Chinese semiconductor industry

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tphuang

tphuang

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tonyget said:
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Samsung SDI Files Lawsuit against China’s BOE in US for Trade Secret Infringement​


Samsung Display filed a complaint with the U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC) against China’s BOE, the world’s largest liquid crystal display (LCD) panel maker and Samsung Display’s largest display competitor. Samsung Display claims BOE stole its technology. This is separate from an ongoing patent infringement lawsuit.

According to the display industry on Nov. 2, Samsung Display filed a complaint against BOE and eight other companies including BOE’s subsidiaries with the U.S. ITC on Oct. 31 (local time) for trade secret infringement.

Trade secret infringement is not the unauthorized utilization of disclosed technology like patent infringement, but a theft of technology through partners and current and former employees.

In its complaint, Samsung Display alleged that BOE has infringed upon trade secrets related to Samsung Display’s organic light-emitting diode (OLED) panel and module technology through Samsung Display’s partner company Toptec since late 2017.

In March, the Suwon High Court convicted 11 Toptec employees of leaking Samsung Display’s trade secrets. During the trial, Chinese companies such as BOE were mentioned as potential customers of Toptech.

Samsung Display filed a complaint with the U.S. ITC against China’s BOE for leaking trade secrets because it found evidence that Chinese companies such as BOE were involved in the process of leaking trade secrets from its partner company, Toptech, analysts say.

According to sources in the display industry on Nov. 2, a number of Chinese companies were mentioned in a lawsuit against Toptech employees for allegedly leaking Samsung Display’s technology to China.

The equipment at issue in the case is an organic light-emitting diode (OLED) curved surface laminator, which plays a key role in realizing curved surfaces of smartphone flexible OLED panels. Although the equipment was made by Toptec, the production plan, core design, and structure were proposed by Samsung Display or jointly developed by the two companies together. The technology has been applied to the Galaxy S20 and Note series.

In 2018, the Suwon District Public Prosecutors’ Office indicted 11 Toptec executives for leaking technology overseas while exporting curved laminators to China. Toptec was already supplying the curved laminators to Samsung Display.

In March, the Suwon High Court convicted the executives in the second trial after they were acquitted in the first trial. In July, the Supreme Court confirmed an original verdict that sentenced a former Toptec CEO to three years in prison. During the trial, Chinese display panel companies including BOE, CSOT, Visionox, and Everdisplay were mentioned as potential customers of Toptec’s OLED curved surface laminators.

Samsung Display filed a complaint against BOE with the U.S. ITC for leaking trade secrets because the trial in Korea resulted in a guilty verdict and revealed involvements of Chinese companies such as BOE in the process, legal experts say. The Korean display giant claims that this is malicious technology theft by BOE. In Korea, there are growing concerns about such trade secret infringements by Chinese companies.

In filing the lawsuit, Samsung Display reportedly claimed that BOE is also infringing upon its trade secrets by hiring Korean engineers.

Samsung Display also has a separate patent infringement lawsuit against BOE. The company filed a complaint with the ITC against parts wholesalers, alleging that after-sales service (A/S) panels for smartphones distributed in the United States infringed upon Samsung Display’s diamond pixel patent. The patent infringement case began in earnest in February when BOE voluntarily agreed on investigations.

In June, BOE filed an inter partes review (IPR) suit with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office against five of Samsung Display’s patents, and Samsung Display responded by filing patent infringement lawsuits in the U.S. Eastern District of Texas and a Chinese court.
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Samsung getting nervous because Chinese OEMs have switched to using domestic OLED solutions outside of a few stragglers.

This is why I tell people to not be concerned about OEMs using foreign suppliers. First, win market share and then work in domestic supply chain.

People don't realize how much companies like Huawei and xiaomi invest in domestic supply chain startups
 
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Didida

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How to spin a positive news to a negative one?

