Side note lurking at semiconductor thread exposed me to much more exotic chemical molecule than all the years I studied chemistry lol.
Chinese semiconductor industry
- Thread starter Hendrik_2000
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So am I bro, when @tokenanalyst @FairAndUnbiased and @krautmeister (hadn't hear from him which is unfortunate) join this forum 2 years ago things liven up, that batch of 2021 is the best after the batch of 2020 which include the likes of @WTAN ,@foofy @Oldschool,@Alb and @superdog. And things get better as last year batch consist of @hvpc ,@PopularScience,@tinrobert and @olalavn moved the discussion even to a higher professional level. We're lucky to have all of them and in my capacity as a mere member and an eager student, I THANK THEM ALL!!!
US and its allies, eg chip-4 etc will fail, just like when US blocked China in ISS participation.
"... the issue was not Huawei’s alleged spying, but American chagrin at China’s preeminence in a decisive field of technology."
Here is a fair reminder about issue of the day,
"... the issue was not Huawei’s alleged spying, but American chagrin at China’s preeminence in a decisive field of technology."
Here is a fair reminder about issue of the day,
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Did a little research on RISC-V progress recently, so here it goes. It should be obvious by now that China has to move toward RISC-V and that it is moving in that direction. Basic things like 32-bit MCUs and low power CPUs and industrial control chips are the first ones they move to using RISC-V designs.
RISC-V is really good for these applications because they generally consume less power and can do more tasks than ARM chips at the same mature process node. So, I see Huahong building a bunch of 32-bit MCUs for AptChip and they are perfect for smart cars and machineries and such. And they can be produced with 55nm process. It's pretty good.
But then when we get into desktop, laptop and data center chips, you get areas that are dominated by x86 with some ARM processors. Smartphone CPUs and other data center chips are ARM processors. Even though RISC-V is more efficient, we haven't got to the point where they can offer strong enough performance to just match the processing power of x86/ARM CPUs.
Recently, we have seen a couple of RISC-V cores, including from SiFive with P670 where they reached older ARM CPU core. Remember this post?
At the time, we were very close to seeing 2nd generation XiangShan CPU getting taped out. Now, it looks like it will be taped out in Q1 and be shipped to customers in Q2/Q3.
You may wonder why 2nd gen Xiangshan is aimed at ARM A76 with just Spec2006 score 10/GHz, when Ventana is aiming for HPC and SiFive is aiming for ARM A78? Well, the simplest answer is that this RISC-V project has to be designed with a process that can be produced with domestic fabs. Not a lot of point designing for 4/5nm, when SMIC can't produce that for the next 2/3 years. Note, that both Veyron 1 and SiFive P670 use 5nm process. Now of course, most of P670 performance boost over Nanhu is that you can just clock 5nm chip a lot higher than 12/14nm chip. But even aside from that, I think you can get higher computation per GHz with a more advanced chip process. So, CAS is constrained by foundry unlike SiFive or Ventana.
So, I think it's quite impressive that they think they can achieve ARM Neoverse 2 level of computation with 3rd gen Xiangshan (Kunminghu) and that it will be ready sometimes in 2024 (so probably 6 months to 1 year later than Ventana) and that it will be able to replace ARM based on chips in data centers.
Now, remember that ARM Neoverse V2 was apparently off limit to Chinese chip designers based on the reporting from December.
As such, unless Chinese chip designers have special ISA/IP rights like Phytium and design their own special cores, they are pretty much handicapped if they continue to design ARM chips. That's why major players like Alibaba T-head, Huawei & Tencent are probably working with CAS on this through their joint effort in BOSC. They are making this open source so that others including all the major Chinese tech companies can help out with the effort and use them in their HPC chips. If Xiangshan does turn out to be comparable to ARM Neoverse V2 in performance, then they will be at a pretty good place.
RISC-V is really good for these applications because they generally consume less power and can do more tasks than ARM chips at the same mature process node. So, I see Huahong building a bunch of 32-bit MCUs for AptChip and they are perfect for smart cars and machineries and such. And they can be produced with 55nm process. It's pretty good.
