Are there any Chinese companies that produced analog chips?
Chinese semiconductor industry
- Thread starter Hendrik_2000
- Start date
- Status
antiterror13
Brigadier
Well it is the news in 2021 .. surely more now ... already few of those
This company makes NAND and NOR Flash for embedded purposes.
This is basically old style planar Flash memory. They do not have their own fabs, they basically design specialty memory and fab it someplace. Like at SMIC.
SLC memory is required when you need more reliability even if at the cost of density. If you want density, today you have V-NAND anyway, so planar MLC isn't quite what it used to be.
1xnm NAND Flash is likely planar flash with equivalent density to something in the tens of nanometers range.
Last edited:
Those countries are so small, doesn't really matter. Vast majority of tools are spent by Taiwan, Korea, china and us. The last one is a no go for china. So the greatest growth for NAURA would be:
1) to get more business from tsmc and Samsung
2) domestic fabs having aggressive growth on the advanced node market. Think about it $16 billion from ymtc for phase 2. More growth by smic is the other one. They got probably $6 to $10b a year of capex for the next 5 years. And of course, other Chinese fabs are growing too.
So expand the china pie and get into more of that korea and Taiwan pie.
This chart is off I think for some. You can Google asm international revenue for 2022 and it is 2.4 billion euros.
Last edited:
South Korea is a rival with SEMES. There's also the risk of being banned. It is always better to open new markets than try to squeeze into a crowded existing market because there's literally no competition when you create a new market. That is also how Chinese companies have historically expanded: take domestic market share, create new developing country markets, then finally, take over developed markets or get banned from them. And if banned, then start eroding adversary market shares everywhere outside their home market.
Example: Africa was a small, nonexistent market for smartphones in 2010. US would've deemed them only worthy of using dumb phones on 2G and demanded they be thankful for buying dumb phones for $300 each. Chinese companies put a smartphone in every African's hand for $225 by 2019. Now there's $25 billion worth of Huawei telecom networks in Africa. A 100's billion USD level market was created out of thin air because Chinese businesses empowered Africans to buy modern technology.
The exact same thing can be done for Russia and Brazil. They've already signed MOU with China. Finance some initial orders, then they're hooked just like Africans on smartphones and telecom equipment, and a new market has been created.
This is also the logic behind why Intel invested in places that otherwise don't make much sense like Ireland, Is.rael, etc. Are these particularly huge markets? Do they make up a huge portion of tool spend or electronics customers...? Exactly. This is to create markets.
I'm the one that wrote the Seeking Alpha article May 18, 2022 on SMIC reaching 7nm (2 months before TechInsights, and you can read it here:
Here's the point. I started analyzing the Semiconductor Industry when I formed The Information Network () in 1985. I don't read Chinese, but I have nearly 40 years of analyzing the sector and know how to get into back doors. That's the trick. Anyone can hire a translator, and I think the people applying sanctions, who don't now chocolate chocolate chip ice cream from a computer chip do so.
I asked @hvpc about something like this actually. I wonder if you need to get someone with r&d than cxmt into dram. As seen in tencent example, dram speed really makes a difference. You also don't want to lose all that revenue to Koreans. So while smic has bigger fish to fry, I wonder if smic or Huawei can get in here and move things forward. Of course, also need domestic toolmakers to improve a lot.
Huawei has no experience in DRAM. The business model of an IDM is very different than a foundry, and IDMs for captive internal customers is very different than an IDM for selling to external OEMs. IDMs for internal consumption - like what Huawei wants to do - is less cost sensitive and can accept some inefficiencies, because the costs can be built into the final product sold. Nobody will notice an extra $50 on a $10k base station or an extra $2-3 on a $500 smartphone, but a marginal profit change +/- $2 per chip is gigantic for a foundry. Tool depreciation for an internal IDM is also very different than a foundry, as you can't afford to keep buying new tools to upgrade and offload old tools onto legacy fabs, you don't have the volume.
In addition, I believe DRAM really needs a focused semiconductor company as their processes are different than logic. I'm not an expert in DRAM though, just applying what I know from other fields.
Chinese semiconductor equipment market in 2022 is estimated in
If even just 10-20% of that market will be localized in 2023, it means an additional 4-8B$ in 2023 for Chinese producers....and up to 8B$ less for foreign manufacturers.
IMO Chinese SME producers are capacity bounded, not market bounded.
The only way for US to stop this is to prevent ASML and the Japanes to sell any kind of lithography machine. This would force stopping capacity developing at client firms, and indirectly will also stop all other types of machine...at least for 1/2 years, until SMEE does not ramp up production.
But this scenario is highly unlikely, it would be like to declare war to China.
Internal and external troubles TSMC production capacity expansion "sudden brake"
"It is reported that TSMC's 6/7nm process capacity utilization rate was less than 40% by the end of March; 4/5nm process has dropped to 75%"
"TSMC originally planned to build two factories in Kaohsiung, including 7nm and 28nm. However, following the suspension of plans for the 7nm plant of the Kaohsiung plant due to weak demand in the smartphone and PC markets, it was reported that the 28nm plan was also postponed. Delayed, and the list of 28nm equipment that the factory plans to purchase is also cancelled."
"Although TSMC has pressed the "pause button" for the construction of many factories in Taiwan, contrary to this, the construction of new factories in Arizona, USA and Kumamoto, Japan will continue to advance. Among them, the first phase of the Arizona fab is expected to in 2024 start producing 4nm chips. The second phase of the project has also started. It is expected in 2026. to start producing 3nm "
TSMC is clearly digging his own grave here. Once US fabs will be open, they are no more TSMC's, they are 100% made in USA...and owned and ruled by US: TSMC (including its people) are just a tool to produce US chips in US.
And their government does not help them because it is geopolitically controlled by US. The best thing for TSMC is that Taiwan reunites with China in the future, maybe after 2024 elections. No, is not a joke. It is an objective analysis.
- Status