YMTC just secured $2bn fundings. Good news for them, right? Not to MSM of course. How to try to report it in a negative way? Here are the top news titles pushed by Google News today:
  • FT: Costs of US chip curbs force China's YMTC into major fundraising round
  • DIGITIMES: YMTC keeps spending spree to catch up with Korea-based competitors amid US sanctions
  • Hong Kong Standard: Clamp forces YMTC to raise fresh funds
I politely asked ChatGPT to create some positive titles and I’m not disappointed:
  • “China’s YMTC Bolsters Innovation and Global Competitiveness with $2bn Funding Surge”
  • "YMTC's Strategic Fundraising Empowers Breakthroughs and Global Expansion in Semiconductor Industry"
  • "YMTC Secures $2bn Boost for Semiconductor Leadership"
Until we see the titles like above, long way to go for China technology PR.
 
G

gelgoog

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Didida said:
YMTC just secured $2bn fundings. Good news for them, right? Not to MSM of course. How to try to report it in a negative way? Here are the top news titles pushed by Google News today:
  • FT: Costs of US chip curbs force China's YMTC into major fundraising round
  • DIGITIMES: YMTC keeps spending spree to catch up with Korea-based competitors amid US sanctions
  • Hong Kong Standard: Clamp forces YMTC to raise fresh funds
Click to expand...
These articles are totally retarded. YMTC is building their fab expansion which will double their production capacity from 100,000 wafers per month to 200,000 wafers per month. The second fab building is ready and now they need to fill it with machine tools. Of course this costs a massive amount of money.
 
T

tokenanalyst

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​

Domestic advanced packaging equipment supplier Yuanzhuo Microna plans to A-share IPO​


According to disclosures, Yuanzhuo Microna was established in October 2016 and signed a listing guidance agreement with CICC on July 10, 2023.
Recently, Yuanzhuo Microna launched the DPM-06 measurement and exposure integrated equipment for advanced packaging applications. It adopts an innovative dual-table architecture, a self-developed real-time graphics compensation algorithm, and a high-precision position measurement system for fan-out packaging. The process solves the die shift problem and provides an overall solution.

Information shows that Yuanzhuo Micro Nano Technology (Suzhou) Co., Ltd. was founded by a number of senior technicians working in internationally renowned semiconductor equipment companies. It is a company focusing on the integration of LED, laser Light source technology and digital optical processing (DLP) technology are combined into high-tech companies in the fields of PCB&FPC, FPD, LED, solar energy, wafer, IC packaging and high-precision screen printing, focusing on the research and development and production of various types of digital optics (Digital- Step-Scan (DiSS for short) equipment and related components and devices.

Based on the original laser direct imaging technology (DI), the company's core R&D team has developed a new generation of digital exposure technology (DiSS) that can match the cost performance of film exposure machines, laying the foundation for comprehensive intelligent and clean and environmentally friendly production of the entire PCB industry exposure process! At the same time, we provide customers with digital exposure machine solutions that replace traditional exposure machines (film exposure machines) and are more precise, economical, efficient, intelligent and environmentally friendly.​

1699031691639.png

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tokenanalyst

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China’s chip equipment makers accelerate localization progress​

Chinese chip equipment makers are accelerating localization progress amid more competition and reversed globalization trend of the semiconductor industry, according to a JW Insights report on October 28.

The semiconductor equipment market is growing with the continuous expansion of the semiconductor market. Data shows that from 2017 to 2021, the global semiconductor equipment market increased from $56.6 billion to $102.6 billion, with a CAGR of 12.6%.
Despite the significant global economic downturn in 2022, the semiconductor equipment market still experienced slight growth. It reached $107.6 billion, with sales in China's mainland accounting for 26.3% of global sales, reaching $28.27 billion, surpassing Taiwan region (24.9%), South Korea (20%), and North America (9.7%).

The rapid localization of China's integrated circuit market is driving the domestic equipment industry. As a major producer and consumer of semiconductors globally, along with the construction boom of foundries and packaging and testing plants, the consumption of domestic equipment is enormous.

Wang Jian, CEO of ACM Research, recently said, “The market dominance of equipment companies from the US, Japan, and South Korea is due to their early advantages in economic and technological development. Chinese chip equipment companies are just starting to rise. With the most complete semiconductor industry chain in China, it is expected that they will make more advanced equipment.”
In the first half of this year, the revenue of several key listed companies showed stable growth with a rising trend, and the overall market size is gradually increasing.

