Chinese semiconductor industry

If China wants to break the tool and materials blockade, it is pretty simple, the weakest link is Japan. Japan can do pretty much everything by themselves and their major trade partner by far is China. The US tools and materials manufacturers should be kept out of the Chinese market as much as possible. China and HK are like 25.66% of Japanese exports and 26.1% of Japanese imports. In comparison the US is 18% and 10.9% respectively.

gelgoog said:

If China wants to break the tool and materials blockade, it is pretty simple, the weakest link is Japan. Japan can do pretty much everything by themselves and their major trade partner by far is China. The US tools and materials manufacturers should be kept out of the Chinese market as much as possible. China and HK are like 25.66% of Japanese exports and 26.1% of Japanese imports. In comparison the US is 18% and 10.9% respectively.

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China doesn't need to do like U.S.... they just leisurely do their job... Japan isn't stupid enough to ignore the China market..

[Winning the bid] Jiaxin Caneng, a subsidiary of Wanye Enterprise, won the bid for 3 sets of thin film deposition equipment for the Shanghai Jita Project​

According to news from Jiwei.com, on February 28, Shanghai Jita Semiconductor Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Shanghai Jita") special process production line construction project announced the results of three winning bids.

It is reported that the successful bidders of the three projects are Jiaxin Caneng Semiconductor Equipment Technology (Zhejiang) Co., Ltd., a subsidiary of Wanye Enterprise, and the subject matter involved is 1 boron-phosphorus-doped silicon dioxide film chemical deposition equipment and 2 titanium/titanium nitride deposition equipment.

Previously, Jiashan official news showed that the Jiaxin semiconductor project under Wanye Enterprise was undergoing secondary structural construction. It is expected to complete the civil engineering construction by the end of March and transfer to the stage of interior decoration and equipment installation. It will be completed and put into production by the end of the year.

Microelectronics has made important progress in in-memory computing of graph networks​

Manuscript source: Shang Dashan and Zhang Kangwei from key laboratories Release time: 2023-02-24
As an important engine of AI , 　　deep learning technology has received widespread attention and rapid development in recent years. Graph Neural Network ( Graph Neural Network ) is a relatively new deep learning technology that can be used to process more complex unstructured data, and is widely used in application scenarios such as social networks, e-shopping, drug prediction, and human-computer interaction. With the rapid expansion of the amount of data, the efficiency of running graph neural networks in traditional CMOS digital hardware systems needs to be improved urgently. The training process of graph neural networks is becoming more and more complicated, which makes training energy consumption remain high. Although the in-memory computing technology based on Resistive Memristor ( RRAM ) can significantly alleviate the von Neumann bottleneck in traditional digital hardware systems and further improve computing efficiency, it is still subject to high power consumption for erasing and writing, delay and certain limitations. Limitations of device non-ideal characteristics such as programming resistance randomness.

This should surprise no one, but cutting all Qualcomm sales to Huawei would have an immediate affect on Huawei's mobile & tablet division as well as auto division.
Now, they better stock up those CPUs while they still can. It should've been obvious when this was first announced that this is coming.

bzhong05 said:

stopped reading at the part where he said it will take at least 10 years to build a domestic 28nm line....

then I double-checked, oh he's a finance guy.

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10 years for 28nm is not that far off from other estimates. For example:

Wu Zihao, a former top Taiwanese chip engineer who has worked in China for two decades, that even in the best-case scenario China might be able to produce 28nm chips with its own lithography tools within six years.

He says this forecast is based on the most optimistic scenario, in which SMEE can still source foreign parts, which is increasingly difficult in the face of US sanctions and pressure.

His advice to Chinese scientists is that they tackle problems of making 90nm or 130nm chips before focusing on more advanced 28nm ones.

gadgetcool5 said:

10 years for 28nm is not that far off from other estimates. For example:

Wu Zihao, a former top Taiwanese chip engineer who has worked in China for two decades,

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that even in the best-case scenario China might be able to produce 28nm chips with its own lithography tools within six years.

He says this forecast is based on the most optimistic scenario, in which SMEE can still source foreign parts, which is increasingly difficult in the face of US sanctions and pressure.

His advice to Chinese scientists is that they tackle problems of making 90nm or 130nm chips before focusing on more advanced 28nm ones.

