Chinese semiconductor industry

olalavn said:

Chinese semiconductor equipment manufacturers 1H23

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tphuang said:

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沃泰芯 (wotai semiconductor) launched their new fab. It apparently bought 60 equipments from abroad. When fully in production, this plant can produce 360 million VCSEL Laser chips/year

this project had 1B RMB investment. Will produce GaA VCSEL chips and Inp photodtector chips
used in optical communication systems, data centers, face recognition and Lidar

That's a lot of VCSEL chips

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此外，纵慧芯光还积极推动其VCSEL在汽车MEMS固态激光雷达 (LiDAR)领域的应用。2022年8月，纵慧芯光与SOSLAB合作开发了具有180度广角和远距离测量性能的ML LiDAR（移动LiDAR），突破了固态LiDAR在距离和角度上的限制。

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在Yole发布的2022年全球前10家头部激光雷达（LiDAR）公司中，其中有6家在和纵慧芯光定制开发汽车激光雷达用VCSEL芯片，并有两家开始了量产交付。纵慧芯光也成为亚洲首家、全球前二实现汽车前装激光雷达用VCSEL芯片批量交付的公司。截至目前，纵慧芯光在汽车电子市场已经有4款VCSEL产品完成开发认证，并在持续批量交付中。

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陈晓迟：纵慧芯光从2015年12月份成立，用了3年的时间对初代VCSEL产品进行开发，2017年开始市场推广工作，2018年产品正式导入终端客户，2019年开始大批量交付。截至目前，外延片产出超过9000片，超过国内其他VCSEL厂商之和，芯片的累计出货量超过9000万颗。

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陈晓迟：VCSEL作为一款车用新兴器件，在汽车上前装量产，还是最近两年的事情。激光雷达2022年装车量首次突破10万台，2023年将达到45万台，2024年有机会突破100万台。光源选择上，中近距离补盲激光雷达已经几乎全面选择VCSEL。远距离主激光雷达选择VCSEL的比例也越来越高，未来有望达到80%以上。虽然车用VCSEL市场增长快速，但是汽车客户对于新型器件是非常谨慎的，尤其是对待核心的光芯片，这些客户会要求VCSEL厂商具备大批量量产交付的经验，以证明自身具备车规产品量产交付的能力。

纵慧芯光当前交付芯片量已超过9000万颗，并且做到了零现场失效，这种量级的优良交付记录，成为纵慧芯光进入汽车电子市场的敲门砖。所以说想要进入汽车电子市场，如果没有实实在在的交付历史数据会非常困难，这也是为什么纵慧芯光能够成为全球头部车载激光雷达客户唯二的供应商选择。纵慧芯光也是当前国内唯一在量产交付的VCSEL厂商。

纵慧芯光三年前是国内第一家通过车规AEC-Q102产品认证的VCSEL公司，两年前又是国内第一家通过IATF16949汽车产品质量管理体系符合性认证的VCSEL公司。经过两年的车规产品量产出货，今年又成为国内第一家通过IATF16949正式认证（SGS发证）的VCSEL公司，管理体系范围覆盖外延设计和制造、封装、老化测试等。对于VCSEL类产品，交付一颗满足性能要求的产品有很多方式可以做到，但是要保证上百万颗、千万颗产品的批次稳定性和可靠性，满足汽车客户车载的严苛环境，上万小时老化后“零缺陷”要求，是一个非常大的挑战。

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ansy1968 said:

That's why Sir, I'm urging and cheering the US to implement more restriction we can deduced that local 7nm chip production (SMIC ASML) had been solve with most AI chip is based on this node, the problem is to produce it on scale. The current restriction on AI chip is a NO BRAINER, it may delay the Chinese until next year when the domestic 7nm line will be introduced and SMIC may have scale its production.