Although China still does not have an advantage in areas such as lithography machines, it has performed well in inspection equipment, SMT, and cleaning equipment. The penetration rate of deposition equipment and etching equipment continues to increase.
From January to June this year, Chinese chipmaking equipment suppliers won over 50% of the domestic orders, showing a significant increase compared to the previous year, and the types of equipment are also gradually expanding.

Investment in the domestic equipment sector has also shown a rational and sustained trend seeing from this year's projects and financing. There is still considerable financial support for the domestic equipment sector, which is expected to sustain the industry's continuous development.

The total investment of equipment projects is nearly RMB30 billion ($4.1 billion) in the first half of 2023, an increase of about 30% compared to the same period in 2022, showing strong growth momentum, according to statistics from JW Insights.
At the same time, as of October this year, there have been more than 25 financing cases in the equipment sector with nearly RMB2.9 billion ($396.4 million).

In terms of investment direction, various parts have been covered including advanced packaging equipment, semiconductor front-end metrology equipment, coating and developing equipment, CD-SEM equipment, thin-film deposition equipment, and etching equipment.​
 
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paiemon

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gelgoog said:
These articles are totally retarded. YMTC is building their fab expansion which will double their production capacity from 100,000 wafers per month to 200,000 wafers per month. The second fab building is ready and now they need to fill it with machine tools. Of course this costs a massive amount of money.
Click to expand...
Assuming YMTC had sufficient capital on hand for their fab expansion from previous fundraising, injection of funds, etc that would have been based on prior assumptions of being able to build out the fab and processes prior to the additional export controls. Therefore, we should be more concerned if YMTC had not required additional injection of capital since it would raise the question regarding the viability of that expansion. The fact that they are raising additional funds is positive because they have a way forward to complete the expansion with alternative paths despite the headwinds, but obviously it will cost more $$$.
 
TK3600

TK3600

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What are people's thoughts on instruction sets? I see different approaches in China. For example: LoongSon chips.

They use their own instruction sets, and rely on translation/emulation(?) to run current softwares. This comes at a penalty to performance. While it is cool to have 100% domestic design, is it really needed? I could think of possible security benefits, but nothing useful for consumers.

Then we have Huawei's ARM based chips. Yes it is foriegn, and people can stop license new ones to you, but they cannot revoke existing license. Kirin chips can just keep modify ARMv8 and not use ARMv9.

Then we have Hygon chips. They have license from AMD. While they seem capable of improve on archetecture, they dont seem to modify instruction sets, like using AVX-512. I am not sure what is stopping them.

Lastly there is RISC-V. It has no existing ecosystem advantage, but it is open and less work to do. Open standards are hard to sanction so that is covered too.

Is there a good reason LoongSon rather stick to using their own instruction set despite the drawbacks?
 
BoraTas

BoraTas

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TK3600 said:
What are people's thoughts on instruction sets? I see different approaches in China. For example: LoongSon chips.

They use their own instruction sets, and rely on translation/emulation(?) to run current softwares. This comes at a penalty to performance. While it is cool to have 100% domestic design, is it really needed? I could think of possible security benefits, but nothing useful for consumers.

Then we have Huawei's ARM based chips. Yes it is foriegn, and people can stop license new ones to you, but they cannot revoke existing license. Kirin chips can just keep modify ARMv8 and not use ARMv9.

Then we have Hygon chips. They have license from AMD. While they seem capable of improve on archetecture, they dont seem to modify instruction sets, like using AVX-512. I am not sure what is stopping them.

Lastly there is RISC-V. It has no existing ecosystem advantage, but it is open and less work to do. Open standards are hard to sanction so that is covered too.

Is there a good reason LoongSon rather stick to using their own instruction set despite the drawbacks?
Click to expand...

Actual logic circuit designer here...

Instruction sets are more about compatibility nowadays. Cache-related things dominate both chip performance and die area. Instructions themselves are of less importance because you can easily integrate very complex instructions on a chip thanks to densities achieved by modern nodes. And the vast majority of the time the bottleneck is feeding cores with data and instructions (See: Von Neumann Bottleneck).

Considering it is the govt institutions who use them, there are probably LoongArch native OSes and software. According to Wiki, they have LLVM, GCC, Golang compiler extensions for LoongArch.

And yes, Huawei could modify the ARMv8. They have the advantage of also building the device and the OS. So incompatibility problems could be handled, I guess.
 
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