Chinese semiconductor industry

2nd hand sources? I gave you a link to a PAGE ON TSMC's WEBSITE.

TSMC offered the world's first 0.18-micron (µm) low power process technology in 1998. The Company continued to build its technology leadership by rolling out new low power processes every two years, ranging from 0.13μm and 90-nanometer (nm) to today's most advanced 20nm and 16nm technologies.

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0.18 micron is 180 nanometer.
You gave me a Rand report on SMIC and claim TSMC themselves don't know when they started manufacturing at 180nm.
Do you even know what a primary source is?

Here's a "highly prized" 1st hand source from SMIC, talking about its Top Fab award in 2003:

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Yes. In 2003, after they licensed 180nm from Chartered Semiconductor in late 2001, they were producing at 180nm. Big whoop.

In 2001 TSMC was manufacturing the VIA C3 processor in volume at 130nm.

FriedRiceNSpice said:

Let's just assume SMIC is 2yrs behind in 2002. Then it can be expected they would fall even further behind, assuming free market competition regardless of whether or not their are sanctions or not. Why would anyone choose a chip that is two years behind when they have the option of choosing a cutting edge children for the same cost? Being two years behind is still a huge disadvantage for SMIC when it comes to market competition. As a result, SMIC would have less revenues and profits to invest back in R&D, and the tech gap will only increase. That is why so many chip fabs fell out of the game over the last two decades, fabbing chips is a winner takes all business. To attribute SMIC falling behind to the success of sanctions is a logical fallacy. Conversely, with the imposition of total sanctions, SMIC is actually in a more advantageous position, as now it has no competition within certain domestic market segments, and will have the revenues as well as governmental support drive its R&D efforts.

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SMIC actually had a competition advantage over TSMC in China 20 years ago. It had a head start of over a year, and TSMC did not want to risk moving production of anything below 250nm at the time when SMIC was beginning 180nm production and getting close to starting 130nm production. Plus, after the TSMC engineer migration scandal, Taiwan government introduced onerous restrictions on sending Taiwan personnel to China, which put TSMC at a further disadvantage. SMIC had its niche. Chinese government could always have stepped in and ensured that they have a healthy market share no matter what. But they failed to capitalize on it and operated for years as a money losing machine.

I admit that it's difficult to prove that the export restrictions were the determining factor, but that doesn't mean it's a logical fallacy. Truth is not a determinant of logical soundness. Making a logically sound hypothesis doesn't prove anything.

To poke at your logic a bit: Why were people buying AMD chips in the late 2000s and early 2010s, when AMD was hopelessly behind Intel in both architecture and manufacturing process and was barely competitive with the bottom of Intel's product portfolio?

nlalyst said:

SMIC actually had a competition advantage over TSMC in China 20 years ago. It had a head start of over a year, and TSMC did not want to risk moving production of anything below 250nm at the time when SMIC was beginning 180nm production and getting close to starting 130nm production.

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How do you come up with this BS? TSMC was delivering the VIA C3 processor to the market at 130nm in 2001.
That's before SMIC produced anything at 180nm.

gelgoog said:

2nd hand sources? I gave you a link to a PAGE ON TSMC's WEBSITE.

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

0.18 micron is 180 nanometer.
You gave me a Rand report on SMIC and claim TSMC themselves don't know when they started manufacturing at 180nm.
Do you even know what a primary source is?



Yes. In 2003, after they licensed 180nm from Chartered Semiconductor in late 2001, they were producing at 180nm. Big whoop.

In 2001 TSMC was manufacturing the VIA C3 processor in volume at 130nm.

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

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You keep asking me to show you SMIC 180nm products, but refuse yourself to show me a TSMC 180nm product from 1998. If you can't find a product from 1998, your source is irrelevant. Doesn't matter if is first or second hand. It doesn't serve any useful purpose in this discussion, because you refuse to accept that SMIC qualified its 180nm process in 2001, which is what TSMC did in 1998 for its 180nm process. We can only compare apples to apples, wouldn't you agree?

I have demonstrated that there was a SMIC 180nm product available on the market for TSMC to buy and inspect in 2003 the latest. This was a "proprietary" SMIC process node, not licensed. The earliest TSMC 180nm that one could buy on the market was available in 2000. I challenge you to find an earlier product.

How could they have qualified its 180nm process in 2001 if they only signed a license for it in December 2001?
Do you even know what signing a license is? It means they signed a contract where Chartered would pass the technology to them then.

gelgoog said:

How do you come up with this BS? TSMC was delivering the VIA C3 processor to the market at 130nm in 2001.
That's before SMIC produced anything at 180nm.