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

Click to expand...

I still remember when "experts" said that the first flight of the J-20 was going to be in 2030.

gadgetcool5 said:

10 years for 28nm is not that far off from other estimates. For example:

Wu Zihao, a former top Taiwanese chip engineer who has worked in China for two decades,

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

that even in the best-case scenario China might be able to produce 28nm chips with its own lithography tools within six years.

He says this forecast is based on the most optimistic scenario, in which SMEE can still source foreign parts, which is increasingly difficult in the face of US sanctions and pressure.

His advice to Chinese scientists is that they tackle problems of making 90nm or 130nm chips before focusing on more advanced 28nm ones.

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

Click to expand...

Wu has already been discussed in this thread before when his blog was posted here. A lot of his statements directly contradict the ones made by havok, an active SMEE employee and insider and so the former's remarks are taken with a teaspoon of salt.

Xinyun Intelligent accelerates the layout of semiconductor automation equipment field.​

In recent years, with the unprecedented rapid development of my country's semiconductor industry, the demand for domestic chip production capacity has increased rapidly, and domestic fabs have therefore increased their production capacity layout. As an indispensable part of the semiconductor production process, semiconductor automation equipment shoulders the important mission of improving the utilization rate and product yield of the fab. However, looking at the domestic market, this field has long been monopolized by foreign companies. As an independent and controllable semiconductor automation equipment manufacturer with leading core technology, Wuxi Xinyun Intelligent Technology Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Xinyun Intelligent" or the "Company") conducts product layout around the Automatic Material Handling System (AMHS) and is committed to Continue to empower the improvement of semiconductor production efficiency.

As one of the few teams in China who have participated in the R&D, installation, operation and maintenance of the first domestic AMHS system, the Xinyun intelligent team has deep technical accumulation. Relying on the in-depth understanding of semiconductor equipment and semiconductor factories, Xinyun Intelligent, which was established in April 2022, chose the wafer transfer module EFEM as the entry point, and opened the advanced road of AMHS system research and development. Based on a solid technical foundation and years of experience in solutions in the industry, the company successfully designed, developed and manufactured EFEM equipment with independent intellectual property rights and delivered it to customers in just 4 months, which has won high recognition from customers for the team and products. Based on this, the company has also laid a solid foundation for gradually breaking the foreign monopoly in the field of AMHS, accelerating the replacement of localized equipment, and realizing the independent and controllable development of China's chip industry.

In addition to the precise positioning track, the talent advantages of the technical team composed of senior practitioners from the semiconductor industry, combined with the advantages of independent intellectual property rights, also constitute the "moat" for the rapid development of Xinyun Intelligent. Today, the company's main products cover semiconductor factory AMHS automatic material handling system, semiconductor factory wafer handling automation equipment, and localized replacement of core components of automation equipment, which have been verified and recognized by well-known companies such as HTKJ, ZKZX, and CDYX. In the long-term strategic planning in the future, the company will continue to increase investment in research and development, continuously improve the core competitiveness of products in technology, and is committed to providing customers with complete solutions, while achieving world-class benchmarking of key technologies for product performance.

Chinese chip companies cement IP defense by aggressive patent filings​

As semiconductors gain significance strategically and commercially, global patent filing statistics reveal a changing trend in which major economies are vying for dominant status in the relevant IP, with industrial policies from China, the US, and the EU expected to lead to more fierce competition.

According to European IP law firm Mathys & Squire, a record of 69,194 patents for semiconductors was filed between October 2021 and September 2022, up 10% from a year earlier and 59% from five years ago, highlighting intense competition with the sector.

TSMC was the largest filer, accounting for 7% of all patents worldwide in 2021-2022.

37,865 (55%) of the semiconductor patents were filed in China for the same period, compared with 18,223 (26%) in the US, as China intends to reduce dependence on western technologies. Meanwhile, Applied Materials and SanDisk, the top two patent filers in the US, filed 209 and 50 patents in the country.

Edd Cavanna, the managing associate at Mathys & Squire, said that governments are increasingly concerned about the fragility of global supply chains and are taking steps to promote semiconductor research and production domestically, with global powers such as the US, China, and the EU competing to be leaders in the sector.