Chinese semiconductor thread II

[tokenanalyst]

Without stooges like this, most Chinese companies would have preferred to manufacture their chips abroad. Nobody would have taken local semiconductor manufacturing equipment-materials-EDA-Components companies seriously. IC self-sufficiency in China would be around 15% instead of almost 40% today. The idea of a nearly 100% Chinese smartphone would have been a dream. People would have laughed you out of existence for the idea of local lithography machines. Ironically due to cost and low demand SMIC would have abandoned the idea of advanced nodes below 14nm. The entire industry would be totally disconnected. These controls have been annoying for companies at the top like Huawei but for a lot companies in the supply chain things have never been so good, an opportunity that will never present itself again.
And all of that for what? a couple of years? I think it's quite likely that the next boom in semiconductor fabs in China is going to be 14nm/7nm/5nm, as the demand for advanced chips for AI is not going to go away just because these stooges feel like it.​

 

[Michael90]

I actually do hope those stupid politicians put ban on Intel and AMD chips. Intel chips these days are mediocre at best. Huawei working with Loongson and Zhaoxin will be a huge boost for those companies, since Huawei has this amazing ability to bring out the best of domestic companies (endless examples including JHICC, all the domestic CIS, 5G RF chip companies etc etc)

This is weird. So despite all the rhetoric and sanctions the US has placed against China, we still have to wait for more sanctions for Chinese companies to try going fully domestic? They should already be doing this whether the US sanctions them again or not. Its only a matter of time anyway. So I don't understand why they have to wait for the US to sanction Intel before trying local. Alternatives (even if they might be inferior for now)

 

[Wahid145]

This is weird. So despite all the rhetoric and sanctions the US has placed against China, we still have to wait for more sanctions for Chinese companies to try going fully domestic? They should already be doing this whether the US sanctions them again or not. Its only a matter of time anyway. So I don't understand why they have to wait for the US to sanction Intel before trying local. Alternatives (even if they might be inferior for now)

Well the saying goes, necessity is the mother of innovation. We saw how america broke ZTE in 2018 by denying them Quallcomm Chip for its smartphone business. Look at 2025, to this day except for ZTE (even ZTE sometimes) all major Chinese companies are still reliant on Quallcomm for their smartphone.

They could have tried Unisoc for their top of the line phones just like ZTE does but no! I am well aware that Unisoc SoC are not as good as Quallcomm right now but with iteration and constant feedback from major companies like Vivo and Xiaomi I'm sure they would have been competitive.

7-8 years ago MediaTek was a garbage Smartphone SoC maker and look at them now. This only happened because Chinese companies would rather invest their money in MediaTek, Quallcomm and not in Chinese SoC companies like Spreadtrum>Unisoc.

Xiaomi launced their Surge S1 in 2016 and decided to stop investing in SoC after seeing Surge S1 was not on par with highest end SOC at that time. What did they expect? Their first ever SOC is gonna be top of the line or something? Look at HiSilicon, how many iterations it required until they go into Kirin 970, 980 when it was on par with Quallcomm top of the line and even Apple A series SOC.

Xiaomi after seeing what happened to ZTE didn't feel like, lets keep investing in the Surge series until it becomes competitive enough. Instead they would rather give the money to QC and MediaTek. Finally they came into sense recently.... Nothing to say to be honest. Xiaomi is the perfect company who must develop their own SOC since they have a huge spectrum of products from Smartphone to Smart Washing Machine to Smart EV to Smart everything. And guess what, to make those stuff "smart" you need a smart SOC too and Xiaomi Silicon division could have reaped all those revenue.

 

[tokenanalyst]

Yixing Intelligence received hundreds of millions of yuan in Series A financing for mass production of RISC-V computing chips​

Yixing Intelligent Technology (Guangzhou) Co., Ltd. ("Yixing Intelligent") officially announced that it had recently completed a round of A financing of several hundred million yuan. This round of financing was led by the National Small and Medium Enterprise Development Fund managed by old shareholder Oriental Fortune Capital, and old shareholders such as Lion City Capital and Volcano Rock Investment jointly increased their investment. The funds raised in this round of financing will be used for the company's upcoming RISC-V computing chip mass production, market expansion and improvement of the software and hardware ecosystem to meet the growing market demand.
Yixing Intelligence was established in January 2022 and is headquartered in Nansha, Guangzhou. It has R&D and operation centers in Shanghai, Nanjing, Hangzhou, Shenzhen, Beijing, etc. The company's independently developed new generation of end-to-cloud integrated general AI computing architecture and high-speed interconnection and other core technologies are widely used in the Internet, finance, autonomous driving, medical, scientific research and other large-scale parameter model application fields. From AI cores, chips to cluster interconnection, it effectively solves the computing bottleneck problem of large models on the end and cloud sides.

