Chinese semiconductor industry
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With miniaturization at a wall, upstarts gain edge in race for faster chips
KEN KOYANAGI, Nikkei Asia Editor-at-largeOctober 21, 2020 17:54 JST
TOKYO -- Yukio Sakamoto, a 73-year-old Japanese chipmaking business veteran, last fall took a senior vice president position at Tsinghua Unigroup, a leading Chinese high-tech conglomerate affiliated with the renowned Tsinghua University. His role is to oversee the launching of a DRAM memory-chip manufacturing business.
It looked like a bold decision and perhaps an ill-conceived move considering the U.S.-China technology rivalry was growing nastier. The U.S. continues to throw one punch after another at Chinese semiconductor makers Huawei Technology and Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp., known as SMIC, making the idea of launching a new chipmaking business in China appear daunting.
But Sakamoto remains optimistic.
"We are living in a world where latecomers have a better chance to catch up with incumbent leaders," he told Nikkei Asia, "because semiconductor technology is progressing more slowly today as the smallness of transistors is approaching limits in terms of physics and optics."
He is not talking about the near-term conditions for building a new memory-chip factory, which are far from ideal. It is uncertain how long Chinese companies will be allowed to import U.S. chipmaking equipment and chip-designing software, though as of Oct. 19 Unigroup has not been named as a restriction target by any U.S. government agency.
Rather, Sakamoto is talking about the longer-term prospects for China to develop its own silicon wafer fabrication skills and technological capabilities for domestically supplying chipmaking materials, equipment and software.
History tells us that a technology paradigm shift can create opportunities for emerging players, and Sakamoto is seeing this unfold in the semiconductor sector today.
Rise of 3D tech
Moore's Law remains on the books. It says that the number of transistors in an integrated-circuit chip doubles every 18 to 24 months. It was foretold by Intel co-founder Gordon Moore in the 1960s. Until the mid-2000s, the industry kept pace with the law by shrinking the size of transistors and circuits built on a surface of a silicon wafer die.
But miniaturization hit a wall about 15 years ago. The size of transistors had shrunk to about 30 nanometers (30 billionths of a meter), measured by the width of a central electrode called a "gate." Therefore the speed of miniaturization slowed.
Chipmakers have nonetheless kept reducing the numbers labeling their latest generations of chips, going from 32nm to 22nm, to 14nm and to 10nm. But these numbers stopped representing actual transistor-gate sizes after the mid-2000s, becoming something like brand labels.
For example, the actual gate length of a transistor in a "7nm" logic chip made last year by Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Corp., known as TSMC, was somewhere around 18 nm, according to University of Tokyo professor Toshiro Hiramoto. It is a stark deviation from the "32 nm" chips, whose gate length was actually 32 nm or smaller.
Because of the increased difficulty and rising cost of miniaturization, chipmakers are turning to so-called three-dimension technologies that make use of the space above the conventional wafer surface to load more transistors onto a chip.
For example, the most advanced NAND flash memory chip, commonly used for data and image storage in smartphones and personal computers, is structured in as many as 96 to 128 layers of integrated circuits stacked on top of the bottom wafer die.
While the layers increase and the whole chip thickens, transistor miniaturization has reversed itself in the world of flash memory.
Today, the typical transistor size of a flash chip is somewhere in the 22-32 nm range, larger than the 14-nm transistors used in flash memories a few years ago, according to industry experts.
Such a shift of importance from miniaturization to 3D technologies is likely to affect the industry's stance about the most difficult part of the chipmaking process, photolithography.
Photolithography is a process in which a circuit plan is imprinted on the photosensitized surface of a silicon wafer by beaming light toward the wafer through a glass plate called a photo mask on which the circuit plan images are drawn. This is like the traditional photo development process, where an image captured on transparent film is imprinted on paper by projecting light through the negative film toward the photosensitized paper.
As circuits further miniaturize, the process needs shorter-wave lights for better resolution. The most-advanced miniaturization requires invisible light of the extreme ultraviolet or EUV spectrum range.
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Liberation from EUV
EUV lithography technology is so difficult and costly to develop that all but one lithography machine company, ASML of the Netherlands, have abandoned it.
ASML, bequeathed a monopoly, is believed to be selling one EUV lithography machine at a price range of $120 million to $170 million. When a chipmaker makes a deal with ASML, it buys a machine that is applicable only to tiny parts of the entire chip fabrication process and which brings about only modest miniaturization effects, industry experts say.
