Chinese semiconductor industry

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olalavn

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they are doing preliminary research on EUV photoresist... i wish them success

Shanghai Xinyang: Over 3 customers have ordered krF photoresist, and ArF photoresist cannot predict the certification time​


According to Weibo news, on August 12, an investor asked Shanghai Xinyang on the interactive platform, how is the progress of SMIC North ArF glue verification work? How many customers are there for krF glue orders?

Shanghai Xinyang said that the photoresist verification work is still in progress, and more than 3 customers have ordered krF photoresist.

Regarding ArF photoresist, Shanghai Xinyang said that the company's ArF photoresist is still in the process of certification. Due to various factors such as the epidemic situation and customer production capacity, the certification time cannot be estimated for the time being.

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According to the mid-term report, Shanghai Xinyang’s operating income in the first half of 2022 was about 549 million yuan, a year-on-year increase of 25.63%; the net profit attributable to shareholders of the listed company was about 9.91 million yuan, a year-on-year decrease of 90.18%; The net profit was 52.4729 million yuan, an increase of 17.61% compared with the same period last year.

Shanghai Xinyang's third core technology product, photoresist, has continuously made major breakthroughs. The self-developed KrF photoresist products have been certified by the increasing number of customers, and have been supplied to mainstream domestic wafer manufacturers.

At present, Shanghai Xinyang is developing high-end photoresist products for integrated circuit manufacturing, including I-line photoresist, KrF photoresist, ArF dry photoresist for logic and analog chip manufacturing, KrF thick photoresist for memory chip manufacturing Film photoresist, bottom anti-reflection coating (BARC) and other supporting materials. (Proofreading / Deng Qiuxian)
 

tonyget

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The United States imposes a new export ban on China: involving four technologies including EDA, gallium oxide and diamond materials

On August 12, local time, the U.S. Department of Commerce’s Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS) disclosed a new interim final rule on export restrictions in the Federal Register, involving advanced semiconductors, turbine engines and other fields.

The ban applies to EDA/ECAD software necessary for integrated circuits with a GAAFET (Around Gate Field Effect Transistor) structure, ultra-wide bandgap semiconductor materials represented by diamond and gallium oxide, pressure gain combustion (PGC) Four technologies implemented new export controls.

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GAAFET related EDA software

EDA/ECAD refers to electronic computer aided software used to design, analyze, optimize and verify the performance of integrated circuits or printed circuit boards. As early as August 3, Xinzhixun reported that "the United States will cut off the supply of EDA tools related to GAAFET technology to China". The announcement of the ban further confirms the news.

As the successor of FinFET, GAAFET is considered to be the key technology for mass production of 3nm and below semiconductor process technology. At the end of June this year, Samsung has announced the first mass production of the 3nm process based on GAAFET technology. The 3nm that TSMC is currently mass-producing is still based on FinFET technology, and it is expected to introduce GAAFET technology at 2nm.

In other words, the US ban will limit the export of EDA software to China that can be used in chip designs for advanced semiconductor processes of 3nm and below. This move will limit the breakthrough of Chinese chip designers to advanced processes of 3nm and below.

BIS is also currently soliciting public comments to determine which specific features of ECAD are particularly useful in designing GaAs FET circuits to ensure that the U.S. government can effectively enforce the regulation.

Related article "It is rumored that the United States will cut off the supply of GAA technology-related EDA tools to China"

Gallium oxide and diamond

As for the wide bandgap semiconductor materials gallium oxide (Ga2O3) and diamond (including silicon carbide SiC): gallium nitride and silicon carbide are the main materials for the production of complex microwave, millimeter wave devices or high power semiconductor devices, with the potential to create more complex devices , can withstand higher voltage or temperature.

