Chinese semiconductor industry

tokenanalyst said:

Well is a really good idea that they set the goal higher and benchmark against multiple ASML machines. If you design a CPU, you don't benchmark it against the worst ones but the best ones, that way the effort put into development is higher, even if was almost guaranteed that they will fail to reach that goal. So maybe is not as good as NXT:2000i but if the reached the last previous generation is a great achievement.​

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Agreed. There is an established science behind setting lofty and ambitious goals which motivates the engineers to work harder

A good example would be with Elon's companies with
Tesla in tranforming to a green world
SpaceX in setting a colony in Mars (delusional but whatever..)

Ambitious goals often get the most of the workers

ChongqingHotPot92 said:

Are you saying Russia's current lithography machines were all purchased before 2014-2015? Also, I doubted TSMC is specifically barred by USDOC BIS from selling its most advanced chips to Russia (unlike China, which both Taipei and Washington shared the critical threat perception, especially since Trump and GOP considered China a much more serious threat than Russia).

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We are banned from purchasing EUV for the same reason as China - it is considered dual-usage equipment. It is not like we have any use for them anyway, because even the 65 nm node at Mikron is currently not mass-produced. Most of the chips produced in Russia are 90nm+ and the used machines (at least at Mikron fabs) are ASML's PAS 5500/750F and PAS/1150C. They are roughly similar to SSA600 series of SMEE.

GodRektsNoobs said:

So where are the Russian high-end chips? They can't even design them, let alone build them. What you are claiming is simply difficult to answer because the scenario you implied isn't anywhere close to occurring.

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Russia's MCST has designed 28nm and 16nm Elbrus 2K VLIW CPUs which are produced at TSMC.
Those processors are not used in military applications but are used in government servers and banking servers, etc.
Russia also produces 90nm Elbrus 2K CPUs at their own facilities. These are used, among other things, in the Su-57's avionics.

Mikron supposedly has developed a 65nm node with their 90nm dry litho tools but it supposedly uses multiple exposures so is likely not cost effective with TSMC 28nm. It was likely just developed in case there were foreign sanctions and they needed to develop a higher end chip for some military application.

Another Russian CPU designer is Baikal electronics. They develop ARM CPU based products for the commercial sector. These are manufactured at Taiwan.

xypher said:

We are banned from purchasing EUV for the same reason as China - it is considered dual-usage equipment. It is not like we have any use for them anyway, because even the 65 nm node at Mikron is currently not mass-produced. Most of the chips produced in Russia are 90nm+ and the used machines (at least at Mikron fabs) are ASML's PAS 5500/750F and PAS/1150C. They are roughly similar to SSA600 series of SMEE.

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Wow. I personally can't wait for the day when Russia obtains SSA800. It would be a major step up for Russian IC industry!

xypher said:

We are banned from purchasing EUV for the same reason as China - it is considered dual-usage equipment. It is not like we have any use for them anyway, because even the 65 nm node at Mikron is currently not mass-produced. Most of the chips produced in Russia are 90nm+ and the used machines (at least at Mikron fabs) are ASML's PAS 5500/750F and PAS/1150C. They are roughly similar to SSA600 series of SMEE.

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once China declares full independence from foreign suppliers in semiconductor, the floodgates also open for Russia, which is the nightmare scenario for certain adversaries.

Imagine the mechanical engineering capabilities of Russia combined with the electronics and software of China.

GodRektsNoobs said:

Wow. I personally can't wait for the day when Russia obtains SSA800. It would be a major step up for Russian IC industry!

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FairAndUnbiased said:

once China declares full independence from foreign suppliers in semiconductor, the floodgates also open for Russia, which is the nightmare scenario for certain adversaries.

Imagine the mechanical engineering capabilities of Russia combined with the electronics and software of China.

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That's all well and good as far as it goes, and I'm generally quite sympathetic to Russia. At the same time, I'm not terribly thrilled by the prospect of Chinese chip fabrication equipment being used to build components of weapons exported to the likes of India and Vietnam.

GodRektsNoobs said:

Wow. I personally can't wait for the day when Russia obtains SSA800. It would be a major step up for Russian IC industry!

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We don't have a large electronics industry or a large internal market, so I doubt SSA800 is even needed because setting up an advanced fab would be a waste of money anyway. Russia is probably going to aim to get domestic 28 nm and stop at that, mostly for military applications. The only way I see us ever needing advanced fabs is if Elbrus and Baikal platforms become successful outside of government procurement and military which is not likely.

ZeEa5KPul said:

That's all well and good as far as it goes, and I'm generally quite sympathetic to Russia. At the same time, I'm not terribly thrilled by the prospect of Chinese chip fabrication equipment being used to build components of weapons exported to the likes of India and Vietnam.

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LMAO. Isn't this the same fear which US has regarding China?

xypher said:

We don't have a large electronics industry or a large internal market, so I doubt SSA800 is even needed because setting up an advanced fab would be a waste of money anyway. Russia is probably going to aim to get domestic 28 nm and stop at that, mostly for military applications. The only way I see us ever needing advanced fabs is if Elbrus and Baikal platforms become successful outside of government procurement and military which is not likely.

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What about Russian automotive, aerospace and heavy industries? They certainly need chips.

ZeEa5KPul said:

That's all well and good as far as it goes, and I'm generally quite sympathetic to Russia. At the same time, I'm not terribly thrilled by the prospect of Chinese chip fabrication equipment being used to build components of weapons exported to the likes of India and Vietnam.

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I think it is okay, more customer means more money and more inputs and feedback. I don't think China should imitate US "method" of banning weapon/tech to any countries