Chinese semiconductor industry

tokenanalyst said:

It would be like going back the era of contact lithography but I don't know all the details and what workarounds they are making.

In other news I find interesting that china have mask writers for advanced process nodes.

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on the other hand, who is Shanghai Chuangxiao. I seem to have seen their name in several places by now.

measuredingabens said:

SSMB should be able to be used for X-ray lithography as well, but the main problem boils down to photoresists than the actual scanners.

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Maybe we should just be ignoring what this guy has to say.

tonyget said:

No HBM either，could be problem for AI application

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it's a lot easier probably to source HBM for AI applications, since the quantity is so much lower than 60million you would need for Huawei phones next year.

I'm sure it will be difficult, but Huawei must have enough stocked up or sourcing through back channels for a while.
and after that, it will just have to deal with slower DRAMs I guess.

Theoretically speaking, you should be able to get to 1a without EUV (Micron has done that), but CXMT as of now is stuck on 1x. Maybe once it finishes validating AMEC equipment, it will also be ready for 17nm (1y)

IIRC, CXMT was planning on getting to DDR5 with 17nm DRAM?

tokenanalyst said:

I think ASML was almost able to ship EUV tools to China because the threshold of US technology was not high enough to trigger export controls but the Trump administration was able to convince the Dutch goverment to stop the shipments.

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There was a suspicious fire in ASML’s factory in Berlin in early 2022. Iirc, there were some industry comments that ASML was about to ship some DUVs over to China but the sale ended with the fire.

Pendemic said:

There was a suspicious fire in ASML’s factory in Berlin in early 2022. Iirc, there were some industry comments that ASML was about to ship some DUVs over to China but the sale ended with the fire.

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Actually, I believe it was rumored they were about to ship the first EUV over. Your link somewhat suggests this may have been true:

"As to EUV, the fire affected part of the production area of the wafer clamp, a module in our EUV systems. We are still in the process of completing the recovery plan for this production area and determining how to minimize any potential impact for our EUV customers, both in our output plan and in our field service."

Professor at Tsinghua University talks about SSMB-EUV

CMP said:

Actually, I believe it was rumored they were about to ship the first EUV over. Your link somewhat suggests this may have been true:

"As to EUV, the fire affected part of the production area of the wafer clamp, a module in our EUV systems. We are still in the process of completing the recovery plan for this production area and determining how to minimize any potential impact for our EUV customers, both in our output plan and in our field service."

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You are mixing two different fires. The one Pendemic is taking about is from 2022.

The one that prevented SMIC EUV machine happened in 2018. SMIC ordered the EUV in 2018. US started pressuring the Dutch as soon as SMIC gave the order. But ASML was on track to deliver the machine to SMIC in early 2019. Then the fire happened in December 2018 and ASML announced that all EUV machines for 2019 delivery has been delayed due to the incident. Then few months into 2019 the US was successful in forcing the Dutch to implement the ban.

horse said:

To me, it not about winning or losing the chip war, as it is really just ineffective. Whatever the Americans wanted to get out of that, it just won't happen.

Here is a video from 8 months ago, which I think is creditable source, at least this time. Simple point is that whatever the American chip can do, the Chinese can do too.

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puffffff.
Well, in term of AI speed is good but memory, bandwidth and above all the ecosystem is what matters. Nvidia chips are good but their proprietary software ecosystems is bar to none that is why they have a monopoly in this stuff.
If Nvidia chips get totally banned from the Chinese market maybe that could give some room for growth for a new software stack ecosystem around Chinese GPUs.

Is there any update on EUV speculum in China？

Total investment is 2 billion! Luxin Semiconductor Mask R&D and Industrialization Base was officially signed​

According to " Suzhou Release" news, on September 2, the Suzhou Municipal Party Committee and Municipal Government held a promotion meeting. At the meeting, Luxin Semiconductor Mask R&D and Industrialization Base was signed and settled in Suzhou Industrial Park.
It is understood that the total investment of the project is expected to be RMB 2 billion. The project company will rely on Luwei Optoelectronics' technical foundation in the mask field to delve deeply into the semiconductor mask field and build a semiconductor mask production line for the 130nm-28nm process node.
Public information shows that Jiangsu Luxin Semiconductor Technology Co., Ltd. is a semiconductor mask R&D manufacturer, mainly engaged in the R&D and production of semiconductor masks and other related semiconductor devices. Build a semiconductor mask production line with 130nm-28nm process nodes.

olalavn said:

when i read this it made me laugh... they are like a kid whose toy is taken away from them

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Huawei and SMIC did something incredible, but the accusations from the US aren't untrue, are they? How clean from american products do you believe the supply chain for the kirin 9000S is? Maybe the majority of tools are domestic, Japanese and ASML, but it seems hard to believe that there isn't a single American piece of equipment in the supply chain.

If that's the case, then they have broken american law, for which I applaud them, as american law doesn't apply in China and imposing foreign sanctions is probably illegal under Chinese law. Nevertheless, the senators aren't wrong that Huawei and SMIC haven't obeyed american sanctions and it's therefore justified to cut them off completely from any american tools

Minm said:

Huawei and SMIC did something incredible, but the accusations from the US aren't untrue, are they? How clean from american products do you believe the supply chain for the kirin 9000S is? Maybe the majority of tools are domestic, Japanese and ASML, but it seems hard to believe that there isn't a single American piece of equipment in the supply chain.

If that's the case, then they have broken american law, for which I applaud them, as american law doesn't apply in China and imposing foreign sanctions is probably illegal under Chinese law. Nevertheless, the senators aren't wrong that Huawei and SMIC haven't obeyed american sanctions and it's therefore justified to cut them off completely from any american tools

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If they have it wouldn’t be anything flagrant I think. Huawei took care to use stocked Hynix for the latest phones, that’s how careful they are to work around the sanctions.