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[tokenanalyst]

Investigation of the Morphological Evolution Mechanism of Tin Contamination Under Low-Temperature Hydrogen Plasma.​

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Abstract​

Tin contamination presents a significant challenge to optical mirror applications in tin-based EUV lithography and Tokamak devices. This study clarifies the controversy regarding the structural evolution mechanism of tin contamination during in-situ, non-destructive cleaning with low-temperature hydrogen plasma. Local melting of tin particles (from spherical to conical structure) is observed. The experiments of atomic hydrogen cleaning, annealing, and re-deposition have excluded other factors that may affect the morphology changes of tin. Ion energy diagnostic results (23–40 eV) indicate that the ion thermal effect on tin (307.2 kJ·mol-1) exceeds its melting enthalpy (7.08 kJ·mol-1), theoretically leading to local melting of tin. The formation of SnO2 on RuO2 surface (coated with Sn) and the transformation of amorphous oxide to an ordered crystal structure after plasma cleaning further confirm the ion thermal effect. This study provides new insights into the interaction between low-temperature hydrogen plasma and tin, offering guidance for optimizing cleaning processes and future engineering applications.

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[tokenanalyst]

Design of a high transmission illumination optics for anamorphic EUV lithography optics using deep reinforcement learning.​

Abstract​

The design of the illumination optics for high numerical aperture (NA) anamorphic extreme ultraviolet (EUV) projection optics is a critical challenge to EUV lithography in advanced technology node. However, the EUV illumination optics design using conventional methods have flaws in illumination efficiency and illumination uniformity due to the limitations of relay configuration and matching method that can only consider one factor affecting illumination uniformity. One-mirror configuration can improve illumination efficiency by reducing the number of mirrors. Deep reinforcement learning (RL) can solve the limitations by considering multiple factors simultaneously. In this paper, a design method for a high transmission relay system and a matching method for double facets using deep RL are proposed to design NA 0.55 anamorphic EUV illumination optics. The one-mirror relay system is designed by first calculating its coaxial spherical initial configuration using matrix optics; then the one off-axis relay mirror, which is tilted and decentered to eliminate ray obscuration, is fitted into a conic surface. To satisfy the requirements of multiple factors that affect illumination uniformity, the assignment relationships between the field facets and the pupil facets are determined using deep RL under a certain illumination mode. Simulation results show that the illumination efficiency is 26.24%, and the illumination uniformity can reach 99% on the mask under different illumination modes.

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[tokenanalyst]

Jiangfeng Electronics plans to introduce electrostatic chuck production technology and purchase related production lines from KSTE​

Jiangfeng Electronics and KSTE INC. signed the "Cooperation Framework Agreement on the Electrostatic Chuck Project". Jiangfeng Electronics intends to introduce electrostatic chuck production technology from KSTE and purchase electrostatic chuck production lines.
KSTE INC. is a leading Korean company specializing in the production of electrostatic chucks and related equipment and process development, integration and installation. It has mastered many proprietary technologies and business information in the fields of design, production and sales of electrostatic chucks.

Jiangfeng Electronics introduced all the production technologies required for the agreed range of electrostatic chuck (E-CHUCK) products from KSTE and purchased related production lines, and finally realized Jiangfeng Electronics' independent mass production in mainland China. In order to achieve the cooperation goals, KSTE is responsible for providing Jiangfeng Electronics with full-process technical support and is responsible for the design and delivery of relevant production lines.

Electrostatic chucks are core components in semiconductor manufacturing process equipment and are widely used in semiconductor etching equipment, thin film equipment, and measurement equipment. They play an important role in many aspects of the semiconductor manufacturing process. With the rapid development of the semiconductor industry, the electrostatic chuck market faces huge opportunities. Jiangfeng Electronics said that the signing of this agreement will help promote the development of the company's parts business, help the company better serve semiconductor customers, and have a positive impact on the company's future operating performance, which is in line with the interests of the company and all shareholders.​

 

[Eventine]

This is weird. So despite all the rhetoric and sanctions the US has placed against China, we still have to wait for more sanctions for Chinese companies to try going fully domestic? They should already be doing this whether the US sanctions them again or not. Its only a matter of time anyway. So I don't understand why they have to wait for the US to sanction Intel before trying local. Alternatives (even if they might be inferior for now)

The issue is the Chinese government isn't banning foreign imports for end users, so Chinese companies still have to deal with foreign competition from Apple, Samsung, etc. In that sort of situation, if you're not using imports, you could be at a market disadvantage. Not everyone is Huawei and has the full support of the government.

So while it would make sense to go full domestic, as long as the Chinese government isn't forcing consumers to go full domestic, the best strategy for Chinese companies will remain fence sitting. You need "all of society" efforts to fully remove foreign supply chains; companies aren't going to sacrifice their bottom lines while their competitors are still allowed to use foreign components.

 

[Phead128]

Don't know how true this information is

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He says information coming from supply chain，that：

（1）If the new Trump gov bans the sell of AMD and Intel chip to Huawei，the Matebook series could discontinue

Again? US already cut Huawei off from Intel's AI laptop chips (

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,

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) in May 2024, which unironically forced lower Intel revenue projections (

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), which unironically preceded Intel's stock implosion in June 2024. FAFO phase. Intel just keeps taking L's if US gov't bans all Intel chips for Huawei laptops.

 

[FriedButter]

Why are some of you guys acting as if China can magically use a wand to instantly switch to 100% domestic. There is literally not enough domestic capacity to fill demand and it takes times to scale, become competitive, and have comparable quality.