But then when we get into desktop, laptop and data center chips, you get areas that are dominated by x86 with some ARM processors. Smartphone CPUs and other data center chips are ARM processors. Even though RISC-V is more efficient, we haven't got to the point where they can offer strong enough performance to just match the processing power of x86/ARM CPUs.
Recently, we have seen a couple of RISC-V cores, including from SiFive with P670 where they reached older ARM CPU core. Remember this post?
At the time, we were very close to seeing 2nd generation XiangShan CPU getting taped out. Now, it looks like it will be taped out in Q1 and be shipped to customers in Q2/Q3.
You may wonder why 2nd gen Xiangshan is aimed at ARM A76 with just Spec2006 score 10/GHz, when Ventana is aiming for HPC and SiFive is aiming for ARM A78? Well, the simplest answer is that this RISC-V project has to be designed with a process that can be produced with domestic fabs. Not a lot of point designing for 4/5nm, when SMIC can't produce that for the next 2/3 years. Note, that both Veyron 1 and SiFive P670 use 5nm process. Now of course, most of P670 performance boost over Nanhu is that you can just clock 5nm chip a lot higher than 12/14nm chip. But even aside from that, I think you can get higher computation per GHz with a more advanced chip process. So, CAS is constrained by foundry unlike SiFive or Ventana.
So, I think it's quite impressive that they think they can achieve ARM Neoverse 2 level of computation with 3rd gen Xiangshan (Kunminghu) and that it will be ready sometimes in 2024 (so probably 6 months to 1 year later than Ventana) and that it will be able to replace ARM based on chips in data centers.
Now, remember that ARM Neoverse V2 was apparently off limit to Chinese chip designers based on the reporting from December.
As such, unless Chinese chip designers have special ISA/IP rights like Phytium and design their own special cores, they are pretty much handicapped if they continue to design ARM chips. That's why major players like Alibaba T-head, Huawei & Tencent are probably working with CAS on this through their joint effort in BOSC. They are making this open source so that others including all the major Chinese tech companies can help out with the effort and use them in their HPC chips. If Xiangshan does turn out to be comparable to ARM Neoverse V2 in performance, then they will be at a pretty good place.
"The Chinese government has called the United States “selfish” as Washington works at persuading Japan and the Netherlands to join its chip export ban imposed on China.
“In order to perpetuate its hegemony and selfish interests, the US has repeatedly abused export controls and politicized technology and trade issues by using them as a weapon to exert economic coercion over its allies,” said Wang Wenbin, spokesperson of the Chinese foreign ministry.
“In order to perpetuate its hegemony and selfish interests, the US has repeatedly abused export controls and politicized technology and trade issues by using them as a weapon to exert economic coercion over its allies,” said Wang Wenbin, spokesperson of the Chinese foreign ministry.
Can someone here figure out what that 81 number means? Not large enough?
What about supporting machines from AMAT etc?
"ASML continued to sell its previous generation of lithography equipment, which etches 14-nanometer transistors using “deep ultraviolet” (DUV) light. China bought 81 such machines in 2021 alone.
What about supporting machines from AMAT etc?
"ASML continued to sell its previous generation of lithography equipment, which etches 14-nanometer transistors using “deep ultraviolet” (DUV) light. China bought 81 such machines in 2021 alone.
tphuang.
You think Loongson is already better than Intel and AMD in terms of design?
Once, China can mass produce 7nm and eventually 5nm, does it mean AMD and Intel will both be dead ?
Thanks!
For me the most interesting part is this supplier that is new to me. I knew that SMEE uses Guoke Precision for optical system.
I searched a bit on this company. It is a mid size supplier with but very interestingly on their site they state they are working on EUV optics too:
Recently, in 2018, they ...what a brave people!
"Biden will also meet Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte in Washington for a related discussion on January 17."
This thing escalated at Biden level!
This is a clear sign that so far US administration officials were unsuccessful in their "convincing" of Japan and Holland. So now this thing has been escalated at the highest level: the President of the US!
We will see how it goes...it is telling that President Biden himself has to be directly involved in this negotation to eventually make the ban happen....and anyhow the final result, with all the small but very critical details, is still far from clear.
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