where it has been used in CPU and GPU designs.

@WTAN
I am mostly interested at Huawei 45nm fab at Shanghai. Its helped by ICRD and since they are located at Shanghai Huawei fab has to be at Shanghai not Wuhan. In the news it said fab setup by end of 2020. How's that coming along?

This is truly the first Chinese fab without any US equipments. A pioneer indeed !


I want to see volume production and products being shipped out. Not some sort of laboratory.

Oldschool said:

@WTAN
I am mostly interested at Huawei 45nm fab at Shanghai. Its helped by ICRD and since they are located at Shanghai Huawei fab has to be at Shanghai not Wuhan. In the news it said fab setup by end of 2020. How's that coming along?

This is truly the first Chinese fab without any US equipments. A pioneer indeed !


I want to see volume production and products being shipped out. Not some sort of laboratory.

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I posted an article about this Huawei FAB in Shanghai a couple of weeks ago. Construction in Shanghai will begin early next year.
The production of the 45nm Chips will begin immediately once the FAB is completed using the SMEE 65nn DUVL which is already mass produced.
Once the SMEE 28nm DUVL has finished verification and testing at ICRD, it will be used to produce the 28nm Chips.
Hopefully by the end of 2022 Huawei will be producing 20nm and 14nm chips.

WTAN said:

I posted an article about this Huawei FAB in Shanghai a couple of weeks ago. Construction in Shanghai will begin early next year.
The production of the 45nm Chips will begin immediately once the FAB is completed using the SMEE 65nn DUVL which is already mass produced.
Once the SMEE 28nm DUVL has finished verification and testing at ICRD, it will be used to produce the 28nm Chips.
Hopefully by the end of 2022 Huawei will be producing 20nm and 14nm chips.

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Since Huawei hiring lithograph engineers and poached SMEE talents yet it is the biggest user of SMEE equipments, it makes sense to me if Huawei acquire SMEE . You mentioned Huawei is part of the EUV alliance. I believe SMEE will the integrator of EUV equipment. The Chinese equipment players are small and fragmented
If Huawei acquired and consolidated them the Chinese equipment industry will be much stronger be able to compete with Applied material and ASML in Chinese market.
Huawei semiconductor equipment division

I think that's a bad idea. Huawei could make an investment in SMEE without acquiring it outright.

Hi WTAN, gelgoog,

A question, in five years time as China strives for self sufficiency, where will you place the European, the Japanese and the US. Here in this video Europe will invest 145 billion euros to whim itself from American tech. For me it's good to have choices, But with sanction being weaponized (I think the world IC/semiconductor will be divided to 3 blocs (US , CHINA & the EU) with Japan a big question mark) , Nobody in its right mind will invest an expensive FABS equipment with uncertainty regarding supplies. Of the four , China has the market to sustain itself for a full spectrum top to bottom local IC development, what about others? will Japan be forced to JV with China to survived?

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