Chinese semiconductor industry

european_guy said:

It is telling that US has forbidden everybody from selling to Huawei...but their companies: Qualcomm, Intel, Micron, etc sell a lot of $ to Huawei, and are the only ones that got a license! No Koreans, no Taiwan. For instance IIRC only Micron sells DRAM and only Qualcomm (no Mediatek) sells smartphone chips for Huawei smartphones. It is real mafia!

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european_guy said:

So according to your info and getting also info from havoc, I try here to tentatively put together the pieces of this puzzle.

Here are the new SMEE litho machines.

1. SMEE new platform is a double wafer stage type and is named 800 series. This series totally replaces the obsolete 600 series.

2. Of this new 800 series, according to havoc and to your table, 2 machines are already in volume production (although no info on customers, delivered numbers, etc): the SSB800 i-line (365nm) capable of 280nm resolution, and the SSC800 KrF (248nm) capable of 110nm resolution

3. There is also at some customer's site, like IRCD, for testing and validation purposes, but still not in volume production, the SSA800 Arf (193nm) capable of 55/65nm resolution (it seems IRCD is testing a 55nm line).

4. There is also a prototype version at SMEE's site of the still unnamed Arfi (193nm immersion) capable of 28nm resolution. This latest machine is expected to be delivered to selected customers for validation within this year.


Can someone confirm/correct the above summary?

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PopularScience said:

Havok: ArF90nm前道光刻机也已量产交付。

The ArF90nm front-end lithography machine has also been mass-produced and delivered.

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hvpc said:

And that would be the SSA600 system. This is not the same as the ArF capable of 55nm node production that havic/you guys spoke of.

and I would question havoc’s definition of “mass production”. Shipping one or two systems doesn’t put it in the “mass production” category.

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PopularScience said:

Double stage Arf 90nm. New machine. Not SSA600

这个干式是600系列还是800系列新搓的？

Havok: 新搓的

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hvpc said:

Only 1 SSB800 iLine scanner has been shipped to SMEE “customer” last September. It’s still not in production as of today. Like I said, many critical features are missing so the fab’s target application will be for the least critical layers with very loose specification/tolerance. Initial target applications would be for the polyamide or for the implant layers for memory fabs to test out SMEE SSB800 machines. SMEE is having trouble shipping the 2nd SSB800 iLine scanner

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hvpc said:

Then I would be disappointed that the new SSA800 is a 90nm resolution system.

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tokenanalyst said:

Let me guess, source? eetop. There was a guy claiming the I-Line machine that YMTC was testing was having trouble with the motion control of the dual wafer stage. In a later post he stated that all the problems have been solved. I would call that a positive feedback loop.
As far I understand SMEE send 3 dual wafer machines for testing, to SMIC, YMTC and another company. My guess they would probably find problems on their own, is debugging cycle.

According to Beijing Guowang Optical the company that plans to mass produce projection lens subsystems this year for:

350/280 nm i guest this is I-line
90/110 nm I guess this Krf
65nm I guess I guess this would be ArF dry
28 and below I guess this would be immersion

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hvpc said:

lots of rumors and speculations, some may turn out to be true. But, I only trust what my customers tell me. Everything else I take with a grain of salt.

so, apologies for not jumping on the same bandwagon as the most of you.

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