Chinese semiconductor industry

Dongfeng taped out 3 new auto grade domestic chips including the 1st domestic auto grade RISC-V based MCU


This is actually a little bit unexpected for me since I've seen other RISC-V based 32-bit MCU in the past like the ones by aptChip

but this appears to be first auto grade one

Yiyue Technology's over 300 million yuan semiconductor high-purity electronic process equipment manufacturing base project foundation laying​

Anhui Yiyue Technology Co., Ltd.'s semiconductor high-purity electronic process equipment manufacturing base project laid the foundation stone .

The project is located in Hefei Xinqiao Science and Technology Innovation Demonstration Zone, covering an area of about 20 acres, with a total investment of about 320 million yuan. It is mainly engaged in the research and development and manufacturing of semiconductor electronic grade chemicals, special gas supply systems, semiconductor plasma tail gas treatment equipment and semiconductor core devices.

The official website of Anhui Yiyue Technology Co., Ltd. shows that its headquarters is located in Hefei, and it is committed to providing high-purity process system solutions for high-end advanced manufacturing industries such as semiconductors, photovoltaics, TFT/LCD, biomedicine, and optical fibers.

The latest development of domestic silicon carbide equipment​

In February of this year, Jingsheng Electromechanical released a 6-inch double-chip SiC epitaxial equipment. Through the transformation of the graphite parts in the reaction chamber, the equipment adopts the method of superimposing the upper and lower layers. A single furnace can grow two epitaxial wafers, and the process gas of the upper and lower layers can be controlled separately.


In May, Yuesheng Company announced that its self-developed 4/6-inch SiC epitaxial equipment has been running continuously and stably for nearly 300 hours without failure, and the quality of the grown 4/6-inch SiC epitaxial wafers has reached the international advanced level, meeting the preparation requirements of MOSFET and SBD devices.


In the same month, the "Great Wall Holdings Bidding Center" issued a document stating that it had launched the "Seiko Automation Silicon Carbide Epitaxy Plant Renovation Design Project" and is currently bidding.

In addition, the Yandu District People's Government of Yancheng City reported that Hanyin Electromechanical invested 1 billion yuan in 2022 to start the Hanyin semiconductor equipment project, and newly installed 40 sets (sets) of third-generation semiconductor carbon epitaxy equipment, which can produce 200,000 silicon carbide epitaxial wafers per year.

Improving accuracy and sensitivity of diffraction-based overlay metrology​

tphuang said:

Definitely. Ga is typically your industry where economic value does not come close to show its security importance. I'm really surprised that wolfspeed claims they will not have problem getting supplies. Let's see. 2% of production in 2020 was from countries outside of China, Ukraine & Russia. No idea where they think they are getting all the Gallium from

Click to expand...

Can't they just smuggle it in the way Russia does with semiconductors?

Make a shell company, pretend to be buying it for harmless electronics, which is really a front for Raytheon.

If China finds out and busts it, just create another shell company and hide the connection better...

HighGround said:

Can't they just smuggle it in the way Russia does with semiconductors?

Make a shell company, pretend to be buying it for harmless electronics, which is really a front for Raytheon.

If China finds out and busts it, just create another shell company and hide the connection better...

Click to expand...

There's a lot less buyers for pure Ga than there are for random microcontrollers for dishwashers and washing machines.

You can buy 500k scrap dishwashers as "simple scrap appliance dealer" that have an intact chip, reprogram it as a missile seeker, np np. Or "I am simple appliance repairman, I need 500k boards for this dishwasher"

Who buys 50 tons of pure gallium???

FairAndUnbiased said:

There's a lot less buyers for pure Ga than there are for random microcontrollers for dishwashers and washing machines.

You can buy 500k scrap dishwashers as "simple scrap appliance dealer" that have an intact chip, reprogram it as a missile seeker, np np. Or "I am simple appliance repairman, I need 500k boards for this dishwasher"

Who buys 50 tons of pure gallium???

Click to expand...

Good point,

Still, I think it's something to consider.

HighGround said:

Can't they just smuggle it in the way Russia does with semiconductors?

Make a shell company, pretend to be buying it for harmless electronics, which is really a front for Raytheon.

If China finds out and busts it, just create another shell company and hide the connection better...

Click to expand...

You can implement your licensing system such that licenses will only be granted to entities for which there exist an established business history for gallium exports (i.e., there were business transactions conducted for the export of gallium to them). Since that wouldn't apply to shell companies unless somebody hacked the databases and added entries for them, only existing customers could be granted licenses in theory. And then you can add that any diversion beyond the buyer to an end-user who is subject to a ban (i.e., Raytheon) would result in revocation of the license.

Now of course there will always be leakage, as @FairAndUnbiased due to the limited customer pool and volumes the costs will be higher. This makes transactions easier to monitor and control whereas for general purposes chips alot of business goes through wholesalers and distributors in huge volumes so siphoning through degrees of separation from the end user is more straightforward.

SEMICON CHINA, equipment and material companies support the development of semiconductors.​

1. Nanjing Yili Xinchuang Semiconductor Technology Co., Ltd.
In this SEMICON, Nili Xinchuang exhibited a whole series of defoaming product families represented by vacuum pressure defoaming system and wafer-level vacuum lamination system, intelligent packaging defoaming equipment and vacuum lamination equipment.

2. Festo (China) Co., Ltd.
Festo itself is involved in fields such as semiconductors, solar energy, biotechnology and pharmaceuticals, chemicals, water treatment, food and packaging industries, as well as rapidly developing medical technology and laboratory automation.

