Chinese semiconductor industry

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Oldschool

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I think they should develope 10nm as the last efficient tech under duv and wait euv for 7nm.
10nm is a sweet spot, significant improvement over 14nm and doesn't take yield hit like 7nm.

The People's Semiconductor has to be very economical and efficient for itself and second world, third world
 
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Skywatcher

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Seems like Nikkei Asia's Cheng Ting Fang and Lauly Li, and Seeking Alpha's Robert Castellano are the English language sources to go to for news on Chinese domestic semiconductor equipment manufacturer.

Castellano is particular has good credentials (a PhD in Chemistry from Oxford, studied under Dr. Goodenough of Nobel Prize for Lithium Ion battery fame) and access to sources (probably in large part due to being a peer reviewed journal editor). He was the first English writer (AFAIK) to break news of Naura's 5-7nm equipment research. And maybe, given Havok's recent apparent (and apparently censored) claim about the SMEE 28nm providing 14-16nm capability by year's end, he could also be the first English writer to state that the initial SSA-800 already has 14nm capacity.
 
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antonius123

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Mr. Liang revealed in his letter that SMIC will commence risk production of the 7nm process in April this next year. This stage of the production process aims to finetune affairs to prevent problems from disrupting mass production later on. Additionally, he also revealed that when it comes to the leading edge 5nm and 3nm nodes, SMIC has completed developing eight of the processes most difficult technologies (highlighted in bold in the fully translated letter below) - with production now contingent on extreme ultraviolet (EUV) machines exclusively manufactured by the Dutch company ASML.

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So according to the Mong Song Liang the resigning CEO of SMIC, SMIC is on its way with 5nm and even 3nm, the hinderance is only EUV lithograpy.
 
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weig2000

Captain
Skywatcher said:
Seems like Nikkei Asia's Cheng Ting Fang and Lauly Li, and Seeking Alpha's Robert Castellano are the English language sources to go to for news on Chinese domestic semiconductor equipment manufacturer.

Castellano is particular has good credentials (a PhD in Chemistry from Oxford, studied under Dr. Goodenough of Nobel Prize for Lithium Ion battery fame) and access to sources (probably in large part due to being a peer reviewed journal editor). He was the first English writer (AFAIK) to break news of Naura's 5-7nm equipment research. And maybe, given Havok's recent apparent (and apparently censored) claim about the SMEE 28nm providing 14-16nm capability by year's end, he could also be the first English writer to state that the initial SSA-800 already has 14nm capacity.
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Reminds of me some years back when I was listening to one of those panel discussions hosted by one of the leading US think tanks on Chinese military and defense industry. One of the panelists (IIRC Derek Scissors) said that people often accused China of lack of transparency in defense matters, when in fact China was quite open and you could get 80% of the information from open source. It's just they're all in Chinese. He then said China's best protection is Chinese.

Coming back to the current topic, the Chinese semiconductor industry. You get a very different feel of the industry if you can access both English and Chinese open sources, compared with if you can only access English sources. Admittedly, it's quite different these days due to the widespread social media of all kinds, from the time when I listened to the said panel discussion.
 
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ansy1968

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weig2000 said:
Reminds of me some years back when I was listening to one of those panel discussions hosted by one of the leading US think tanks on Chinese military and defense industry. One of the panelists (IIRC Derek Scissors) said that people often accused China of lack of transparency in defense matters, when in fact China was quite open and you could get 80% of the information from open source. It's just they're all in Chinese. He then said China's best protection is Chinese.

