Chinese semiconductor industry

AVIC invests in GTA Semi

On November 30, 2021, Shanghai GTA Semiconductor Co., Ltd. completed a strategic financing of RMB 8 billion. As one of the main investors, AVIC Aviation Industry Investment Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Aviation Industry Investment"), an industrial investment platform of AVIC Industry Finance, has increased its capital by 240 million yuan in GTA Semiconductor.


GTA Semiconductor was established in 2017 and is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Huada Semiconductor . Huada Semiconductor is a subsidiary of China's electronic information industry and one of China's top 10 integrated circuit design companies.
In August 2018, GTA Semiconductor's characteristic process production line was started in Lingang, Shanghai, with a total investment of 35.9 billion yuan. In October 2018, GTA Semiconductor and Shanghai Advanced Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., Ltd. signed a merger agreement. After the merger, GTA Semiconductor will be divided into two factories, Lingang and Hongcao. With decades of experience in the manufacturing and R&D of analog, high-voltage, and power devices , Shanghai Advanced Technologies has laid a solid foundation for the establishment of the market competitiveness of GTA Semiconductor's characteristic process production lines.
Lingang production capacity layout is dedicated to high-end applications such as industrial control and automotive electronics . Special craft production lines: 8-inch production line 60,000 pieces/month, 12-inch characteristic craft production line 3,000 pieces/month, 6-inch SiC production line 5,000 pieces/month, the goal is significant Enhance the core competitiveness and large-scale production capacity of China's power devices ( IGBT ), analog circuits , power management, and sensors .



Under the current development trend of the aviation industry, the investment in this project has increased AVIC’s support for independent innovation in key areas such as information technology, improved investment and industrial operation capabilities in the new generation of information technology, and deepened The “finance + industry” development model of China Aviation Industry & Finance will help solve the problem of chip bottleneck and promote the transformation and upgrading of the aviation industry, technology industry, central enterprises and the real economy.

So they will merge Tsinghua Unigroup more? I disagree. They should just spin-off YMTC and it should go into a Chinese stock auction.
I suspect the money from the sale would easily erase the debt after it is restructured and they make a hair cut to it.
My guess is the Chinese government sees value in the holdings and doesn't want to upset the apple cart too much. In the short term this works but long term I think Tsinghua Unigroup needs to be broken up.

Yukiolweipqled51 said:

Fair to say China will be playing catch up in the semiconductor industry way past 2030? @FairAndUnbiased @WTAN and others, your takes plz

Click to expand...

@Yukiolweipqled51 if you're talking about the leading edge Like 2nm or even 1nm YES, But 7nm and above maybe by 2025, 5nm and 3nm definitely within the decade.

Here are some of China major IC achievement.

1) Chip design Check with Hisilicon a world class chip design with the likes of Geely and others doing the same.

2) Chip architecture Check with focus on RISC-V

3) Packaging and Testing Check

4) Back end Litho Check

5) 3D stacking Check with Huawei and YMTC

Hope @WTAN ,@tokenanalyst and @FairAndUnbiased can add more.

The only problem is front end stepper and materials, it may take time BUT five years is a reasonable timeframe to develop an EUVL while SMEE SSA800 28nm DUVL hold the fort. With Moore's law at its limit, China with 3D stacking tech and other innovation in packaging can be competitive.

Yukiolweipqled51 said:

Thanks for your opinion. I remain skeptical, though. Still, wish you the best.

Apart from front end lithography, materials, lack of indigenous instruction set architecture, are there any other shortcomings? Let's say, in etching, deposition, CMP, ion implantation or any other steps along the way? Are the yields competitive with leading fabs in Taiwan or Korea?

What about equipment? Can Tokyo Electron, Lam Research, Applied Materials be replaced easily?

Click to expand...

@Yukiolweipqled51 bro if you have the time Please read the entire thread, 28nm had been fully indigenized , next year 14nm. So from these 2 nodes alone we can say China achieved self sufficiency, and from 14nm going to 7nm is much easier (the jump from 28nm planar to 14nm FinFet is huge) cause they share the same equipment with some tweaks. I'm no expert BUT I'm lucky that some of our esteem members like @WTAN , @Oldschool , @tokenanalyst ,@FairAndUnbiased and @krautmeister had the patience to explain in layman terms a very technical Jargon and I'm grateful cause I learn a lot and I hope you too. It's Free and save you a lot of money instead of attending an engineering course...lol

Huaxing Yuanchuang: Micro OLED testing equipment has been verified by Sony and end customers​

According to the micro-net news, on December 14th, Huaxing Yuanchuang (688001.SH) stated on the investor interaction platform that Huaxing Yuanchuang Micro OLED has extremely high resolution, and its ultra-high resolution feature makes it the most suitable for AR. /VR equipment near-eye display technology products are expected to be widely used in near-eye display products in the future.