At present, compound semiconductors represented by silicon carbide and gallium nitride have received a lot of attention, and they will play a role that traditional silicon devices cannot achieve in future high-power, high-temperature, and high-voltage applications. Especially in the automotive field, one of the three emerging application fields (automotive, 5G and the Internet of Things) in the future, there will be very broad development prospects. However, gallium oxide has a wider band gap than silicon carbide and gallium nitride, which makes this compound semiconductor unique in higher power applications.

Gallium oxide is a wide-bandgap semiconductor with a band gap of EG=4.9eV, far exceeding that of silicon carbide (about 3.4eV), gallium nitride (about 3.3eV) and silicon (1.1eV), and its electrical conductivity and luminescence characteristics are good. Therefore, it has broad application prospects in optoelectronic devices and high-power scenarios. Although, the mobility and thermal conductivity of gallium oxide are low, especially the thermal conductivity is its main short board. However, relatively speaking, these disadvantages do not have much impact on the characteristics of power devices, because the performance of power devices mainly depends on the breakdown electric field strength.

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△Ga2O3 has five main crystal forms: α, β, γ, δ, and ε. Among them, the β structure is the most stable, and most of the research reports related to the crystal growth and physical properties of Ga2O3 use the β structure. The breakdown electric field strength of β-Ga2O3 is about 8MV/cm, which is more than 20 times that of Si and more than twice that of SiC and GaN.

Compared with silicon materials, gallium nitride, silicon carbide, etc., the forbidden band width of diamond semiconductor materials is as high as 5.45 eV, and the biggest advantage lies in higher carrier mobility (holes: 3800 cm2V-1s-1, electrons: 4500 cm 2V-1s-1), higher breakdown electric field (>10 MVcm-1), greater thermal conductivity (22 WK-1cm-1), its intrinsic material advantage is the highest thermal conductivity in nature It can meet the needs of high power, strong electric field and radiation resistance in the future, and is an ideal material for making power semiconductor devices. It has broad application prospects in smart grid, rail transit and other fields.

However, according to Li Chengming, a professor at the Institute of New Materials Technology at the University of Science and Technology Beijing, there is still a long way to go for diamond to achieve commercial applications. The high cost and small size of diamond materials are the main obstacles restricting the development of diamond power electronics. For example, the dislocation density of nitrogen-doped diamond single crystal flakes (6 mm × 7 mm) in CVD production can currently be as low as 400 cm-2; The dislocation density is still up to the order of nearly 107 cm-2, and the high defect density remains a challenge.

pressure gain burn

Pressure Gain Combustion (PGC) is a technology that has the potential to increase the efficiency of gas turbine engines by more than 10 percent, potentially impacting aerospace, rocket and hypersonic missile systems. PGC technology utilizes a variety of physical phenomena, including resonant pulse combustion, constant volume combustion, and knocking, to create effective pressure in the combustion chamber while consuming the same amount of combustion.

BIS is currently unable to confirm whether any of the engines in production use the technology, but there has been plenty of research pointing to potential production.
 

56860

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China Chipmaker YMTC Ships Xtacking 2.0 SSDs, Up to 6.2 GBps​

Just like other makers of commodity 3D NAND, Yangtze Memory has been evolving from a manufacturer of flash memory into a vertically integrated producer of solid-state storage solutions. The company started with simplistic SATA SSDs roughly two years ago, then evolved to more advanced PCIe drives, and now it is time for YMTC to enter the most lucrative 3D NAND market — enterprise storage.



YMTC's first enterprise-grade product is the
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that comes in a 2.5-inch U.2 form factor featuring a PCIe 4.0 x4 interface, using 3D TLC NAND memory, and offering storage capacities of up to 6.4TB for drives aimed at mixed workloads and designed for up to three drive writes per day (DWPD) as well as up to 7.68TB for drives targeted at read-intensive workloads and designed for up to 1 DWPD.