EUV machines today are used only for logic chips -- like PC microprocessors, system-on-chips in a smartphone and graphics processors for games and artificial-intelligence data crunching. Because of the complexity of circuit composition, logic chips have not been able to fully deploy 3D layer technologies.
When they do, the cost and difficulty of deploying EUV lithography may become less justifiable.
Flash-memory makers have actually skipped EUV. And "DRAM memories are unlikely to require EUV as far as I can see," predicts Sakamoto, who has run DRAM businesses at various companies including Texas Instruments, United Microelectronics (UMC) of Taiwan and Elpida Memory of Japan, which today is Micron Technology's Japanese plant.
If a chipmaking plant starts using EUV lithography, it requires many other processes also to be optimized for EUV lithography, meaning massive capital investments for various kinds of advanced equipment. The more advanced the equipment, the fewer suppliers there are, making U.S. bans more effective.
But if one can skip EUV lithography, the available choices for chipmaking equipment increases.
There are more choices for the non-EUV lithography process than EUV. Japan's Nikon and Canon make non-EUV lithography machines. So far, their shipments to Chinese chipmakers have not been blocked by the U.S.
Some Chinese companies, including Huawei Technology itself, have been working hard to develop their own lithography machines. There are reports of successes in making prototypes of a lithography machine using deep-ultraviolet argon-fluoride excimer-laser immersion technology, the most advanced among non-EUV lithography technologies.
In addition, Yangtze Memory, an affiliate of Unigroup, announced in June that it had succeeded in developing a manufacturing capability for 128-layered 3D flash memory chips and will start commercial production by the end of the year.
The U.S. seems to have focused on EUV in efforts to block China from obtaining advanced semiconductor technologies. It has been reported that the U.S. successfully persuaded the Dutch government to block ASML from selling EUV machines to SMIC. But, as Yangtze shows, China is accumulating know-how in 3D chipmaking skills, which will eventually be applicable to advanced logic chips and will help the country avoid dependency on EUV-based miniaturization.
Of course, there is a harsh reality that most of the non-lithography equipment items handling dozens of chipmaking-process stages are made almost exclusively by U.S. and Japanese companies. The thin-layer deposition process, critical in pursuing multilayer 3D chipmaking, is dominated by Applied Materials of the U.S. And surface inspectors of KLA-Tencor of the U.S. are indispensable in completing each such layer.
No matter whether 3D tech is involved, if access to U.S. equipment is blocked, it will disable any chip manufacturer in building or expanding its manufacturing capacity.
However, in the longer run, experts believe China is capable of enhancing its capabilities in all related sectors -- materials, optics, chemical, wafer-fabrication process control, surface inspecting, function testing and so on.
Toshiaki Ikoma, former president of Texas Instruments' Japanese subsidiary and former chief technology officer at Canon, was SMIC's chief technology officer in the mid-2000s. Based on his experience there, he believes China has a sufficient number of capable scientists and engineers to develop its own chipmaking equipment and chip-design software.
"Their national strategy to send many students to U.S. schools and companies and then repatriate them like sea turtles, which has been going on for decades, is bearing fruit," he told Nikkei.
Hideki Wakabayashi, a Tokyo University of Science professor, says developing the whole supply chain of chipmaking equipment and materials cannot be done quickly. But "there is a possibility for China to become a dominant country in the field in 10-20 years because of its abundance of talent in all science and engineering fields," he said.
And technology trends are a plus for latecomers like China. "New technologies such as new materials, 3D, advanced packaging, AI-assisted chip design and cloud-based manufacturing collaboration will all create new opportunities for emerging players," said Samuel Wang, research vice president at Gartner.
James Lewis, senior vice president at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington reminds that a U.S. ban on satellite components to China led non-U.S. companies to become alternative suppliers. "Overly broad restrictions will harm the U.S. more than China," he warned on his blog in May, commenting on U.S. efforts to block China's access to semiconductor technologies.
Sakamoto said he had been impressed when he was chatting with a Chinese business leader earlier this year. "He told me that Chinese tech leaders are now grateful to Mr. Trump for helping them become resolutely determined to develop technologies on our own," Sakamoto said.
