I would say CAS (Chinese academy of science), Huawei and CETC.
Chinese semiconductor industry
- Thread starter Hendrik_2000
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Mostly CAS, it's a National project priority number 1 since we had already tackled the bottleneck in aircraft engine development and production.
More thought experiment on this think 2023 is probably the first year where they have full N+1/12/14nm production lines running at SN1 at close to 35k wpm(will see if that's true). At this point, I'm not counting any SN2 capacity yet. Anything from there would be a bonus.
Let's say 280k 12/14nm and 140k N+1 wafers for the full year (likely lower than that for N+1). The 12/14nm process should be mature enough to produce anything at good yield. The N+1 process likely will have lower yield, especially for the more complex chips.
die size tend to shrink as you get to more advanced processes. But let's say for desktop CPU, die sizes are 150 to 200 mm2 on 12/14nm node and you get like 90% yield on them. on a 12-inch wafer, you can get about 300 die from that. Let's say die size is around 125 to 150 mm2 on N+1 node and you get like 75-80% yield on them. on a 12-inch wafer, you can get about 400 die from that.
So if you want to produce 10 million desktop/laptop CPU for 2023 and 80% of them are on 12/14nm process, that's around. 8 million at 300 die per wafer would be about 27k wafers. Remaining 2 million at 400 die per wafer would be 5k wafers.
Now if we move to 500+mm2 server CPUs at 12nm process like 3C5000, you can get 110 per wafer. If you want to see 1 million 3C5000 or half million 3D5000, that would be 9k wafers. If we add in Phytium and hygon, around 30k wafers in total for sever CPUs.
On top of this, let's say Huawei wants to put two die Chiplet for phone on sale and sells 5 million. That would require 10 million die which works out to be 22k wafers at around 450 die per wafer.
And then we have someone like Moore threads come in with 2 million GPUs per year at 600+ mm2, you can get 80 per wafer. That would be another 25k wafers.
I guess what this shows is that there is enough advanced wafer production in SN1 (if they get to 400k wafers a year of high yield) to fully support domestic desktop replacement program, server CPUs, desktop GPUs and cloud/server GPUs + even some mobile tablet devices. Domestic chip designers just need to make sure their chips are at satisfactory level. since I think they are finally getting there in 2023/2024 time range, I see orders shrinking for not just Intel & AMD but also Nvidia.
btw this is now going around Chinese social media and causing people to get alarmed which is also trigger articles like this
Based on what can decipher from what people have been saying, the troubles at YMTC are real and they are suffering from not just losing access support for the American tools they bought but also losing orders like the apple one. When you ramp up production with the expectation of certain order, it stinks when the orders are not there. If we factor in the current market downturn in memory chip prices, YMTC is definitely have a hard time here.
There is definitely rumors of people leaving YMTC due to the tough circumstances. My sense is that the second fab is definitely not starting production anytime soon. But they do need to find customers to pay for first fab.
The other sentence here is too dramatic. The Chinese gov't will not let YMTC go bankrupt.
aha, this is why SS raises prices by 10% Chinese companies agree to pay them... but this is rumors
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"Another industry expert, a former technician at Huawei, said YMTC was not short of lithography systems as it had bought several before the restrictions were imposed, but the challenge lies in etching tools from suppliers such as Lam Research."
So ASML banning does not seem an immediate issue for YMTC, and I guess neither for SMIC because they both knew what they had to do.
Regarding etching, AMEC will close the gap, maybe it wil take some time, but it will close the gap and will be 100% Chinese equipment. Etching is not lithography. Technology is not as complex and, very importantly, there are already well established and advanced local manufacturers.
IMHO lithography is the only real weak link, the gap for other kind of equipment will be closed before and in an easier way.
I mean the issue for American tools is that they are not getting serviced at all. So, having stocked up more of them helps, but they can only replace the older machines that are breaking down.
As long as ASML and TEL service their products, the strategy of stocking up extra tools work. Since YMTC depends so much on Lam and KLA, not have service support for their products really hurt. As long as the Europeans & Japanese don't stop after service support, they will have no issue staying in the Chinese market. As we saw in the other chart, Chinese IC industry buys a lot from TEL. So, what the Japanese agree to is important too. I don't think we will find out for a while what these things are.
I would assume that ASML has an idea of what type of sanctions are coming and it said in the earnings call that it does not affect any change in its China revenue projection this year, which tells me 3 things
1) they will continue to service lithography machines they already delivered (so their service revenue doesn't decline)
2) they expect some kind of grace period for deliveries of DUVi machines which will last for a few months
3) and/or only the newest DUVi like 2000 to 2100i are limited and SMIC has already stocked up on enough of them
I assume that Dutch & Japanese will agree to similar level of restrictions.
I don't know what Weibo commenter is basing his fact upon. YMTC was under the radar of US congress after it has successfully become a supplier of Apple. Supplying Huawei was never mentioned as the reason why YMTC got a total ban. It is banned due to YMTC is too successful.
US congress basically doesn't give a fuck about YMTC supplying Huawei or not. If you read through the news article before the total ban, the US congress was asking the Biden administration to ban YMTC more than a year ago and shortly after Apple is attempting to use YMTC products. I don't think posting a random Weibo rumor is useful for the discussion.
US congress basically doesn't give a fuck about YMTC supplying Huawei or not. If you read through the news article before the total ban, the US congress was asking the Biden administration to ban YMTC more than a year ago and shortly after Apple is attempting to use YMTC products. I don't think posting a random Weibo rumor is useful for the discussion.
Matt Pottinger wanted to screw YMTC over back in 2020.
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