Chinese semiconductor industry

ansy1968 said:

@WTAN Sir the hint's are getting visible, One must connect the dot just like in PLA watching, the evidences are there, its up to us to look for it. One of those is the Official announcement from Huawei about the Return of the King in 2023, the second about the delivery of the prototype SMEE DUVL in December 2020 which correlate @Oldschool post of SMEE SSA800 DUVL doing verification work by SMIC Chengdu FAB in July this year , third about Huawei breakthrough in 14nm 3D stacking tech. These kind of progress will never be reported by the Western Media and the Chinese are tight lip except IF you can read Chinese. My concern is that the Dual Approach strategy is stymied, SMIC 7nm projected mass production date will be delayed by 2 years the most, extending the gap already existed between the 2 leaders, even IF a 7nm 3D chiplet is mass produce in 2024, by that time TSMC and Samsung 3nm is up and running.

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WTAN said:

If the Biden Admin goes ahead with the plans against SMIC, yes it could cause some delays with the 7nm mass production.
But given that the restrictions are only on processes below the 14nm node, SMIC should still be able to operate the Shanghai FAB with the 1980i DUVL.
It could still begin smaller scale 7nm production for clients with the existing facilities.
For larger scale production it would have to wait till a proper 14nm Localised production line is up and running in 2022/2023.

But the good thing about the latest restrictions is that it will force SMIC to completely switch to local Equipment for Advanced nodes like 7nm and smaller.
Another thing is that SMIC also has an interest in 3D Packaging and it will probably produce 3D ICs for clients while waiting for the arrival of the locally made EUVL.

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BoraTas said:

The destiny of most highly technical product segments is getting monopolized by a few anyway.

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Pkp88 said:

The key line is "China-made lithography equipment has not entered wafer mass production lines"; This is a huge weakness in the whole system it's like not controlling oil production in previous generations. It's tough to solve as as they are one of three countries capable of achieving this but the progress has been slow and the ramifications are quite large... You read about advances here and there but if nothing is actually being used in mass production it's pretty bad...

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tokenanalyst said:

I think they are talking about the FrontEnd IC lithography market, an area were ASML has a monopoly in China and SMEE is a bit late in the area, hopefully with the new Arf immersion litho machines and the pressure of US sanctions they can start the virtuous cycle of development in the FrontEnd area of integrated circuit production.

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gadgetcool5 said:

There are only two weeks left in the year, so unless there is some dramatic surprise coming out of left field in the next 15 days, a domestic 28nm line this year isn't happening.

Further, even if you ignore the motivating effect of US sanctions, the fact remains that China achieved 90nm supposedly in 2016. Even in the normal course of events it should have made some progress in the last five years, yet its most advanced machine is still 90nm and even this machine, seems to have negligible sales. On this board there is a lot of (1) posting rumors and (2) boasting, and I am sure someone will reply to my comment with more rhetoric meant to puff up China and temporarily make us feel better, but the reality is, China's efforts haven't been showing any results. The US is just having a field day shooting at China with no response.

Further, the Chinese government far from supporting China's tech sector is cracking down on it and making it hard for it to raise money. Chinese tech companies have taken a bath this year much due to the Chinese government's own policies. In many ways the Chinese and US governments are both aligned and pursuing the same goals against Chinese tech (such as attacking Chinese overseas IPOs). Meanwhile the US is supporting its own tech sector massively with huge bills and all sorts of pressures. Sigh.

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ansy1968 said:

@WTAN Sir a novice question, if the total ban on SMIC is given the green light, how about the spare parts and service agreement with ASML? and since SMEE SSA800 is comparable to NXT 1980i can they be interchange and used some parts like the light source (RS LASER)? it's the only equipment that contain US technology.

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gadgetcool5 said:

There are only two weeks left in the year, so unless there is some dramatic surprise coming out of left field in the next 15 days, a domestic 28nm line this year isn't happening.

Further, even if you ignore the motivating effect of US sanctions, the fact remains that China achieved 90nm supposedly in 2016. Even in the normal course of events it should have made some progress in the last five years, yet its most advanced machine is still 90nm and even this machine, seems to have negligible sales. On this board there is a lot of (1) posting rumors and (2) boasting, and I am sure someone will reply to my comment with more rhetoric meant to puff up China and temporarily make us feel better, but the reality is, China's efforts haven't been showing any results. The US is just having a field day shooting at China with no response.

Further, the Chinese government far from supporting China's tech sector is cracking down on it and making it hard for it to raise money. Chinese tech companies have taken a bath this year much due to the Chinese government's own policies. In many ways the Chinese and US governments are both aligned and pursuing the same goals against Chinese tech (such as attacking Chinese overseas IPOs). Meanwhile the US is supporting its own tech sector massively with huge bills and all sorts of pressures. Sigh.

Click to expand...