Chinese semiconductor thread II

[FairAndUnbiased]

Steep slope VTFET 2D material transistor research. This and other 2D material FETs are the expected successors to CMOS transistors past the next decade.

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interesting, however IBM has been working on it for 3 years already, and Samsung is their production partner. Yes, the same Samsung of 0% yield on the simpler GAAFET process that was supposed to precede VTFET.

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I think VTFET has the potential of lowering lithography requirements though since it isn't all that limited by lateral dimensions. Just a casual guess.

 

[AndrewS]

On the flip side, it implies that ASML has a sizeable war chest and they may opt to cut margins to compete for international market share. The domestic Chinese market is where SMEE can make some interesting moves.

If ASML has competition and has to accept a much smaller profit margin and share sales, their stock market capitalisation will crash. R&D spending would likely follow.

As per the Economist, China is the lowest cost location to build a fab. ASML machines aren't allowed in China, plus companies can't rely on ASML supporting the machines it sells in China, because the US keeps increasing sanctions.

SMEE will receive a lot more support and subsidies from the Chinese government than ASML. That extends to SMEE customers like SMIC who build and operate fabs, and to their customers like Huawei who design and sell the end chips.

My understanding is that they are amongst the companies who have an unlimited funding line available.

Note that today, China accounts for 25-30% of end semiconductor consumption, and another 25-30% pass through Chinese factories for export. That is 50-60% which means the Chinese market would be larger than the rest of the world combined. That results in a cost advantage due to scale, and will fund the most R&D spending.

And to think this would never have happened without US tech sanctions on China. It forces Chinese companies to develop an entirely Chinese technology stack. Plus it becomes a national security issue for the Chinese government.

 

[measuredingabens]

interesting, however IBM has been working on it for 3 years already, and Samsung is their production partner. Yes, the same Samsung of 0% yield on the simpler GAAFET process that was supposed to precede VTFET.

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I think VTFET has the potential of lowering lithography requirements though since it isn't all that limited by lateral dimensions. Just a casual guess.

I think that goes for stacked transistors in general. Going vertical is a way to bypass the issues of lateral scaling.

 

[tphuang]

You posted the news about SMIC N+3 process on X. Does it equivalent to TSMC N7+?

i wouldn't take everything I post as gospel. N7+ is just natural progression of where they were at. It could be better than that

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"4 January 2024
...
Based in Hefei, Anhui Province, Nexchip was founded in 2015 as a joint venture between Taiwan-based Powerchip Technology Corp. and Hefei City Construction Investment Group and was also the first 300mm (12-inch) wafer foundry in the province.
...
According to Nexchip, its 150nm and 55nm nodes are already in volume production, and the R&D on 40nm and 28nm platforms is underway. However, due to the industrial downturn, the company's 2023 half-year report revealed CNY2.97 billion in revenue, a year-on-year decline of 50.4%. Among them, DDIC accounted for 87.84% of sales, followed by CMOS Image Sensors (4.08%), PMIC (5.77%), and MCU (1.35%). In terms of process nodes, Nexchip's 90nm platform accounted for 49.92% of sales, followed by 110nm (31.65%), 150nm (13.6%), and 55nm (4.83%).

As pointed out by the company, overconcentration on the DDIC sector could be a potential risk, subjecting Nexchip's performance to order fluctuation and its bargaining power. Therefore, it becomes necessary to further diversify into CIS, MCU, and PMIC platforms. The five largest customers of Nexchip, in particular, accounted for 66.47% of total sales, rendering Nexchip overdependent on the performances of these major customers."

right, Nexchip and HH are competing. They are also looking to move beyond that to auto chips. That's where a lot of demands are right now.

SMIC is also trying to capture that. But SMIC does have the ability of making more advanced chips than Nexchip and HH, so I think they will continue to do the best out of the three

 

[tacoburger]

Imagine a nation that has spent two decades trying to make an ordinary gas-powered car but keeps failing, making a barely functional product.

Then imagine that that nation suddenly tries to develop a cutting edge state of the art electric vehicle in half that amount of time. Not likel-wait... Nevermind...

