Chinese semiconductor industry

AMEC 2021 fundamentals:

In terms of CCP dielectric etching, the company still lacks in two aspects. One is Damascus etching, which is for logic circuits. In this regard, foreign equipment companies occupy a monopoly position.

But the company has developed the RIE of XD, and will announce the name of the product in the future, and will soon complete the development and enter the market. The preliminary demo results are very good.

Another shortcoming of the company in the past is the etching of extremely high aspect ratio, especially 3D memory. The company is intensively developing it. It is now called YDRIE. The official name will be announced in the future. It is currently under development and has a very good performance. It will take about a year Coming soon to the market.

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One of the most difficult processes for etching machines in the field of chip processing is etching with a high aspect ratio, from 3:1 aspect ratio to 5:1, 7:1, 10:1... now 60:1 , but also to 90:1, the company has made a technological breakthrough in the development of an etching machine with a very high aspect ratio, so the company can open a very deep space of 60:1.

PopularScience said:

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AMEC 2021 fundamentals:

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Thanks, interesting article. The source is not clear, but he seems to have some possibly legit info.

Here is what I find interesting

1. Article is of April 2022, almost one year old.

2. AMES had 1048 people at the end of 2021 and it was in full development of 3 big production and R&D expansion projects. For a pure equipment manufacturer, this is an important size, at least for European standards.

3. The first generation most advanced etcher , was introduced only in 2018. The second generation ICP Nanova was in development in spring 2022. We can assume it will be in verification/testing stage this year and possibly in volume production in early 2024. This is a very critical piece of equipment, because we can expect the second generation ICP etcher will close the gap with foreign companies, at least for the non-EUV applications, 7nm and above.

4. Another critical machine is the high aspect ratio etcher for 3D NAND, read for YMTC. It seems AMEC made a technological breakthrough in the development of an etching machine with a very high aspect ratio already last year, and it was intensively developing it. According to the author, it takes about one year to delivery, so we can expect YMTC will have the high aspect ratio etching machine soon, or maybe they even already have one for validation purposes. This machine is critical for YMTC planned development.

5. The article is very long and detailed, but the author forgot about AMEC suppliers. In particular, AMEC stated that this can be a problem, because many parts are of foreign, and even US origin and supplier localization is a slow process. When US will attack Chinese equipment manufacturers, banning US suppliers will be the low hanging fruit and the first to be enforced.

european_guy said:

5. The article is very long and detailed, but the author forgot about AMEC suppliers. In particular, AMEC stated that this can be a problem, because many parts are of foreign, and even US origin and supplier localization is a slow process. When US will attack Chinese equipment manufacturers, banning US suppliers will be the low hanging fruit and the first to be enforced.

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They stated in the investor meeting in July that their localization rate of their etching tools is about 60% with the rest more 30% coming from Europe and Asia and less 10% coming from the US.

tokenanalyst said:

They stated in the investor meeting in July that their localization rate of their etching tools is about 60% with the rest more 30% coming from Europe and Asia and less 10% coming from the US.

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Also, iIRC, these things are actually quite hard to sanction, because you can get them for different purposes.

A bit of consolidation on part of AMEC, the company has taken positions in piotech specialized deposition technology and RSIC metrology and testing.

In terms of R&D layout and strategic planning in the field of thin film deposition, the company is now intensively developing EPI (single crystal epitaxy) equipment required for integrated circuits in terms of silicon and silicon germanium. Another company's layout is the conductor-type deposition equipment LPCVD (low-pressure thermochemical reactor), from LPCVD to ALD are all around the deposition of silicon metal compounds, conductor-type deposition will be the company's current development of thin film deposition field The focus of the device. ALD is a new field, and domestic applications are still limited at present, because ALD is generally used in this technology below 10nm, and the company has also entered the field of conductor ALD, and related equipment is under development.

In the choice of external investment, China Microelectronics participated in the leading PECVD company Tuojing Technology to form business synergy, holds 11.2% of the shares of Tuojing Technology, has certain cooperation in technology development and product layout, and horizontally invests in the semiconductor testing equipment manufacturing company Rui Li Instruments holds 29.36% of its shares. On the basis of maintaining the advantages of etching equipment, the company invests in or coordinates the development of upstream and downstream supporting equipment, forming synergistic effects in process research and development, customer channels, supplier management and production operations.

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This is SMEE 90nm lithography machine core internal component. You can see U-precision's logo on the bottom left corner

More update from Moore Threads

They have now signed up with several big cloud computing players including Lenovo Cloud, Archer OS, CStack, Tingyu Tech and Sangfor to provide GPUs for cloud desktop solution. It will provide physical GPUs with S2000, which can be split to up to 20 virtual GPUs. Usage of virtual/cloud GPU resources allow CPU usage to be reduced (so to not overburden it)

Moore Threads is the first domestic GPU maker to provide this.

This is kind of interesting. A lot of the GPUs we've seen are utilized in the role of AI computation and large data centers. Moore Threads is the only Chinese GPU maker that has taken the role of the mass market desktop GPU for both PC, workplace computers and VDIs. They maybe the most consequential here and eventually become the most successful Chinese GPU companies since they are already getting a lot of orders and establishing partners everywhere. And we know Chinese gov't is doing a major to replace all the gov't and SOE with domestic chips.

tphuang said:

I think what we want to stress is that the current project 02 development in china is just not ambitious enough. If you can only produce 20 arf dry and arfi scanners a year, that's just nowhere enough to satisfy the growing demand. Sure, it's unlikely the older arf scanners or krf or iline get sanctioned but china needs to invest more into fast tracking the production increase across it's supply chain. While this is not a process overnight, they really need to cut the bullshit and roll out a vision that actually meets the new geopolitical reality.

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It takes time to ramp up production.

These machines are very sophisticated.

Tony Soars as Chinese Chip Wafer Maker Says 2022 Profit to Triple, Signs USD693 Million Deal

Shares in Zhejiang Tony Electronic surged by the exchange-imposed upper limit today for the second day running after the Chinese semiconductor materials supplier said it expects net profit for 2022 to a least triple from the year before and on announcing a new long-term supply deal that could be worth CNY4.7 billion (USD693 million).

Tony Electronic’s share price [SHA: 603595] closed up 10 percent at CNY73.32 (USD10.82). The share price also surged by the daily limit yesterday, before the good news was announced.

Tony Electronic expects to rake in net profit of between CNY100 million (USD14.8 million) and CNY110 million in 2022, which equates to a jump of between 199.28 percent and 229.2 percent from a year earlier, the firm said after markets closed yesterday. The extra earnings are thanks to a wider profit margin, an increase in revenue and exchange-rate gains due to the appreciation of the US dollar.

The firm also signed a three-year supply contract yesterday for six-inch silicon carbide wafers which could be worth CNY4.7 billion based on current market prices, although the company did not stipulate the total value of the contract as unit prices for subsequent years are still subject to negotiation.

Tony Electronic will provide the unnamed customer with 135,000 wafers in 2023, 300,000 in 2024, and 500,000 in 2025, the Huzhou, eastern Zhejiang province-based company said. Pre-tax revenue in 2023 alone will amount to CNY675 million (USD99.6 million), it added.

The high electrical conductivity of silicon carbide wafers means they can minimize the power consumption of devices, improve energy conversion efficiency and reduce product size. They are mainly applied in fifth-generation networks, aircraft and new energy vehicles.

tphuang said:

It looks like Huawei Mate 50 sold at least 10 million copies, so they'd probably put a lower end model to sell 25 million copies, which would require 50 million chiplets of 12/14 nm.

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Is Huawei still selling Mate today ?