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This in reference to China's local market conditions in 2002. TSMC's 250nm fab was still in construction at the time SMIC's was running. And SMIC could always count on the Chinese government to help it have a niche in the market one way or the other.

gelgoog said:

How could they have qualified its 180nm process in 2001 if they only signed a license for it in December 2001?
Do you even know what signing a license is? It means they signed a contract where Chartered would pass the technology to them then.

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Your brain refuses to accept the simple fact that the 180nm process I am talking about is SMIC "proprietary" technology, i.e. their own "creative" product. But as it turned out, it was just stolen TSMC technology. That's how they magically closed the gap.

nlalyst said:

Can you show me a product on sale that was manufactured on SMIC 7nm?

When I last checked a couple of months ago, SMIC's 14nm accounted for less than 10% of their sales. I have the impression that this company is slightly over-hyped on this forum.

EDIT:
The first 14nm product was shipped by Intel back in 2014. AFAIK, SMIC shipped its first 14nm product in 2020. Therefore, the gap of 2-3 years was at least doubled since the early 2000s.

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And Intel still stuck with 14nm .... its 10nm is well known for a lot of problems and none of Intel desktop CPU use 10nm until at least now - May 2021

And the current most advanced Chip manufacturer TSMC only first manufactured its 12/14nm in 2017

Jesus. Just read this.

SMIC and Chartered announce alliance on 0.18-micron technology and capacity
21 Dec 2001
SMIC will receive 0.18-micron baseline logic process technology transfer and be granted patent license rights from Chartered, as Chartered will receive an equity stake and access to capacity in SMIC. Financial terms were not disclosed.
...
SMIC recently entered into pilot production producing 8-inch wafers at 0.25-micron (and below) technology, and it is expected to reach full capacity producing 85,000 8-inch wafers per month by the end of 2004.
...
Established in April 2000, SMIC is a Cayman Islands Company with headquarters in Shanghai, China. SMIC offers leading technology, fast turnaround production and customizable outsourced semiconductor manufacturing services for major integrated device manufacturers, fabless design houses and system OEMs. SMIC's key services include IC design, mask shop, manufacturing, packaging, and testing, providing our customers with a one-stop full service solution. Pilot production has already begun in Fab 1 and volume output is expected by the beginning of 2002. Fab 2 is planned to begin equipment installation by August 2002 and commence pilot production by the end of 2002.

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And now read this.

SMIC launches fully qualified 0.18-micron Logic process
16 Aug 2002
Semiconductor Manufacturing International (Shanghai) Corporation (SMIC), a pure-play semiconductor foundry located in China, announced today that it is ready to launch its fully qualified 0.18-micron CMOS logic technology, which is the first such offering in China. SMIC's internal R&D team has developed this foundry compatible 0.18-micron Logic process technology, based upon SMIC's licensed technologies from technology partners. ... SMIC has already implemented this 0.18-micron logic technology into volume production, and has achieved competitive levels of defect density and process cycle time.

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This is what TSMC was doing in the year SMIC was founded in 2000.

TSMC and VIA Technologies, Inc. Announce First Functional 0.13-Micron Processor Wafers
2000/12/12
HSIN-CHU, Taiwan, December 12, 2000 - Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (NYSE: TSM) and VIA Technologies, Inc. today announced the delivery of the foundry industry’s first 0.13-micron functioning wafers.
...
VIA has already received its 0.13-micron wafers and verified their functionality. The new VIA Cyrix processors are expected to meet the specific needs of the value PC, notebook and information appliance (IA) markets.

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In 2001 that VIA C3 was being sold in the market.

And you claim this crock of shit.

SMIC actually had a competition advantage over TSMC in China 20 years ago. It had a head start of over a year, and TSMC did not want to risk moving production of anything below 250nm at the time when SMIC was beginning 180nm production and getting close to starting 130nm production.
...
TSMC's 250nm fab was still in construction at the time SMIC's was running.

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In prior posts you looked at graphics chips like 3Dfx and NVIDIA. Back then graphics chips were much less sophisticated than CPUs and used much older manufacturing processes. So of course they weren't manufactured with the latest and greatest process. Back then the graphics chip did not do compute, it was not a general purpose processor, it only rendered polygons and sometimes textures. 3Dfx didn't even have 2D processing in it to make it even less complex to manufacture.

antiterror13 said:

And Intel still stuck with 14nm .... its 10nm is well known for a lot of problems and none of Intel desktop CPU use 10nm until at least now - May 2021

And the current most advanced Chip manufacturer TSMC only first manufactured its 12/14nm in 2017

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Intel's 10nm is set to overtake its 14nm in production in the second half of this year. That's proof that they solved most of their problems on that node, albeit 3 years too late. A 10nm Intel desktop CPU (Alder Lake) has been spotted in the wild and benchmark results posted online. It's scheduled to launch in the second half of this year.