Chinese semiconductor thread II

[gelgoog]

@tinrobert's article shows quite well the incredible speed at which the Chinese semi tools sector has been growing at.

I will add that AMEC's revenue was supposed to have been $879 million USD in 2023. Which would mean it would have surpassed the #10 in that list.

AMEC's growth should also rapidly increase starting this year. As they replace foreign component imports and ramp up production in their new factory at Lingang, Shanghai.

If for whatever reason the import of ASML immersion lithography machines is banned outright then you will see a huge crash in the market since you cannot run a production line without lithography machines. Most of the currently planned capacity at Chinese fabs will also require immersion lithography. For example the ongoing Nexchip and Hua Hong expansions use 40nm-28nm, the SMIC expansions use 28nm, YMTC and CXMT will also need immersion lithography machines.

There will be a huge crunch and outcry since this is like 50% of revenue for Western tool vendors. You will see massive cancellations of equipment orders and demands to claw back deposits. You will have unsold inventory, parts, and idle tool factories. It is also highly likely ASML would be sued for damages in European courts. China will cut down gallium and germanium exports to the EU.

I suspect much like what happened with the Huawei ban the Chinese will just make substitute equipment for whatever they cannot import and fill those empty fab shells eventually. It might take a couple of years but then those sales and maintenance contracts for Western tools will be gone forever. Huawei was also stuck when they could not buy RF modules from Western companies anymore, that is why they stopped being able to make 5G phones, it took them like three years to get around that but now the Western choke hold in that sector is gone forever.

Once ASML and Nikon are out of the Chinese lithography market, then Chinese semiconductor fabs will be forced to take in Chinese made lithography machines regardless of how poor their economics are, and a virtuous cycle where customer acquisitions and feedback is used to increase their performance will form.

 

[sunnymaxi]

I will add that AMEC's revenue was supposed to have been $879 million USD in 2023. Which would mean it would have surpassed the #10 in that list.

in 2024, AMEC expecting 11-13 Billion RMB revenue. approx. $1.55 billion to $1.83 billion.. basically 100 percent jump as compared to 2023.. their R&D expenditure hit close to 1 billion Yuan in H1,2024. jump 110% yoy.

KingSemi expecting 5-6 Billion RMB revenue this year. all set to enter in $1 Billion club by next year.

so far 5 to 6 domestic SME companies entered in $1 Billion club. and the scary thing is, this is just the beginning.

 

[gelgoog]

For whatever reason the US government seems to think modern lithography machines are something out of reach for China to make. A country which can make its own optical spy satellites, laser weapons, and maglev trains. It is just more imperial hubris.
It is just more money that would have gone to Western tool vendors that will end up in China's pocket instead.

28nm is called the forever node for a reason. It has better economics than EUV for a lot of classes of chips which do not require a huge amount of compute power. So the fab capacity will still make sense to build even if it is a decade from now.

The efforts to get DUV and EUV machines working are also highly orthogonal. One uses lenses, another mirrors, one uses an excimer laser, the other uses LPP with CO2 laser, so China can split the work and do both in parallel. The idea that you need to do lithography research as a series of sequential steps just like what happened in the West is a lie. China is just researching everything simultaneously.

 

[defect]

With 28nm you can make great FPGA chips. If my country could make those or have a semi fab. That would be really cool. I mean, having that ability, you could make most chips that your industry needs.

How are Nikon and Cannon fairing in the DUV market? Are they selling their photolit machines, or it's all ASML? I'm getting that vibe because ASML is always in the news (when photolitography is mentioned).

Are there any Chinese bans on selling Chinese semiconductor equipment to other countries? I'm asking, because it's a good opportunity for other countries with good Chinese relations to make their own semiconductor development or "mini fab".

 

[gelgoog]

Canon competes well in the i-line and KrF lithography machine sector. This is used to make chips up to 180nm efficiently and at best you can make 90nm with it. Nikon is the major competitor to ASML in the ArF and ArF immersion sectors. But ASML gets a lot of clients because of joint orders for equipment and perceived higher wafer processing throughput of their ArF machines vs Nikon even if this is not always the case. Intel for example used to be a customer of Japanese lithography machines and this is only changing with the move to EUV.

 

[siegecrossbow]

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Just in time for September to wrap things up for this summer?

 

[curiouscat]

"Black Myth : Wukong"
Which Chinese GPU company can gaming use in China to replace Nvidia's GPU?

At the current moment realistically none. They’re all very slow for gaming in heavy part due to massive driver issues compared to Nvidia AMD and Intel.

 

[BlackWindMnt]

At the current moment realistically none. They’re all very slow for gaming in heavy part due to massive driver issues compared to Nvidia AMD and Intel.

Is Moore Thread still even interested in gaming gpu or did they completely pivot to AI accelerators?

From what i gathered western mobile GPU core designs have absolute gutter level driver support.
I think Huawei should probably pick up the gaming gpu thread and put some fire under Moore threads etc.

 

[curiouscat]

Is Moore Thread still even interested in gaming gpu or did they completely pivot to AI accelerators?

From what i gathered western mobile GPU core designs have absolute gutter level driver support.
I think Huawei should probably pick up the gaming gpu thread and put some fire under Moore threads etc.

Moore threads is still working on GPUs but their drivers are still miserable to work with. At the current rate I don’t think we’ll see a globally competitive Chinese GPU for a long time if we ever do. It doesn’t seem to be a high priority.

 

[weland]

Depends on what you believe. The SMEE immersion DUV machine is either in testing or in limited production somewhere.
The EUV machine is still at an intermediate technological readiness level where they are trying to get the separate components to have enough performance to make a working demo prototype that is viable for mass production of chips.

The experimental nature of the cavity of the extreme ultraviolet vacuum exposure device in 2021. it looks like asml ADT cavity .this month is September 2024. EUV is in testing .