And this is an aside to how wrong and oversimplified your analogy was in the first place. China is renowned for making slow progress until forced by Western sanctions, causing them to explode forth with decades of advances in years.

LOLOL I know that. That was to show how wrong Tacoburger's analogy was, especially when applied to China.

The analogy is totally wrong here. China can make ICE cars, can for decades, they are just crappy and unable to penetrate the mass market due to Japanese/german competition. But they existed in the hundreds of thousands, were midly popular in China and you can buy them. Electric cars build up on the common ICE cars framework China already had

The analogy would be like if a nation totally couldn't make a single car at all, not the engine, tyres, gear box or any of the important parts despite more then a decade of effort, but announced that they were gonna mass produce supercars within a handful of years.

The point still stands, I'm not saying that China can't get a EUV, just that it's gonna take wayyyyy longer then most people expected. China's own EV development mirrors this, BYD didn't pop up in 2020. They have been making hundreds of thousands of ICE cars/hybrids for decades since 2003 before their batteries got good enough to reach EV mainstream success. They took more then a decade to scale up and get good.

It would only mirror the lithography situation in China if BYD and other chinese automakers only this year, made their very first cars ever, just a few dozen units and people on internet forums are predicting that in the 5 years, that China would be making a few million super cars. That's how bad the lithography situation is in China right now and I don't think it's realistic for mass production of EUV within this decade, maybe a prototype or two at most

 

[sunnymaxi]

The point still stands, I'm not saying that China can't get a EUV, just that it's gonna take wayyyyy longer then most people expected. China's own EV development mirrors this, BYD didn't pop up in 2020. They have been making hundreds of thousands of ICE cars/hybrids for decades since 2003 before their batteries got good enough to reach EV mainstream success. They took more then a decade to scale up and get good.

It would only mirror the lithography situation in China if BYD and other chinese automakers only this year, made their very first cars ever, just a few dozen units and people on internet forums are predicting that in the 5 years, that China would be making a few million super cars. That's how bad the lithography situation is in China right now and I don't think it's realistic for mass production of EUV within this decade, maybe a prototype or two at most

you continue to ignore all massages and behave like an arrogant person. you thinks, you cannot be wrong.

SMEE didn't start in 2020, CIOMP/SIOMP/HIT didn't begun research and development of lithography just yesterday. they have successfully breakthrough in lithography technology back in 2010's .. but due to various reasons and free market behavior they failed to bring product in the market. as @tokenanalyst explained really well .. SMEE wasn't even serious up until 2020 when US put them in Entity list..

you also failed to understand why last year Chinese fabs stockpile so many lithography machines from ASML.. 30+ fabs under construction in mainland China. SMEE just started production of DUV/DUVi. so they cannot fulfil the local demand. 2023 purchase is the last major Litho shopping spree of Chinese fabs..

you said, lithography condition is very bad in China.

this is again completely wrong. China successfully cultivated domestic supply chain of lithography machine.

SMEE has started the production of DUV/DUVi.
SMEE has started the production of DUV/DUVi.
SMEE has started the production of DUV/DUVi.
SMEE has started the production of DUV/DUVi.

we have official confirmation from suppliers. they started mass production of respective components. this is the first time SMEE is going to produce lithography machine in decent numbers..

 

[Blitzo]

The analogy is totally wrong here. China can make ICE cars, can for decades, they are just crappy and unable to penetrate the mass market due to Japanese/german competition. But they existed in the hundreds of thousands, were midly popular in China and you can buy them. Electric cars build up on the common ICE cars framework China already had

The analogy would be like if a nation totally couldn't make a single car at all, not the engine, tyres, gear box or any of the important parts despite more then a decade of effort, but announced that they were gonna mass produce supercars within a handful of years.

The point still stands, I'm not saying that China can't get a EUV, just that it's gonna take wayyyyy longer then most people expected. China's own EV development mirrors this, BYD didn't pop up in 2020. They have been making hundreds of thousands of ICE cars/hybrids for decades since 2003 before their batteries got good enough to reach EV mainstream success. They took more then a decade to scale up and get good.