It may be true that the U.S. tech squeeze has crushed President Xi Jinping's public dream of China supplying 70% of its own semiconductor demand by 2025. In 2019, China fed 16% of its own demand, according to IC Insights. But the U.S. policy may be raising the longer-term probability of China realizing Xi's dream.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Liberation from EUV
EUV lithography technology is so difficult and costly to develop that all but one lithography machine company, ASML of the Netherlands, have abandoned it.
ASML, bequeathed a monopoly, is believed to be selling one EUV lithography machine at a price range of $120 million to $170 million. When a chipmaker makes a deal with ASML, it buys a machine that is applicable only to tiny parts of the entire chip fabrication process and which brings about only modest miniaturization effects, industry experts say.
EUV machines today are used only for logic chips -- like PC microprocessors, system-on-chips in a smartphone and graphics processors for games and artificial-intelligence data crunching. Because of the complexity of circuit composition, logic chips have not been able to fully deploy 3D layer technologies.
When they do, the cost and difficulty of deploying EUV lithography may become less justifiable.
Flash-memory makers have actually skipped EUV. And "DRAM memories are unlikely to require EUV as far as I can see," predicts Sakamoto, who has run DRAM businesses at various companies including Texas Instruments, United Microelectronics (UMC) of Taiwan and Elpida Memory of Japan, which today is Micron Technology's Japanese plant.
If a chipmaking plant starts using EUV lithography, it requires many other processes also to be optimized for EUV lithography, meaning massive capital investments for various kinds of advanced equipment. The more advanced the equipment, the fewer suppliers there are, making U.S. bans more effective.
But if one can skip EUV lithography, the available choices for chipmaking equipment increases.
There are more choices for the non-EUV lithography process than EUV. Japan's Nikon and Canon make non-EUV lithography machines. So far, their shipments to Chinese chipmakers have not been blocked by the U.S.
Some Chinese companies, including Huawei Technology itself, have been working hard to develop their own lithography machines. There are reports of successes in making prototypes of a lithography machine using deep-ultraviolet argon-fluoride excimer-laser immersion technology, the most advanced among non-EUV lithography technologies.
In addition, Yangtze Memory, an affiliate of Unigroup, announced in June that it had succeeded in developing a manufacturing capability for 128-layered 3D flash memory chips and will start commercial production by the end of the year.
The U.S. seems to have focused on EUV in efforts to block China from obtaining advanced semiconductor technologies. It has been reported that the U.S. successfully persuaded the Dutch government to block ASML from selling EUV machines to SMIC. But, as Yangtze shows, China is accumulating know-how in 3D chipmaking skills, which will eventually be applicable to advanced logic chips and will help the country avoid dependency on EUV-based miniaturization.
Of course, there is a harsh reality that most of the non-lithography equipment items handling dozens of chipmaking-process stages are made almost exclusively by U.S. and Japanese companies. The thin-layer deposition process, critical in pursuing multilayer 3D chipmaking, is dominated by Applied Materials of the U.S. And surface inspectors of KLA-Tencor of the U.S. are indispensable in completing each such layer.
No matter whether 3D tech is involved, if access to U.S. equipment is blocked, it will disable any chip manufacturer in building or expanding its manufacturing capacity.
However, in the longer run, experts believe China is capable of enhancing its capabilities in all related sectors -- materials, optics, chemical, wafer-fabrication process control, surface inspecting, function testing and so on.
Toshiaki Ikoma, former president of Texas Instruments' Japanese subsidiary and former chief technology officer at Canon, was SMIC's chief technology officer in the mid-2000s. Based on his experience there, he believes China has a sufficient number of capable scientists and engineers to develop its own chipmaking equipment and chip-design software.
"Their national strategy to send many students to U.S. schools and companies and then repatriate them like sea turtles, which has been going on for decades, is bearing fruit," he told Nikkei.
Hideki Wakabayashi, a Tokyo University of Science professor, says developing the whole supply chain of chipmaking equipment and materials cannot be done quickly. But "there is a possibility for China to become a dominant country in the field in 10-20 years because of its abundance of talent in all science and engineering fields," he said.
And technology trends are a plus for latecomers like China. "New technologies such as new materials, 3D, advanced packaging, AI-assisted chip design and cloud-based manufacturing collaboration will all create new opportunities for emerging players," said Samuel Wang, research vice president at Gartner.
James Lewis, senior vice president at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington reminds that a U.S. ban on satellite components to China led non-U.S. companies to become alternative suppliers. "Overly broad restrictions will harm the U.S. more than China," he warned on his blog in May, commenting on U.S. efforts to block China's access to semiconductor technologies.