Regarding performance, the drives offer up to 6.2 GBps sequential read speed, up to 4.5 GBps sequential write speed, up to 1 million read IOPS, and up to 380K/190K (mixed workloads/read-intensive workloads) write IOPS. Since Phison's PE310 are enterprise-grade products, stated performance numbers represent sustained, not peak, performance. While the drives are very fast, since they are enterprise-oriented, we will not include them in our list of the
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.

YMTC

Yangtze Memory's 3D TLC NAND memory used for PE310 drives features Xtacking 2.0 architecture. It, therefore, supports a maximum interface data transfer speed of up to 1,600 MT/s, which is in line with what the latest 3D NAND ICs from makers like Samsung and SK Hynix offer.


YMTC does not disclose which controller it uses for its PE310-series products, just like it
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. The only thing Yangtze Memory says is that controllers of its PE310-series drive feature LDPC ECC, are compliant with an NVMe protocol, and support AES-256 encryption. In addition, the drives support such functions as power loss protection, advanced eight-level power management, end-to-end data protection (E2EDP), thermal throttle, and so on.

Considering that YMTC intentionally does not disclose almost anything about PE310's controller, including the supported NVMe version or branding of LDPC-based signal processing and ECC technology, the company either ultimately does not want to reveal the off-controller it uses (in 2020, the company teamed up with
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, but it does not automatically matter that it uses chips from the said vendor on the PE310), uses a highly-customized version of an off-the-shelf controller that has little to do with the initial chip, or uses an in-house developed controller.


Developing an enterprise-grade solid-state drive is complicated as YMTC has to guarantee ultimate reliability, very high endurance, consistent performance, and predictable power consumption under high loads. However, as it turns out, the company has managed to do this. As a result, it will now compete against solutions from other vertically integrated SSD solutions providers, such as Kioxia, Micron, Samsung, and Western Digital.
 

european_guy

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GAAFET related EDA software

EDA/ECAD refers to electronic computer aided software used to design, analyze, optimize and verify the performance of integrated circuits or printed circuit boards. As early as August 3, Xinzhixun reported that "the United States will cut off the supply of EDA tools related to GAAFET technology to China". The announcement of the ban further confirms the news.

Well, considering that EUV is banned in China, banning also GAAFET (below 5nm) EDA tools is moot, it has no practical effect.

Of course sooner or later also EDA tools will be seriously evaluated for banning, they are the last bastion of technology in which US has the monopoly.

Chine has still some year to suffer before US banning becomes ineffective.
 

ansy1968

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Well, considering that EUV is banned in China, banning also GAAFET (below 5nm) EDA tools is moot, it has no practical effect.

Of course sooner or later also EDA tools will be seriously evaluated for banning, they are the last bastion of technology in which US has the monopoly.

Chine has still some year to suffer before US banning becomes ineffective.
Bro it really looks like ASML escape the gauntlet, they really fought back hard and succeeded. I think this is the last time we will heard the US urging the Dutch to participate in additional restriction unless Cursuela Von Der Lying order them to.
 

hullopilllw

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China Chipmaker YMTC Ships Xtacking 2.0 SSDs, Up to 6.2 GBps​

Just like other makers of commodity 3D NAND, Yangtze Memory has been evolving from a manufacturer of flash memory into a vertically integrated producer of solid-state storage solutions. The company started with simplistic SATA SSDs roughly two years ago, then evolved to more advanced PCIe drives, and now it is time for YMTC to enter the most lucrative 3D NAND market — enterprise storage.



YMTC's first enterprise-grade product is the
Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!
that comes in a 2.5-inch U.2 form factor featuring a PCIe 4.0 x4 interface, using 3D TLC NAND memory, and offering storage capacities of up to 6.4TB for drives aimed at mixed workloads and designed for up to three drive writes per day (DWPD) as well as up to 7.68TB for drives targeted at read-intensive workloads and designed for up to 1 DWPD.