Coming back to the current topic, the Chinese semiconductor industry. You get a very different feel of the industry if you can access both English and Chinese open sources, compared with if you can only access English sources. Admittedly, it's quite different these days due to the widespread social media of all kinds, from the time when I listened to the said panel discussion.
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@weig2000 bro its our best defense...LOL and there is a hesitancy on the part of the west to ask the right question. Their arrogance precede them and accusation is often used as a way of massaging their ego.
 
krautmeister

krautmeister

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The EDA market is about 40 years old, and is probably maturing. This means that essentials likely can't improve much. The US EDA developers are probably adding lots of glitz, much as US automakers added tailfins to cars; however, the essentials of the software are probably not changing much. Hence Chinese firms like Empyrean et cetera will have time to catch up.
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In a perfectly efficient world market, this would be the case but that's not the case. In the EDA space just like in the lithography space, the leaders have access to leading edge equipment that the competition does not. This is why Empyrean only recently started offering full design flow EDA solutions at the mature >=28nm nodes while the big 3 support the leading edge processes because they work intimately with TSMC, Samsung, Intel, etc. In other words, no matter how supposedly "easy" some people are claiming this is supposed to be, it can't happen because China is in a sanctions environment and always has been. As soon as China starts climbing the tech ladder and comes within striking distance of the leading edge, coordinated tech sanctions get triggered to keep them behind. Planar transistors are a different animal from FINFET, GAA and all the other FET variants that EDA algorithms have to work with. If companies like Empyrean can't even get access to these advanced fabs to perfect their EDA solutions, how can they hope to catch up, let alone provide simulation, testing and verification at the leading edge nodes? When you have proposals like what US politician Tom Cotton is proposing with the global ban of sales to all China companies at nodes <=14nm, it means China EDA solutions will soon be the ONLY solution available to China if they hope to advance further. When China's own lithography equipment have the ability to manufacture at more advanced nodes is when Empyrean and other China EDA companies can cooperate with those China lithography equipment makers to advance their full design flow solutions, and that's when China will finally break the semiconductor bottleneck.
 
krautmeister

krautmeister

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Oldschool said:
Even thought now Huawei is fully banned by US, it still use cadence and synopsys to design the 3nm chip. Software is Nothing to worry.. it's always available.
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The Huawei 3nm design was started before the US proposed worldwide ban of all designs from US EDA from <=14nm. Huawei's 3nm design will be basically illegal to manufacture anywhere in the world, it's millions of dollars down the drain.
 
krautmeister

krautmeister

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Oldschool said:
It's not used anymore. It's too many layers affecting the yield .

Multipatterned 7nm duv is not an efficient way to go.
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Do you know what were the TSMC DUV 7nm yield figures? The rumored CETC DUV 7nm trials will be China's only domestic sub-14nm solution for many years if we do not consider SMICs N+1, N+2.
 
Quickie

Quickie

Colonel
krautmeister said:
In a perfectly efficient world market, this would be the case but that's not the case. In the EDA space just like in the lithography space, the leaders have access to leading edge equipment that the competition does not. This is why Empyrean only recently started offering full design flow EDA solutions at the mature >=28nm nodes while the big 3 support the leading edge processes because they work intimately with TSMC, Samsung, Intel, etc. In other words, no matter how supposedly "easy" some people are claiming this is supposed to be, it can't happen because China is in a sanctions environment and always has been. As soon as China starts climbing the tech ladder and comes within striking distance of the leading edge, coordinated tech sanctions get triggered to keep them behind. Planar transistors are a different animal from FINFET, GAA and all the other FET variants that EDA algorithms have to work with. If companies like Empyrean can't even get access to these advanced fabs to perfect their EDA solutions, how can they hope to catch up, let alone provide simulation, testing and verification at the leading edge nodes? When you have proposals like what US politician Tom Cotton is proposing with the global ban of sales to all China companies at nodes <=14nm, it means China EDA solutions will soon be the ONLY solution available to China if they hope to advance further. When China's own lithography equipment have the ability to manufacture at more advanced nodes is when Empyrean and other China EDA companies can cooperate with those China lithography equipment makers to advance their full design flow solutions, and that's when China will finally break the semiconductor bottleneck.
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So the bottleneck is really China's lack of advanced lithography equipment.

Once these equipment are available it would be only a matter of configuring the Chinese EDA software to work with them with little change to the software at the higher level of chip design work. The biggest hurdle still comes back to the equipment hardware.
 
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