Sakamoto said he had been impressed when he was chatting with a Chinese business leader earlier this year. "He told me that Chinese tech leaders are now grateful to Mr. Trump for helping them become resolutely determined to develop technologies on our own," Sakamoto said.
It may be true that the U.S. tech squeeze has crushed President Xi Jinping's public dream of China supplying 70% of its own semiconductor demand by 2025. In 2019, China fed 16% of its own demand, according to IC Insights. But the U.S. policy may be raising the longer-term probability of China realizing Xi's dream.
WOW !!!! Huawei defeat Apple decisively... Apple answer, Mister President please lend a hand, No problem we'll ban Huawei is that enough for you...... 
sore loser............
from j20blackdragon (pakistan defense forum)
Huawei fighting to the bitter end.
Apple A14 Bionic has 11.8 billion transistors.
Kirin 9000 has 15.3 billion transistors.
Huawei going out with a bang.
sore loser............from j20blackdragon (pakistan defense forum)
Huawei fighting to the bitter end.
Apple A14 Bionic has 11.8 billion transistors.
Kirin 9000 has 15.3 billion transistors.
Huawei going out with a bang.
Hendrik_2000
Lieutenant General
via vincent what is dual stage subsystem? Anyone know ? Seem like they gearing up to mass produce 45 and 28nm Lithograph machine
Thanks weigh2000 like we all say the embargo is god send now they have no more illusion as to the need of self sufficiency and as the Japanese expert said it is not easy and maybe set back along the way but given China abundant of engineering talent couple with fierce determination nothing is impossible They have proof it again and again. I hope China neighbors will help it will lead to appreciation and reconciliation. Anyway personal relation was never been in question it is alwyas the government to government relation that is strained
From Havok
发表于 2020-10-22 18:27
mac_sed 发表于 2020-09-30 23:49
干式机双工件台在北京的产线施工进展如何了？
北京这个基地暂时还未进行生产，人员已入驻。主要生产干式双工件台但也会很少量生产浸没双工件台，除此之外还会生产干涉仪和浸没工件台平面光栅。
另外北京国望的地皮大约下月底可以定下来。
Production line for dual stage subsystem (use in lithography machines) in Beijing has not started yet, but workers have been introduced to the factory. The line mainly produce 45nm dual stage subsystem, but also small amount of 28nm dual stage subsystem for immersion lithography machines.
北京国望光学科技有限公司(lithography lens) working on securing real estate for its factory, should be completed the end of next month.
Thanks weigh2000 like we all say the embargo is god send now they have no more illusion as to the need of self sufficiency and as the Japanese expert said it is not easy and maybe set back along the way but given China abundant of engineering talent couple with fierce determination nothing is impossible They have proof it again and again. I hope China neighbors will help it will lead to appreciation and reconciliation. Anyway personal relation was never been in question it is alwyas the government to government relation that is strained
From Havok
发表于 2020-10-22 18:27
mac_sed 发表于 2020-09-30 23:49
干式机双工件台在北京的产线施工进展如何了？
北京这个基地暂时还未进行生产，人员已入驻。主要生产干式双工件台但也会很少量生产浸没双工件台，除此之外还会生产干涉仪和浸没工件台平面光栅。
另外北京国望的地皮大约下月底可以定下来。
Production line for dual stage subsystem (use in lithography machines) in Beijing has not started yet, but workers have been introduced to the factory. The line mainly produce 45nm dual stage subsystem, but also small amount of 28nm dual stage subsystem for immersion lithography machines.
北京国望光学科技有限公司(lithography lens) working on securing real estate for its factory, should be completed the end of next month.
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Need opinion regarding its performance spec, especially against Intel and AMD.
from cnTechPost
BYD unveils laptop powered by China-made Loongson 3A4000 processor
2020-10-23 7:10:54 GMT+8 | cnTechPost
0
BYD Electronics has recently launched a laptop powered by the China-made Loongson 3A4000 processor, which has a 13.3-inch narrow-bezel screen and weighs 1.55 kg.
The Loongson 3A4000 chip, made by Chinese chip maker Loongson Technology is based on the new generation processor core (codenamed GS464V) and offers a 100% performance increase over the previous generation Loongson 3A3000.
