Chinese semiconductor thread II
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China chip index nears 3-year high as TSMC order fuels self-reliance bets
SHANGHAI (Reuters) - China's semiconductor index leapt close to a three-year high on Monday on bets a U.S. order halting Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co's shipments of advanced chips to Chinese customers could accelerate Beijing's self-reliance efforts.TSMC will from Monday suspend shipments of certain sophisticated chips to some Chinese clients after receiving a letter from the U.S. Department of Commerce imposing export restrictions on those products, Reuters reported on Sunday.
Analysts said that while the move might lead to some short-term pain for Chinese firms involved in designing chips for artificial intelligence accelerators and graphics processing units, it could benefit the domestic chipmaking sector as companies would have few alternatives.
Several Chinese technology firms and chip designers have in recent years sought to design their own advanced processors after the U.S. sanctioned Huawei Technologies and barred the likes of Nvidia and AMD from selling their most sophisticated chips to China.
Many rely on Taiwan-based TSMC, the world's leading contract chipmaker, for production. In the third quarter, 11% of TSMC's revenue came from China, the company said.
Analysts said SMIC has been making such advanced chips using equipment supplied by companies like the Netherlands' ASML and U.S.-based Applied Materials, which it managed to stockpile before U.S. sanctions took effect.
However, SMIC has faced difficulties in ramping up production due to U.S. export controls barring it from purchasing equipment necessary for advanced chip manufacturing, while domestic alternatives are not yet ready for the effort.
Chinese EDA developers are going full throttle into Advanced Packaging Simulation Technology.
Beijing Zhixin Simulation Technology Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as Zhixin Simulation) was established in December 2019. It is an EDA software company specializing in physical verification and simulation of chip packaging and electronic system design. The company's core technical personnel have many years of research and development background in EDA simulation algorithms. The company currently has more than 80 authorized invention patents, and the number of invention patents ranks among the top domestic EDA companies. Zhixin simulation products include power integrity DC analysis WisimDC, signal integrity analysis WisimSI, package thermal integrity WisimTI and circuit model parameter extraction. As Moore's Law gradually becomes ineffective, Chiplet+2.5D/3D advanced packaging has become the main way to solve the problem of
CoreRui Technology's Phase II plant expansion project officially launched
On November 11, the groundbreaking ceremony for the second phase of the Xinrui Technology plant expansion was held in Xinxing Industrial Square. Since its establishment, Suzhou Xinrui Technology Co., Ltd. has been deeply involved in the semiconductor market, continuously developing new products, with excellent product quality and high industry reputation. Therefore, in order to further increase production and increase production capacity, the company has carried out a plant expansion project. The second phase plant area is 2,000 square meters, mainly a Class 100 dust-free workshop. It develops and manufactures 12-inch temporary bonding and debonding, permanent bonding, hybrid bonding and other high-end models.
Huazhong patents anti-vibration damping technology for EUV lithography.
on the TSMC AI chip ban
Everyone is working on doing it with domestic node and making progress
It's important to note that while the ban does not cover auto or phone chips at the moment, that does not mean it won't in the future. So there is an urgency for all chip designers domestically to tape out with SMIC
The target as of now is for AI and GPU chips. Does not cover smart phones or auto chips. It's unclear to me what about auto AI chips like Journey 6, but we will find out.
Everyone is working on doing it with domestic node and making progress
It's important to note that while the ban does not cover auto or phone chips at the moment, that does not mean it won't in the future. So there is an urgency for all chip designers domestically to tape out with SMIC
They will likely add a more explicit ban like the one they put on Russia with the number of MIPS a chip can have. They can just state that any AI chip with a certain number of TOPS is banned. And then the AI auto chips will also get the ban hammer if they haven't already.
Chinese fabless chip companies should tape out their processors at SMIC and increase demand so that SMIC gets to build another FinFET factory and they won't be hanging out to dry when the US ban hammer comes.
Chinese fabless chip companies should tape out their processors at SMIC and increase demand so that SMIC gets to build another FinFET factory and they won't be hanging out to dry when the US ban hammer comes.
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it is matter of time now. SMIC will either expand further their Shanghai fab or built new one soon. Demand is skyrocketing and they knows very well.
Probably general AI chip like Ascend architecturally different and more complicated than phone SOC. There was report before about Ascend low yield and recent report of Huawei using TSMC made AI chips through a third party.
Looks like mainly the result of scrutinizing huawei.