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tphuang said:

VCSEL is not easy. Couple of other domestic players:

Vertilite (纵慧芯光)

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They got investment from both Huawei and Xiaomi, delivered 100million VCSEL pieces by August, used in huawei, honor and Meizu phones
also used in Lidars

more from here

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Look at that 6 out of 10 top LiDAR firms is working with Vertilite for VCSEL chip delivery. Has already delivering to two of them. The 2nd firm in the world to start doing so. It has 4 VCSEL product in mass delivery

so they only started delivering in 2019 and have now produced 9000 wafers in total with 90 million chip delivered. That doesn't sound like a lot of wafers, but that's a high delivery count of chips. More than any other domestic firms
Usage also includes different phone sensors, AR/VR & robot vacuum
used for 400G, 800G optical cables in data centers

on auto Lidars. Says the lidar delivery will go from 100k in 2022 to 450k in 2023 to >1 million in 2024. Almost all near/mid distance blind spot lidar use VCSEL. the proportion of long range using VCSEL is also increasing (expecting to reach 80% of market)
A lot of testing required for auto grade product.
Vertilite is the only domestic company to mass deliver VCSEL for auto grade Lidar. Passed AEC-Q102 auto grade back 3 years ago. First to pass IATF16949 auto grade 2 years ago. This year, because the first in China to pass IATF16949 formal certification after 2 years of auto grade delivery. Covers production, packaging and testing.

btw, they went from 90m delivery in July to 100m delivery in aug, so that's 10m delivery in 1 month. product line is growing

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looks like huawei, xiaomi, DJI, BYD, Hesai and Robosense have all invested in Vertilite

Another VCSEL producer is Suzhou Everbright (长光华芯)
here is a good article on them, 10 years of hard work to get this into auto grade and ready for cars

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more from them here

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There is also CS Micro
威科赛乐微

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looks like they are the first start mass production of 660VCSEL chip. 660nm long wave. They can already produce 60m of this per year.

A pretty important field that Chinese firms seem to be getting good at really fast

looks like it can be used for display, sensing and searching

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ansy1968 said:

That's why Sir, I'm urging and cheering the US to implement more restriction we can deduced that local 7nm chip production (SMIC ASML) had been solve with most AI chip is based on this node, the problem is to produce it on scale. The current restriction on AI chip is a NO BRAINER, it may delay the Chinese until next year when the domestic 7nm line will be introduced and SMIC may have scale its production.

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olalavn said:

they can't stop China in everything... they just delay it for 6-9 months... China just lacks an ecosystem capable of competing with Nvidia's CUDA.
next year, there will be 7nm production line... currently some things are testing and debugging...

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The Interim Final Rule amends ECCN 3A090 and 4A090 and imposes additional licensing requirements for exports to China and Country Groups D1, D4, and D5 (including but not limited to Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Vietnam, but excluding Israel) of the Company’s integrated circuits exceeding certain performance thresholds (including but not limited to the A100, A800, H100, H800, L40, L40S, and RTX 4090). Any system that incorporates one or more of the covered integrated circuits (including but not limited to NVIDIA DGX and HGX systems) is also covered by the new licensing requirement. The licensing requirement includes future NVIDIA integrated circuits, boards, or systems classified with ECCN 3A090 or 4A090, achieving certain total processing performance and/or performance density.

The licensing requirement applies to the export of products classified ECCN 3A090 or 4A090 to a party headquartered in, or with an ultimate parent headquartered in, Country Group D5, including China.

The licensing requirement may impact the Company's ability to complete development of products in a timely manner, support existing customers of covered products, or supply customers of covered products outside the impacted regions, and may require the Company to transition certain operations out of one or more of the identified countries.

To the extent that a customer requires products covered by the new licensing requirements, the Company may seek a license for the customer but has no assurance that the USG will grant any exceptions or licenses, or that the USG will act on the request in a timely manner.

The Company’s third quarter of fiscal 2024 ends on October 29, 2023. The Interim Final Rule is effective thirty days after its publication. Given the strength of demand for our products worldwide, we do not anticipate that the additional restrictions will have a near-term meaningful impact on our financial results.

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