It would only mirror the lithography situation in China if BYD and other chinese automakers only this year, made their very first cars ever, just a few dozen units and people on internet forums are predicting that in the 5 years, that China would be making a few million super cars. That's how bad the lithography situation is in China right now and I don't think it's realistic for mass production of EUV within this decade, maybe a prototype or two at most

There have already been multiple replies to you explaining why your understanding of China's lithography development and production (both historical and up to recent times) is flawed.

Chinese semiconductor thread II

So what difference will all of this new companies/institutions make? If they are so good, why didn't they go help out SMEE in their development 10 years ago, or 6 years ago when the sanctions made the threat of even basic DUV machines being cut of very real? Because decades ago, 10 years ago...

www.sinodefenceforum.com

Chinese semiconductor thread II

Said to be pair with SSX800 http://www.smee.com.cn/eis.pub?service=homepageService&method=indexinfo&onclicknodeno=1_4_4_5 SHM800 Holistic Metrology Equipment SHM800 SHM800 holistic metrology equipment is an optical scatterometry-based system. SHM800 is mainly used in advanced process...

www.sinodefenceforum.com

Chinese semiconductor thread II

https://www.ithome.com/0/749/505.htm more laptop coming out with 3A6000M, domestic display and OS. i really do hope Loongson gets higher sales this year

www.sinodefenceforum.com

Chinese semiconductor thread II

"We have seen U-Precision won 300 Million RMB order. if we take per unit price then total 20 sets will deliver to SMEE.." Is that DUVi + DUV? I thought Havok said to expect 4-5 DUVi and ~ 20 DUV in the first year of production? dry only.. U-Precision didn't publish information about DUVi. we...

www.sinodefenceforum.com

If you want to ignore the other posts and/or simply do not believe in what is being written, then that is fine, but at the very least you should acknowledge that your perception of the industry is different to many other people's understanding here in terms of incentives for development, bottlenecks of development, timelines of development.


As for manqiangrexue's ICE/EV analogy -- he is not inaccurate. It's not a perfect analogy, but the overall thrust of "previously producing largely non-competitive products unable to gain particularly relevant market share, yet still being able to develop viable and competitive succeeding products when incentives and market demand" is a reasonable one.

 

[AndrewS]

The analogy is totally wrong here. China can make ICE cars, can for decades, they are just crappy and unable to penetrate the mass market due to Japanese/german competition. But they existed in the hundreds of thousands, were midly popular in China and you can buy them. Electric cars build up on the common ICE cars framework China already had

That is factually incorrect.

If you look at the situation 5 years ago in 2019 when the market was almost all ICE cars, Chinese brands accounted for 42% of Chinese passenger car sales.
Given that 21 million passenger cars were sold in 2019, that is 9 million Chinese branded cars.

It's not hundreds of thousands as you put it.

5 years ago, Chinese cars had broadly caught up in quality and performance, but consumer perceptions and branding lagged behind.

---

At a minimum, you should be accurate at least on the facts.
It reminds me of a Peter Zeihan podcast which I listened for 30mins before deciding it was a waste of time.

 

[generalmeng]

LOLOL I know that. That was to show how wrong Tacoburger's analogy was, especially when applied to China.

The west suffer from something they been actively against: monopoly. Chinese firms actually compete very aggressively against one another. Each province have their companion, and compete against other provinces. The west essentially protected their own big auto, and they become compliancent.

 

[siegecrossbow]

That is factually incorrect.

If you look at the situation 5 years ago in 2019 when the market was almost all ICE cars, Chinese brands accounted for 42% of Chinese passenger car sales.
Given that 21 million passenger cars were sold in 2019, that is 9 million Chinese branded cars.

It's not hundreds of thousands as you put it.

5 years ago, Chinese cars had broadly caught up in quality and performance, but consumer perceptions and branding lagged behind.

---

At a minimum, you should be accurate at least on the facts.
It reminds me of a Peter Zeihan podcast which I listened for 30mins before deciding it was a waste of time.

Why did that take so long?