Chinese semiconductor industry

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tokenanalyst

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Accelerate the research and development layout of third-generation compound semiconductor equipment! Bangxin Semiconductor completed Series B financing​


On October 14, according to Zhongnan Venture Capital Fund, Bangxin Semiconductor recently completed Series B financing. This financing is aimed at accelerating the research and development layout of third-generation compound semiconductor equipment and promoting the company to move towards the manufacturing of characteristic processes and advanced process equipment.

Bangxin Semiconductor focuses on providing cost-effective equipment R&D, manufacturing and entire life cycle solutions for the integrated circuit and broad semiconductor industries. The company focuses on the field of third-generation compound semiconductors and has developed many products with independent intellectual property rights, such as 6/8-inch etching machine (HongHu Coral150D/200D) and 6/8-inch tungsten thin film deposition equipment (HongHu TSG150W/200W). In addition, Bangxin is also committed to the research and development and industrialization of plasma glue removal equipment, and successfully launched the domestic 12-inch glue removal machine equipment (QiJi Spinel300A). These products have been put into use on the client side and achieved large-scale production. Its advanced process ultra-low damage glue removal equipment (QiJi Spinel300E) solves key technical problems and fills the domestic equipment gap in the domestic market demand in this field.

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Driven by this round of investment, Bangxin Semiconductor will be committed to realizing the vision of "high-end leadership, innovative excellence, and high-quality development". The company plans to build a leading domestic large-scale advanced process and specialty process manufacturing center, the world's top integrated circuit equipment technology innovation center, and a sales and after-sales service center with quick response and efficient processing. This will help Bangxin Semiconductor quickly become a new power source for the integrated circuit industry in the future.

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mossen

mossen

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I take the words of the CEO of ASML seriously and he has categorically stated that these export bans will only speed up China's fullstack replacement efforts. How long it will take is anybody's guess. But what is clear is that at every turn, any Chinese company that uses US tech after finding a new loophole invariably gets punished for doing it. Beatings will continue until moral (or lessons learned) improves.
 
Phead128

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KYli said:
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I am visiting China now and I bought a Mate 60 Pro.

My wife who is an iPhone Fan Girl since 2008 decided to take MY sanction-proof Mate 60 pro as her primary phone. She really likes the Mate 60 pro once she got used the interface. The camera is really neat and good for selfies.

For real, if Huawei can convert a Apple Fan Girl, it is no wonder Huawei is doubling sales targets for next year. I am not surprised to see reports of iPhone 15 falling behind Mate 60, the Huawei store is jammed packed, it was a long wait list to buy a phone. Still worth every penny to support SMIC and Huawei.

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Huawei has now taken the top spot in the market from Apple, Jefferies wrote in a note on Monday.
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“The trend suggests iPhone would lose to Huawei in 2024,” Lee and colleagues wrote.
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Exactly. Our household is living proof of this trend.
 
tphuang

tphuang

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Franklin said:
Does Huawei have a exclusive contract or agreement with SMIC for their 7nm production. If not then they have to wait in line like everyone else.

And as 7nm failure rate goes down and new production line goes up there will be new capacity to serve more clients.
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Does it matter? They pay a lot of money & work intimately with SMIC to improve their processes. There is of course the chance that some capacity gets freed up for Phytium, Loongson & domestic GPU producers, but also a pretty good chance Huawei just take on any additional capacity. If you are SMIC, do you go allocate precious capacity with a process that already generates good yield or one that is still getting taped out and performance might not be as good as ones produced w/ TSMC. Or if there is a mix, how much gets spared for other chip designers? We are so far away from having enough 7nm production.

Phead128 said:
I am visiting China now and I bought a Mate 60 Pro.

My wife who is an iPhone Fan Girl since 2008 decided to take MY sanction-proof Mate 60 pro as her primary phone. She really likes the Mate 60 pro once she got used the interface. The camera is really neat and good for selfies.

For real, if Huawei can convert a Apple Fan Girl, it is no wonder Huawei is doubling sales targets for next year. I am not surprised to see reports of iPhone 15 falling behind Mate 60, the Huawei store is jammed packed, it was a long wait list to buy a phone. Still worth every penny to support SMIC and Huawei.

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Exactly.
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btw, we don't need to keep repeating Huawei is doing well and Apple is doing badly. Let's wait for a couple of months of sales data to go through. After all, iPhone still outside Huawei in the most recent reported week
 
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tokenanalyst

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-They ban EUV.
-Then they complain EUV is not enough, they want a ban on immersion too.
-Holland export controlled the 2100i, 2050i and the 2000i series of scanners.
-not enough, they want to include the 1980i too.

-They ban tools for 28nm below nodes or whatever that means.
-Then they complain China will take over the mature chips market, now they want to ban tools for 28nm+ nodes or as someone said ban all tools for 300mm wafers.

-They banned the sales of Nvidia H100 so Nvidia launched the H800 to be in compliance with the export controls.
-Now they want to ban the H800 just months since they announced their own rules. AFTER NVIDIA MADE AN MULTI MILLION DOLLAR INVESTMENT ON PRODUCING THE H800.

-The threatened Holland and Japan with unilateral export controls if they dont impose their own controls, so these countries worked for months trying to coming on with their own set of rules.
-Now result that if rumors are real is probably that the US will go unilateral anyways, that they will require third countries companies that use any amount of US parts to summit for a license and probably could extend even to servicing, so Japanese and Dutch officials wasted their time.