According to SPEC CPU2006, a CPU performance testing tool, the Loongson 3A4000 scored more than 20 points for both fixed-point and floating-point single cores, and the Unixbench quad-threaded score based on the Loongson 3A4000 and the latest version of the Chinese operating system has reached more than 2700 points.
It is worth mentioning that the Loongson 3A4000 integrates a vulnerability prevention design, hardware encryption algorithms, a secure trusted module and a secure access control mechanism to ensure safe use from the bottom of the chip.
It is also equipped with a home-grown discrete graphics card, the Jingjia Micro JM7201.
Specifications:
Standard Edition
CPU: Loongson 3A4000 processor
Main frequency: 1.5Ghz
Bridge: Loongson 7A1000
Graphics card：Jingjia Micro JM7201
Memory: 8G DDR4
Hard drive: 256G SSD
Battery: 65Wh
Power supply: DC 19.5V 6.15A
It has support for installing Loongson OS, Kirin OS, and UOS MIPS versions.
Being a consumer oriented laptop, this laptop is equipped with a rich set of functional interfaces with two USB 3.0 ports, one USB C port, one HDMI video out port, and one Audio port.
from cnTechPost
BYD unveils laptop powered by China-made Loongson 3A4000 processor
2020-10-23 7:10:54 GMT+8 | cnTechPost
0
BYD Electronics has recently launched a laptop powered by the China-made Loongson 3A4000 processor, which has a 13.3-inch narrow-bezel screen and weighs 1.55 kg.
The Loongson 3A4000 chip, made by Chinese chip maker Loongson Technology is based on the new generation processor core (codenamed GS464V) and offers a 100% performance increase over the previous generation Loongson 3A3000.
According to SPEC CPU2006, a CPU performance testing tool, the Loongson 3A4000 scored more than 20 points for both fixed-point and floating-point single cores, and the Unixbench quad-threaded score based on the Loongson 3A4000 and the latest version of the Chinese operating system has reached more than 2700 points.
It is worth mentioning that the Loongson 3A4000 integrates a vulnerability prevention design, hardware encryption algorithms, a secure trusted module and a secure access control mechanism to ensure safe use from the bottom of the chip.
It is also equipped with a home-grown discrete graphics card, the Jingjia Micro JM7201.
Specifications:
Standard Edition
CPU: Loongson 3A4000 processor
Main frequency: 1.5Ghz
Bridge: Loongson 7A1000
Graphics card：Jingjia Micro JM7201
Memory: 8G DDR4
Hard drive: 256G SSD
Battery: 65Wh
Power supply: DC 19.5V 6.15A
It has support for installing Loongson OS, Kirin OS, and UOS MIPS versions.
Being a consumer oriented laptop, this laptop is equipped with a rich set of functional interfaces with two USB 3.0 ports, one USB C port, one HDMI video out port, and one Audio port.
Huawei isn't "going out" with a bang. The skill-set and knowledge base is already here, and with the Chinese market's size and scope, together with a still booming economy, China will leave the rest of the world in its wake in technology by 2025.
Mind you, Huawei isn't the only company of such magnitude in China, the whole techno-spectrum is represented in China, we have Nio, Xpeng in electric vehicles, DJI in drones, SMIC/SMEE in semi-conductors, Ant Group, Tencent, etc.
They all compete and compliment each other. These 5 years are going to be epic!
Mind you, Huawei isn't the only company of such magnitude in China, the whole techno-spectrum is represented in China, we have Nio, Xpeng in electric vehicles, DJI in drones, SMIC/SMEE in semi-conductors, Ant Group, Tencent, etc.
They all compete and compliment each other. These 5 years are going to be epic!
These Loongson CPU were created with 28nm fabrication process and is said to offer performance equivalent to AMD's Excavator CPUs released in 2015. As I have not been able to find any English benchmark data available for the Loongson 3A/B4000, one can try to extrapolate the performance to the lowest Excavator based cpu, the AMD Athlon X4 845 . According to geekbench5, X4 single core value is approx.. 500 and multicore value is approx.. 1500. Cross checking the Mac line of computers for context, this will be equivalent to a 2011 i7 MacBook Pro for the single core value and 2013-2014 for the multi core value. Not great, but I imagine usable for office work, programing, youtube, old games running on linux.
The fact that 40 years ago China was plowing fields, and now SMIC has introduced 14nm this year, I'd say it China can dominate this industry, it just needed a reason to do it. US gave it this reason.
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