Chinese semiconductor industry

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Blitzo

Lieutenant General
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What information exactly is misleading?

The most disturbing thing in the report is how he points out that ASML PhD's have double the salary and much better benefits than SMEE's PhD's, and this is based on public job sites and comments on job boards, not the Equal Ocean Report. This could be solved if the Chinese government injected capital into SMEE or allowed SMEE to IPO to attract private capital. Since this seems so easy to solve, I don't see why it hasn't been done already. The most critical part of the semiconductor race will be human capital.

The second disturbing thing is that he claims that China's 90nm SMEE 600/2 machine from years ago is not "selling in relevant quantities." While this may be changing due to US export bans, it would be nice to see some concrete proof that sales of the machine and increasing and that it is being used by customers in volume. He also claims that this is a specialized machine for backend lithography. He does seem to think SMEE has developed a working prototype of a 28nm ArFi machine, but thinks that volume production will not be online until Beijing GuoWang's new plant is completed in 2023, followed by a year of integration which takes us to 2024. And even then, the product may not be commercially viable. In terms of commercially viable front end machines, he sees SMEE as "at least" 20 years behind ASML. Basically, China is able to prototype reasonably (only ~10 years behind) but the quality of its products are low so it never achieves commercialization. However, I still think this is due to the human capital issue mentioned in paragraph #1.

I think if we consider Chinese semiconductor watching to be similar to PLA watching that we are all familiar with, then I think there is a degree of natural skepticism from English language sources who do not have intimate understanding of the Chinese language rumour base and who have done the legwork to correlate them.

I do think that relative to PLA watching, Chinese semiconductor watching is in a bit of an earlier state of maturity with a lower barrier to entry yet also with more useful information openly available... but PLA watching and the quality of "PLA analysis" or news on the PLA that most English language news media, defense journalism, and content creators put out, provides a useful starting point to treat those same analyses on Chinese semiconductors with a similar degree of skepticism.

At least, until we have a more robust system in place.
 

Hadoren

Junior Member
Registered Member
Honestly I find this thread the most useless of all of SDF, barring "Ladakh Flash Point."

This thread is basically the following on repeat.
  • 28nm completed!
  • 14nm completed!
  • 7nm completed!
  • 56nm DUV completed!
  • 28nm DUV completed!
  • 7nm DUV completed!
Repeat, rinse, repeat. 28nm completed. Oh wait, no, 7nm completed. Oh wait, no, actually it's 14nm DUV. Lots of lengthy paragraphs, lots of reposts of news articles written by clueless journalists, lots of delirious claims that 56/28/14/7nm/DUV/EUV is completed.

Anyways, I'm making a commitment not to click on "Chinese semiconductor industry" for at least two weeks. I've weaned myself off of "Ladakh Flash Point," I can wean myself off this.
 

Blitzo

Lieutenant General
Staff member
Super Moderator
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Honestly I find this thread the most useless of all of SDF, barring "Ladakh Flash Point."

This thread is basically the following on repeat.
  • 28nm completed!
  • 14nm completed!
  • 7nm completed!
  • 56nm DUV completed!
  • 28nm DUV completed!
  • 7nm DUV completed!
Repeat, rinse, repeat. 28nm completed. Oh wait, no, 7nm completed. Oh wait, no, actually it's 14nm DUV. Lots of lengthy paragraphs, lots of reposts of news articles written by clueless journalists, lots of delirious claims that 56/28/14/7nm/DUV/EUV is completed.

Anyways, I'm making a commitment not to click on "Chinese semiconductor industry" for at least two weeks. I've weaned myself off of "Ladakh Flash Point," I can wean myself off this.

The point of this thread is for us to know which of the milestones have been met and which haven't been met.

A cursory review of the thread over the last year does point to some pretty obvious milestones and an overall trajectory -- if one is able to filter out the mainstream "news language articles".


=====

I would add however -- @ansy1968 , while I appreciate your enthusiasm for the thread and for various developments, how many of the articles are properly assessed to be accurate?
If we continue with the PLA watching and Chinese semiconductor watching parallels -- there are also many Chinese language articles and videos that are either inaccurate, or overenthusiastic or not saying anything new about PLA matters, and I think there are also enough articles and videos that are the similar for Chinese semiconductors as well.

Consider using a bit more discretion to be a bit more selective.


Alternatively, I am also not opposed to @WTAN articulating his thoughts and positions more clearly, but at the same time I recognize that people here who know more about the details may choose to avoid giving a full and clear picture for general opsec reasons.
 

horse

Major
Registered Member
Honestly I find this thread the most useless of all of SDF, barring "Ladakh Flash Point."

This thread is basically the following on repeat.
  • 28nm completed!
  • 14nm completed!
  • 7nm completed!
  • 56nm DUV completed!
  • 28nm DUV completed!
  • 7nm DUV completed!
Repeat, rinse, repeat. 28nm completed. Oh wait, no, 7nm completed. Oh wait, no, actually it's 14nm DUV. Lots of lengthy paragraphs, lots of reposts of news articles written by clueless journalists, lots of delirious claims that 56/28/14/7nm/DUV/EUV is completed.