The big problem is the uncertainty of these rules, this is not coded rules like ITAR or EAR or Wassenaar, that you can go to a book and see if your product fall is some category, this looks like rules made by toddlers that don't know better.

I think Chinese companies should consider that everything is already banned and non US companies need to diversify their supply chain beyond the US by trying to create US-Free products, maybe incorporating more Chinese made components, that they could sell in other markets. And if people think that this have never happened before I have two words: ITAR-Free
 
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gelgoog

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tphuang said:
this is becoming a real problem in China now. SMIC capacity is limited and Huawei is hogging it due to all this smartphone demand. So, we will see if Biren, Meta-X or Kunlun can get their design fabbed there
btw, this is not restricted to AI chips btw. how does other chip designers get access to SMIC capacities?
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SMIC will have to make a delicate balancing act trying to serve incoming customers. At this time they could likely use their entire production just serving HiSilicon. Had more Chinese chip design companies targeted SMIC's processes earlier maybe they could have ramped up production of advanced nodes by now. You have to remember that SMIC basically ended up postponing the expansion of their 14nm FinFET fab due to lack of demand and later, because of the US sanctions on tools, the expansion of advanced nodes was cancelled altogether.

tokenanalyst said:
Samsung is losing their Chinese clients that are "de-risking" by localizing their production and we are not talking about advanced process nodes, we are talking 8" wafers lines, like sensors, power ICs, controllers and so on. ...
In contrast, the 8-inch wafer utilization rate of Chinese semiconductor factories is expected to rise against the trend. TrendForce predicts that Huahong Semiconductor (HHGrace)'s 8-inch wafer utilization rate will reach 80% to 90% in 2024. Mainly Benefiting from the U.S.'s severe sanctions on China's semiconductor industry, China is forced to accelerate the localization of chips.
Samsung has an 8-inch wafer fab at Giheung Campus in Yongin City, Gyeonggi-do, South Korea. It can produce more than 200,000 8-inch wafers per month for driver ICs, CMOS image sensors and power management ICs. and other chips with low computing requirements.
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It is likely not just Hua Hong that is stealing market share from Samsung. All sorts of Chinese foundries on older processes have cropped up over the past 5 years including Nexchip.

Nexchip was able to produce 100,000 wafers per month (300mm) in late 2021:
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100,000 wafers with 300mm diameter are roughly equivalent to 225,000 wafers with 200mm diameter. So just Nexchip can out produce that Samsung fab. Nexchip produces driver ICs.

CanSemi and CRMicro are other recently expanded foundries. Those produce power management ICs.

Even with regards to Hua Hong there is the Wuxi fab which is a 300mm wafer fab running older processes which is likely way more competitive in cost than the 200mm wafer fabs. And the article doesn't even mention it.

SanWenYu said:
I don't know. Given that T-Head claims by 2020 they had shipped 2 billions of it, I think Xuantie is not in the same category of AI chips such as Ascend 910.

In the chip's home page I did not see more recent numbers of how many have been shipped, I do wonder if something did happen.
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I think most of those T-Head Xuantie RISC-V cores are in IoT devices and it is used in payment terminals as well. That is where those 2 billions come from. But there are several Xuantie core designs, and since the core design is open source, other companies produce chips with those cores as well. For example the most widely available relatively high performance Xuantie RISC-V chip is the Allwinner D1.
 
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HighGround

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mossen said:
I take the words of the CEO of ASML seriously and he has categorically stated that these export bans will only speed up China's fullstack replacement efforts. How long it will take is anybody's guess. But what is clear is that at every turn, any Chinese company that uses US tech after finding a new loophole invariably gets punished for doing it. Beatings will continue until moral (or lessons learned) improves.
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The last 2+ years have proved that China has made a commitment to secure the entire semiconductor supply chains. I don't think additional sanctions really add anything significant in terms of "incentives". What new sanctions accomplish though, is slowing China down and inflicting short-term pain. So I really don't know why everyone is reacting to additional sanctions with a bit of glee when it's obvious that it's going to hurt Chinese companies.
 
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gelgoog

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Actually I would say that in several cases the Chinese semi industry isn't moving fast enough. The tools and materials sector is especially weak. And this is not just for ICs but also display panels and the like. While several of these companies have now finally got financing from the Chinese stock market recently a lot of these projects are still not operational.

There are problems in IC manufacture with more than lithography tools, although that is just the most visible issue, lack of production of ArF photoresist in anything more than test batches is another problem, and there are likely issues with other supplies as well. Even in sectors where the materials industry is relatively strong, like with 300mm wafers, China still is not self-sufficient.
 
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latenlazy

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gelgoog said:
Actually I would say that in several cases the Chinese semi industry isn't moving fast enough. The tools and materials sector is especially weak. And this is not just for ICs but also display panels and the like. While several of these companies have now finally got financing from the Chinese stock market recently a lot of these projects are still not operational.

There are problems in IC manufacture with more than lithography tools, although that is just the most visible issue, lack of production of ArF photoresist in anything more than test batches is another problem, and there are likely issues with other supplies as well. Even in sectors where the materials industry is relatively strong, like with 300mm wafers, China still is not self-sufficient.
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Build a skyscraper in a year and they’ll demand it be built in 6 months.
 
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