At the same time, it revealed that Huaxing Yuanchuang Micro OLED testing equipment has been verified by downstream customers Sony and end customers, and is currently cooperating with downstream customers to conduct preliminary research and development trials for subsequent product mass production, and its product competitiveness is at the forefront of the industry.

Yukiolweipqled51 said:

Fair to say China will be playing catch up in the semiconductor industry way past 2030? @FairAndUnbiased @WTAN and others, your takes plz

Click to expand...

Really hard to say what would happen in 2030. Imagine China-USA in 2010 and China-US in 2021 .... The gap is much narrower

No country (including USA) could be the leader of all technologies, impossible. Even now in 2021, China already the leader in many technologies (i.e 5G, quantum computing, quantum communication, etc). In 2030, for sure China would be the leader on many many more technologies.

Regarding your question in semiconductor, I think in 2030 China would be 1-1.5 generation behind in lithography compare to the top dog, I think the top dog would be the same ASML but ASML won't be longer a monopoly in EUV as I would predict China would come up with EUV machine around 2026, also Japan perhaps 1-2 yrs later. I don't see other countries (apart from Dutch, China and Japan) would manage to make EUV machine, including USA and SK

I think ASML would try hard to source technologies outside the US for their UEV machine, so they could sell it to China otherwise ASML market would decline significantly

That's my views and predictions

Yukiolweipqled51 said:

Thanks for your opinion. I remain skeptical, though. Still, wish you the best.

Apart from front end lithography, materials, lack of indigenous instruction set architecture, are there any other shortcomings? Let's say, in etching, deposition, CMP, ion implantation or any other steps along the way? Are the yields competitive with leading fabs in Taiwan or Korea?

What about equipment? Can Tokyo Electron, Lam Research, Applied Materials be replaced easily?

Click to expand...

You haven't found weird that the thing that the western media usually focus is the EUVL machine, why not other areas? Ironically the areas that the Chinese companies have become increasingly competitive are in those areas were the U.S. is the one who has the most to lose, to the point that Chinese companies are starting to gain sales outside of China. They are still holes to fill like high end lithography and EDA, but those will be filled eventually.
How fast they will catch up? Again, ironically the fuel that is driving the Chinese semiconductor industry is the United State of America, without US sanctions this thread would have been a lot shorter, We wouldn't even be talking about SMEE ARFi lithography machine if it weren't for the sanctions. Chinese electronics companies have a preference for foreign-US made equipment, chips and software, even today there is a lot of inertia for a change. Without sanctions companies like AMEC, Naura, SMEE, Empyrean and others would have been caught in a viscous cycle of serving niche markets, now their products are being tested in a fab environment and they are getting feedback, that will help them to make better products and compete not only in China but in international markets.
Also China don't lack ISAs, in fact they have access most common ISAs like X86, ARM (ARM China), MIPS (A Chinese group acquired the rights) or RISC-V (U.S companies are not as active as Chinese ones) apart from domestic ones like LoongArch ISA, C-SKY and icube. An ISA is just a set of instructions to build a processor, a book which you pay the rights to use those instructions.

China should focus on quantum computing, because it is less than 2 years behind the West at most. This area has far greater potential rewards for China than traditional EUV semiconductors, let alone DUV. It is far easier to get ahead in a new and emerging area than an already established area. By 2030 China could easily be ahead of the West in quantum computing.

If you look at 5G, the reason why Huawei was able to get ahead is because telecommunications technology was still in its infancy then. There was uncertainty in standards between CDMA and GSM, the US bet on CDMA and lost. Hence Huawei had an opening.

Similarly, currently the opening is in quantum computing. It's not that China should not invest in traditional semiconductors, but that even with massive investment it may still be playing catch up in 2030. You really want to be ahead, not playing catch up. The best quantum computers in the future will run laps around the best traditional semiconductors.

gadgetcool5 said:

China should focus on quantum computing, because it is less than 2 years behind the West at most

Click to expand...

Where have you been?