Anyways, I'm making a commitment not to click on "Chinese semiconductor industry" for at least two weeks. I've weaned myself off of "Ladakh Flash Point," I can wean myself off this.

It is a different kind of war.

Huawei versus the US Government, is the main tech war. That is like Vietnam. When they started bombing Cambodia, to stop the Ho Chi Min Trail, that is like this semiconductor war.

To see what is happening, is to see how this war is going.

:)
 

Overbom

Brigadier
Registered Member
Honestly I find this thread the most useless of all of SDF, barring "Ladakh Flash Point."

This thread is basically the following on repeat.
  • 28nm completed!
  • 14nm completed!
  • 7nm completed!
  • 56nm DUV completed!
  • 28nm DUV completed!
  • 7nm DUV completed!
Repeat, rinse, repeat. 28nm completed. Oh wait, no, 7nm completed. Oh wait, no, actually it's 14nm DUV. Lots of lengthy paragraphs, lots of reposts of news articles written by clueless journalists, lots of delirious claims that 56/28/14/7nm/DUV/EUV is completed.
You consider a thread about China's future technological independence "useless"? Is it "useless" to talk about something that will (is) be everywhere in our lives in the 2020s? News about the engine of the 4th Industrial Revolution is definetely not useless at all.

The reason why we have the same news is that the semiconductors business is inherently slow to ramp up. Slow to research, slow to build prototypes, slow to commercialise, slow to build fabs

All in all, everything about IC is slow. This is not a 24hr news channel where we have news coming in every hour (World News thread) or day

In addition ICs are such a specialised field that it is very difficult to have knowledgable people who can analyse it. Its not like in the military threads where you can have a photo and you can analyse it down to the smallest detail. Because, if you are shown a photo of a chip can we even analyse anything at all from its appearance?..


Anyways, I'm making a commitment not to click on "Chinese semiconductor industry" for at least two weeks.
I think this is a good compromise. As you and I said, semiconductors is a very slow industry.
 

Annihilation98

Junior Member
Registered Member
Honestly I find this thread the most useless of all of SDF, barring "Ladakh Flash Point."

This thread is basically the following on repeat.
  • 28nm completed!
  • 14nm completed!
  • 7nm completed!
  • 56nm DUV completed!
  • 28nm DUV completed!
  • 7nm DUV completed!
Repeat, rinse, repeat. 28nm completed. Oh wait, no, 7nm completed. Oh wait, no, actually it's 14nm DUV. Lots of lengthy paragraphs, lots of reposts of news articles written by clueless journalists, lots of delirious claims that 56/28/14/7nm/DUV/EUV is completed.

Anyways, I'm making a commitment not to click on "Chinese semiconductor industry" for at least two weeks. I've weaned myself off of "Ladakh Flash Point," I can wean myself off this.
This forum is actually overestimated China's capabilities. China's semiconductor technologies are 10 or 15 years behind western counterpart. This is a fact.
 

ansy1968

Brigadier
Registered Member
Honestly I find this thread the most useless of all of SDF, barring "Ladakh Flash Point."

This thread is basically the following on repeat.
  • 28nm completed!
  • 14nm completed!
  • 7nm completed!
  • 56nm DUV completed!
  • 28nm DUV completed!
  • 7nm DUV completed!
Repeat, rinse, repeat. 28nm completed. Oh wait, no, 7nm completed. Oh wait, no, actually it's 14nm DUV. Lots of lengthy paragraphs, lots of reposts of news articles written by clueless journalists, lots of delirious claims that 56/28/14/7nm/DUV/EUV is completed.

Anyways, I'm making a commitment not to click on "Chinese semiconductor industry" for at least two weeks. I've weaned myself off of "Ladakh Flash Point," I can wean myself off this.
@Hadoren blasphemy!!! for me this thread is previous, non believer go on and sleep.
 

daifo

Captain
Registered Member
Honestly I find this thread the most useless of all of SDF, barring "Ladakh Flash Point."

This thread is basically the following on repeat.
  • 28nm completed!
  • 14nm completed!
  • 7nm completed!
  • 56nm DUV completed!
  • 28nm DUV completed!
  • 7nm DUV completed!
Repeat, rinse, repeat. 28nm completed. Oh wait, no, 7nm completed. Oh wait, no, actually it's 14nm DUV. Lots of lengthy paragraphs, lots of reposts of news articles written by clueless journalists, lots of delirious claims that 56/28/14/7nm/DUV/EUV is completed.

Anyways, I'm making a commitment not to click on "Chinese semiconductor industry" for at least two weeks. I've weaned myself off of "Ladakh Flash Point," I can wean myself off this.

This is like the Type 003 thread actually... honestly I was confused by the grainy pics the entire time. Sometime the ship looked 1/10 built, then 1/2 build then 8/9 built then back to 1/4 built... then one day we finally see a clear pic of the entire hull.
 
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