The Innovusion Falcon lidar which is used by nio has a very different working pattern compared with the same product from robosense or hesai. It use only one laser laucher and two rotating mirror to change the angle of laser. According to Innovusion's propaganda, by precisely controlling the rotating speed of the two mirror, this lidar can control the lidar point cloud density (or resolution, in other words) . This function makes lidar focus on the region of interest(ROI). I guess that's why they need a new soc for lidar
Chinese semiconductor industry
- Thread starter Hendrik_2000
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Qualcomm still have way too many clients at Xiaomi, Oppo, and other such companies.
Unisoc really needs to up their game. Even if they want to stick to lower end chips, not having any chip with the Cortex A510 is clearly backwards. The performance uplift of going from 2-wide to 3-wide is huge.
At one point Unisoc had success in the low end of the market with chips like the 8-core SC9863 with 8x Cortex A55 chips. You would think something with 8x Cortex A510 would be big in the low end. But they have nothing like it. And the higher end offers are just plain dismal.
Unisoc really needs to up their game. Even if they want to stick to lower end chips, not having any chip with the Cortex A510 is clearly backwards. The performance uplift of going from 2-wide to 3-wide is huge.
At one point Unisoc had success in the low end of the market with chips like the 8-core SC9863 with 8x Cortex A55 chips. You would think something with 8x Cortex A510 would be big in the low end. But they have nothing like it. And the higher end offers are just plain dismal.
It is a breakthrough. For reference the best logic process in the US is 7nm with DUV at Intel.
SMIC basically reached parity with Intel which is the leader in logic manufacture in the US.
Globalfoundries, also in the US, is still stuck at 12nm and stopped investing into further advanced process development.
Only Samsung and TSMC use EUV machines and can manufacture at 5nm or better. Those factories which use EUV are in Taiwan and South Korea. I hear claims that SMIC is two generations behind. But that is also bullshit. SMIC is like a generation and a half behind TSMC. TSMC is at like 4nm which is a half node after 5nm. And if you look at the latest US chip designs, most are still using TSMC 5nm, be it AMD Zen 4, or Apple A16. Intel claims they will start using EUV and catch up with TSMC, but they have failed at process development over the last half decade, so who knows if they will deliver anytime soon.
Also, claims that China is behind the US in chip design are also, I think, basically BS. As can be seen by Huawei's HiSilicon subsidiary designing their own high end ARM cores and GPU, and Alibaba designing their own advanced CPU cores. For example the most advanced RISC-V chip you can actually buy in the market right now in volume is the Alibaba T-Head TH1520 in the Lichee Pi 4A. It uses T-Head's own C910 RISC-V core. And it even comes with its own vendor specific instructions.
SMIC basically reached parity with Intel which is the leader in logic manufacture in the US.
Globalfoundries, also in the US, is still stuck at 12nm and stopped investing into further advanced process development.
Only Samsung and TSMC use EUV machines and can manufacture at 5nm or better. Those factories which use EUV are in Taiwan and South Korea. I hear claims that SMIC is two generations behind. But that is also bullshit. SMIC is like a generation and a half behind TSMC. TSMC is at like 4nm which is a half node after 5nm. And if you look at the latest US chip designs, most are still using TSMC 5nm, be it AMD Zen 4, or Apple A16. Intel claims they will start using EUV and catch up with TSMC, but they have failed at process development over the last half decade, so who knows if they will deliver anytime soon.
Also, claims that China is behind the US in chip design are also, I think, basically BS. As can be seen by Huawei's HiSilicon subsidiary designing their own high end ARM cores and GPU, and Alibaba designing their own advanced CPU cores. For example the most advanced RISC-V chip you can actually buy in the market right now in volume is the Alibaba T-Head TH1520 in the Lichee Pi 4A. It uses T-Head's own C910 RISC-V core. And it even comes with its own vendor specific instructions.
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4nm is a glorified 5nm, I'm waiting for SMIC N+3 news next year.
I still predict by 2026 only the Chinese (Beijing and Taipei) will be producing a 3nm and 2nm Chip.Why would SMIC and Huawei do things in secrecy now？Like hide revenue by node process on quarterly report now. Why SMIC never announce that they can do 7nm？Why SMIC took down 14nm from their website？Why Huawei hide 5G infor on Mate60pro？
If they don't need anything from the US anymore，why would they behave like this？Apparently they can not completely break free from US inputs as of now.
This seems incredibly brittle to me. Don't these new machines need maintenance/spare parts?
They are betting their current expansion on gear that can brick out tomorrow morning, sneaking through loopholes of the current US rules (i.e. 18.7nm instead of 18nm)....I really hope they know what they are doing.
OTH we can infer from this expansion that they already have enough ASML machines, otherwise expansion would be impossible.
Things don't break just like that. I also heard people claim that commercial aircraft needed regular maintenance, and that the Russians wouldn't be able to maintain their aircraft. The truth is they coped. Heck, Iran is still using commercial Airbus A300 aircraft after decades of sanctions and can still fly their US made F-14 Tomcats.
I am pretty sure Huawei and SMIC would not have gotten into this if they weren't pretty sure they could run the lines even in sanctions conditions. SMIC has plenty of other things they could be doing under the radar which would still load the factories. They basically insulated themselves by adding lots of plausible deniability because, let's face it, Huawei and SMIC still have other business which still relies on foreign inputs. But the US overestimates itself. And it is pathetic of them to think that China cannot replicate what Japan did, i.e. make their own wholly complete semi tools chain.
Where the US still holds the edge is in the design tools (EDA) software market. But I suspect that will also be a matter of time. It is all a matter of critical mass and first mover advantage. But right now there are a load of chip design companies in China, and the market is huge.
I am pretty sure Huawei and SMIC would not have gotten into this if they weren't pretty sure they could run the lines even in sanctions conditions. SMIC has plenty of other things they could be doing under the radar which would still load the factories. They basically insulated themselves by adding lots of plausible deniability because, let's face it, Huawei and SMIC still have other business which still relies on foreign inputs. But the US overestimates itself. And it is pathetic of them to think that China cannot replicate what Japan did, i.e. make their own wholly complete semi tools chain.
Where the US still holds the edge is in the design tools (EDA) software market. But I suspect that will also be a matter of time. It is all a matter of critical mass and first mover advantage. But right now there are a load of chip design companies in China, and the market is huge.
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Maintenance service is not magic. A lot of second-hand machines are not maintained by their manufacturers.
For example, the company below is selling second-hand photolithography & photolithography refresh and maintenance service
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