Regarding performance, the drives offer up to 6.2 GBps sequential read speed, up to 4.5 GBps sequential write speed, up to 1 million read IOPS, and up to 380K/190K (mixed workloads/read-intensive workloads) write IOPS. Since Phison's PE310 are enterprise-grade products, stated performance numbers represent sustained, not peak, performance. While the drives are very fast, since they are enterprise-oriented, we will not include them in our list of the
Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!
.

YMTC

Yangtze Memory's 3D TLC NAND memory used for PE310 drives features Xtacking 2.0 architecture. It, therefore, supports a maximum interface data transfer speed of up to 1,600 MT/s, which is in line with what the latest 3D NAND ICs from makers like Samsung and SK Hynix offer.


YMTC does not disclose which controller it uses for its PE310-series products, just like it
Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!
. The only thing Yangtze Memory says is that controllers of its PE310-series drive feature LDPC ECC, are compliant with an NVMe protocol, and support AES-256 encryption. In addition, the drives support such functions as power loss protection, advanced eight-level power management, end-to-end data protection (E2EDP), thermal throttle, and so on.

Considering that YMTC intentionally does not disclose almost anything about PE310's controller, including the supported NVMe version or branding of LDPC-based signal processing and ECC technology, the company either ultimately does not want to reveal the off-controller it uses (in 2020, the company teamed up with
Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!
, but it does not automatically matter that it uses chips from the said vendor on the PE310), uses a highly-customized version of an off-the-shelf controller that has little to do with the initial chip, or uses an in-house developed controller.


Developing an enterprise-grade solid-state drive is complicated as YMTC has to guarantee ultimate reliability, very high endurance, consistent performance, and predictable power consumption under high loads. However, as it turns out, the company has managed to do this. As a result, it will now compete against solutions from other vertically integrated SSD solutions providers, such as Kioxia, Micron, Samsung, and Western Digital.


It is so hard to get their Zhitai's consumer grade SSD. Failed to find it on aliexpress, only available on the mainland domestic JD platform.
 

european_guy

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Bro it really looks like ASML escape the gauntlet, they really fought back hard and succeeded. I think this is the last time we will heard the US urging the Dutch to participate in additional restriction unless Cursuela Von Der Lying order them to.

Bro, Cursuela Von Der Lying has no real power. In EU real power strongly remains within each state government. In this case is the Netherlands government that has the last say. Usually they are US friendly, but maybe in this case they remembered that they are voted by Holland people.
 

ansy1968

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Bro, Cursuela Von Der Lying has no real power. In EU real power strongly remains within each state government. In this case is the Netherlands government that has the last say. Usually they are US friendly, but maybe in this case they remembered that they are voted by Holland people.
So we may see an increase in sales? The Chinese will be grateful cause in adversity one true character shall be revealed and the trust had been solidify.
 

european_guy

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So we may see an increase in sales? The Chinese will be grateful cause in adversity one true character shall be revealed and the trust had been solidify.

Unfortunately I don't think it is finished. US pressure will continue and Netherlands government can succumb at any time. We know it resisted at some big pushes, but we don't know for the future.

It will arrive a point in time when US administration finally realizes that only blocking ASML would be effective against China, all other things will be useless. At that point there will be a gigantic pressure on Netherlands.

The advantage of Netherlands is that US cannot use the usual recipes it applies to developing countries like sanctions, trade banning, financials limitations, etc. because Netherlands is a western country within EU. So even US must refrain. It can threat but it can't "punish" for real, and they know it.
 
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ansy1968

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Unfortunately I don't think it is finished. US pressure will continue and Netherlands government can succumb at any time. We know it resisted at some big pushes, but we don't know for the future.

It will arrive a point in time when US administration finally realizes that only blocking ASML would be effective against China, all other things will be useless. At that point there will be a gigantic pressure on Netherlands.
So SMEE maybe the saving grace of ASML, IF the Chinese is able to deployed a working EUVL let's say in 2024 at the earliest then we might see ASML exporting their NXT 3400C model the same year.
 
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