3. Heraeus Group
At this SEMICON, Heraeus’ products worthy of attention include water-soluble zero-halogen adhesive flux AP500X, and electromagnetic shielding solutions for 5G technology.

4. Drow Semiconductor
Zall's products mainly focus on chip sorting machines, automatic MGP plastic packaging Molding, SSC module trim form systems and other equipment. Among them, the high-speed and high-precision chip sorter can support 0.3*0.3~25*25mm chips, the highest UPH14000, the equipment accuracy is ±10um, and the angle is ±0.5°.

5. Mettler Toledo Technology (China) Co., Ltd.
METTLER TOLEDO's products in the field of semiconductors include solutions for the semiconductor industry in testing laboratories, PowerCellPDX digital weighing modules + RapidCal rapid calibration device combinations, and solutions at the factory and process levels.

6. Anhui Naike Equipment Technology Co., Ltd.
Anhui Naike Equipment is mainly engaged in the R&D, production and sales of intelligent manufacturing equipment used in the fields of plastic extrusion molding and semiconductor packaging.

7. Shanghai Guangchuan Technology Co., Ltd.
Guangchuan Technology is a Chinese-controlled high-tech enterprise jointly invested and established by Shenyang Fuchuang and Yaskawa Group, focusing on the research and development, manufacturing and sales of semiconductor robots and complete sets of transmission equipment. Products cover semiconductor wafer transfer atmospheric robot, semiconductor wafer transfer vacuum robot, semiconductor equipment front-end automation equipment EFEM, Sorter, vacuum platform, motion control and a complete set of wafer transfer solutions.

8. Upward Software (Shanghai) Co., Ltd.
This time semicon Shangyang Software presented its myCIM semiconductor CIM full-stack solution and Fully Auto CIM solution..

9. Shanghai Guona Semiconductor Technology Co., Ltd.
Ye Ying, the founder of Gona Semiconductor, introduced the Gona booth. Gona focuses on the segmented field of "wafer transfer". During SEMICON, Gona demonstrated its leading position in the fields of wafer front-end transfer module (EFEM), wafer sorter (SORTER), wafer storage system (STOCKER), and shared the latest research results and technological innovations.

10. Suzhou Huaxing Yuanchuang Technology Co., Ltd.
During this SEMICON, Huaxing Yuanchuang demonstrated SoC test solutions and PXIe platform detection solutions. It is worth noting that the T7600 SoC tester is an ultra-large-scale digital-analog hybrid test device, which adopts the latest chip technology and repeated simulation and optimization.

11. Shenzhen Liande Semiconductor Technology Co., Ltd.
At this SEMICON, Liande Semiconductor exhibited high-speed eutectic machines, soft solder die bonding machines, Mini LED wafer expanders, QFN lead frame front film attachers, etc. According to reports, Liande Semiconductor has deeply cultivated and laid out the five core technologies of "visual optics, artificial intelligence, precision machinery, software development, and electrical design".

12. Sidian Semiconductor Equipment (Shenzhen) Co., Ltd.
Silicon Electric exhibited a new generation of self-developed 12-inch automatic probe station-PT-930 and 8-inch automatic probe station-PT-9200.

13. CETC Electronic Equipment Group Co., Ltd.
At this exhibition, Dianke Equipment concentratedly displayed key core equipment such as ion implanters, chemical mechanical polishing, wet cleaning, vertical furnaces, and thinning and scribing. Among them, a full range of ion implanter products such as medium beam current, large beam current, high energy and third-generation semiconductors have been formed, full coverage of 28nm process has been realized, 300mm chemical mechanical polishing equipment has entered the mainstream production line, high-performance wafer cleaning and drying technology has reached the international advanced level, wet-process whole-line equipment has reached a new level, thinning equipment has successfully achieved ultra-precision grinding of silicon carbide wafers below 100 microns,

14. Kulicke & Soffa
K&S released the POWERCOMMTM POWERNEXXTM new generation ball welding machine and several consumable products at this exhibition; displayed the AsterionTM wedge welding machine with HPI high-power interconnection function;

paiemon said:

You can implement your licensing system such that licenses will only be granted to entities for which there exist an established business history for gallium exports (i.e., there were business transactions conducted for the export of gallium to them). Since that wouldn't apply to shell companies unless somebody hacked the databases and added entries for them, only existing customers could be granted licenses in theory. And then you can add that any diversion beyond the buyer to an end-user who is subject to a ban (i.e., Raytheon) would result in revocation of the license.

Now of course there will always be leakage, as @FairAndUnbiased due to the limited customer pool and volumes the costs will be higher. This makes transactions easier to monitor and control whereas for general purposes chips alot of business goes through wholesalers and distributors in huge volumes so siphoning through degrees of separation from the end user is more straightforward.

Click to expand...

It really depends on how tough they want to enforce this. Again, here are the largest GaA wafer producers

Top chart is more important since that's the substrate wafer producers. Japan is close to 80% of that. You do a complete cut off to Japan & AXT (which owns Tongmei) from getting GaA wafers, you are basically down to just the 15% for German company Freiberger. And then you work with Freiberger and establish the end users that are allow to get GaA wafers. Maybe have inspectors in their factory. If they sell any GaA to Japanese & American companies, then they can't source Ga fro China anymore. Over night, you destroy the Japanese dominated GaA supply chain.


On the other end, top 5 in there of GaA RF front end IDMs are all American. If China is actually trying to hit this hard, then it should ban all Ga export to GaA substrate & epitaxy makers. Because all the end users outside of China are American

Then Guobo electronics can come out of this being the main GaA RF provider for 5G stations & such and dominate the market. Who cares what happens to Qorvo & skyworks. If they go bankrupt, it would be a great victory for China