Chinese semiconductor industry

SMECS (中芯集成) has formed a new company 芯联动力 with investors including SAIC, XPeng, CATL, Sungrow & others

This is for a new JV producing SIC & other WBG semiconductor R&D & production

Total investment 500m RMB with SMECS contributing 255m and getting 51% controlling shares.

In SMECS's half year report, it reports its SIC MOSFET has already bene mass produced and start getting installed in cars.

current production is 2000 wpm with 90% yield. Expecting to see much expansion

It has also invested in a 2B RMB SiC project by 盛吉盛 (SGS Semi)

Maikeru said:

They really, seriously, need to get a new name for this chip or it will never sell outside China.

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How about Gas Hole 8676?


Looks like MSM have moved from the shock and denial phase to pain and guilt phase. Can’t wait for the anger phase to start. It’ll probably look something like this.

tphuang said:

I think this is probably a fake. If it's real, there would actually be an English article of this somewhere which I cannot find.

this is the only article I can find TechInsights commenting on this issue

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If he was certain this is 7nm or N+2, he probably would've said so.

More importantly, I don't quite understand why TechInsights would start attaching names like N+2 to SMIC process when previously it just said this is 7nm.

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They also made a Weibo post at that time, which they have now deleted. The first part of Weixin post was exactly same as the Weibo post. Weixin post had a title which says TechInsights confirm Huawei Mate 60 pro uses SMIC N+2 7nm process. The extra information in Weixin post was that they previously evaluated SMIC 7nm chip which used N+1, which was a Bitcoin chip so not as sophisticated as an SoC. And that they believe SMIC has made significant improvements since then. Then it just mentioned that they will release preliminary tear down report next week.

tphuang said:

yes, not sure how important this really is. I mean they already have 5G chips before. It's unclear to me what the reconfigurable part brings to the table.

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I think this is for small base stations. Your home or business can now have a 5G network with this chip, the signals of which can be received by HW’s new chip.

siegecrossbow said:

How about Gas Hole 8676?

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Looks like MSM have moved from the shock and denial phase to pain and guilt phase. Can’t wait for the anger phase to start. It’ll probably look something like this.

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I don't know why they are not sh1t ting bricks right now. The coverage in Western mainstream press has been very muted oblivious of the significance of Huawei's development.

That new Kirin chip that pushes 7nm like performance should be taken as a first gen product with more to come.

Next year's 2nd gen will push the envelope further and with the fast approaching physical limit of the silicon chip, there's no reason why 2025's Kirin will not rival whatever Apple chip can come out with.

Maikeru said:

They really, seriously, need to get a new name for this chip or it will never sell outside China.

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They could slightly modify the English name and call it Windbreaker instead.
It could be worse. Thet could have named it "Passing Gas"

siegecrossbow said:

View attachment 118022

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Where did you get these pictures? Weibo?
I pray for the poor soul who posted those pics.

1st half, SMECS made 2.52B RMB, up 24% YoY
lost 1.109B, mostly due to depreciation

They've built their operation up to be the largest auto grade IGBT foundry in China
It is also the largest and most technologically advanced MEMS foundry (I think they may well be the party fabbing BAW filters for HW 5G phones)

they now have 170k wpm capacity in their auto grade smart factory (or under construction???)
Their auto/industrial control IGBT production reached 80k wpm, 95% yield

NEV modules accounted for 51.86% of revenues
industrial control accounted for 29.6% of revenue

SMECS has goal of 120k wpm of IGBT production by end of year

gain, they plan for mass production of auto grade SiC chips. Currently, just have 2k wpm of SiC MOSFET

今年5月10日，中芯集成以每股发行价5.69元上市科创板，募资110亿元用于二期晶圆制造项目、MEMS和功率器件芯片制造及封装测试生产基地技术改造项目、中芯绍兴三期12英寸特色工艺晶圆制造中试线项目。对于当前业绩亏损情形，中芯集成预计，在满足一定假设条件基础上，公司将会在2026年实现公司层面盈利。

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SNECS Shaoxing phase 3 12-inch specialty process is under construction.
Anticipate achieving profitability in 2026
They raised 11B RMB for 2nd phase foundry construction, MEMS/power chipmaking/testing base improvement.

pevade said:

Where did you get these pictures? Weibo?
I pray for the poor soul who posted those pics.

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They were cropped from a video on bilibili that shows a tour of the clean room that has unfortunately been deleted.

tphuang said:

yes, not sure how important this really is. I mean they already have 5G chips before. It's unclear to me what the reconfigurable part brings to the table.

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It's probably a FPGA chip set, it's a pretty important first step compare previous ASIC chip set.