News on China's scientific and technological development.

Aperture05 said:

There is a lot of misinformation about silicon manufacturing on this thread. The fact of the matter is that it will be very hard for Chinese fabs (or rather fab, singular) to move to anywhere smaller than their current node. The single greatest monopoly in the silicon manufacturing industry is ASML, which currently makes the only competitive EUV lithographic machine in the world. The Dutch government have withheld issuing export licenses to China, which means that there is no way for SMIC to achieve a node shrink beyond a certain limit.

Shanghai Microelectronics have only achieved a 22nm lithographic machine, and very recently too. All other machines are basically made by US companies such as Lam research.

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machupicu said:

SMIC will likely survive well due to many factors?


A “cold turkey” cut off could be very ugly

If the US government decided to cut off SMIC cold turkey, things could get very ugly, very quickly. Much like Jinhua we would have to assume that the government would also cut off support of existing installed equipment as well, which would cut off recurring revenue as well.

At Jinhua, US companies employees left literally in a day and were on the next plane out leaving the fab in a lurch and killing it in 24 hours.

Without spare parts, maintenance and upgrades SMIC would have serious problems continuing to function.

So much as with ZTE, Jinhua and Huawei, denying access to US technology could prove a death sentence for SMIC

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ansy1968 said:

Hi Aperture05,

Your new to this thread, I will advise to read all the post from the start, your subject matter had been debated to death, all we have to do is wait for 2022 for the expected domestic EUV to arrive, 2021 for the 28NM SMEE DUV.

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machupicu said:

SMIC will likely survive well due to many factors?


A “cold turkey” cut off could be very ugly

If the US government decided to cut off SMIC cold turkey, things could get very ugly, very quickly. Much like Jinhua we would have to assume that the government would also cut off support of existing installed equipment as well, which would cut off recurring revenue as well.

At Jinhua, US companies employees left literally in a day and were on the next plane out leaving the fab in a lurch and killing it in 24 hours.

Without spare parts, maintenance and upgrades SMIC would have serious problems continuing to function.

So much as with ZTE, Jinhua and Huawei, denying access to US technology could prove a death sentence for SMIC

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

Click to expand...

Aperture05 said:

2021-2022 is expected installation of 28nm DUV at SMIC. I know that SMEE is working on an EUV machine but it is still almost impossible for them to hit 7nm level EUV machines by 2022.

Especially since it was announced only last week that they've hit 22nm.

SMIC is expected to install a 40nm line by end of this year, but I haven't heard any updates about that.

I recognise that the Chinese semiconductor industry is growing like crazy, and reaching a rate of unprecedented development, but 2022? No way.

The only reference I could find to EUV was a Baijia post from may that alleged SMEE will produce a 11nm Lithographic machine by December. Given that they only hit 22nm last week, it's pure fantasy to expect them to reach 11nm by then.

Furthermore, by the time that a comparable EUV machine has been developed, the technology would be once again considered outdated, since when you factor in the fact that SMIC's N2 is based on ASML machines, that the supposed 7nm EUV machines will arrive in 2022, another year of installation, then at least 2 more years of development based on the 7nm machines, it would mean that a node based on the machine would be available for volume fabrication only by 2025. Once again, It would be 5 years behind TSMC, like SMIC currently is.

Your estimates are unrealistically ideal.

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rakib said:

Despite all the actions from the US government, the chinese side looks unbelievably clam. Isn,t that strange?

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Aperture05 said:

2021-2022 is expected installation of 28nm DUV at SMIC. I know that SMEE is working on an EUV machine but it is still almost impossible for them to hit 7nm level EUV machines by 2022.

Especially since it was announced only last week that they've hit 22nm.

SMIC is expected to install a 40nm line by end of this year, but I haven't heard any updates about that.

I recognise that the Chinese semiconductor industry is growing like crazy, and reaching a rate of unprecedented development, but 2022? No way.

The only reference I could find to EUV was a Baijia post from may that alleged SMEE will produce a 11nm Lithographic machine by December. Given that they only hit 22nm last week, it's pure fantasy to expect them to reach 11nm by then.

Furthermore, by the time that a comparable EUV machine has been developed, the technology would be once again considered outdated, since when you factor in the fact that SMIC's N2 is based on ASML machines, that the supposed 7nm EUV machines will arrive in 2022, another year of installation, then at least 2 more years of development based on the 7nm machines, it would mean that a node based on the machine would be available for volume fabrication only by 2025. Once again, It would be 5 years behind TSMC, like SMIC currently is.

Your estimates are unrealistically ideal.

Click to expand...