Chinese semiconductor industry

On Yandong, I don't remember if this was previous posted, but they are finally expecting to start mass production of the 12 inch line this year and reach max production by 2025.
expected to start production in April and eventually reach 20k by July 2024 with first phase. 2nd phase start trial production in April 2024 and reach full production of 20k by July 2025.

燕东微表示，基于成套国产装备的特色工艺12英寸集成电路生产线项目的总投资为75亿元，公司将利用现有的净化厂房和已建成的厂务系统和设施进行局部适应性改造，并购置三百余台套设备，建设以国产装备为主的12英寸晶圆生产线。该产线完成建造后，月产能将达4万片，工艺节点为65nm，产品定位为高密度功率器件、显示驱动IC、电源管理IC、硅光芯片等。

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On Yandong's domestic tool involvement. There states a full set of domestic equipment for a specialty production line with investment of 7.5 billion RMB. The second part indicates that for the full plant, it uses mostly domestic tools and will reach for production of 40k wpm with focus on 65nm in power chips, display drive IC, power management IC and silicon photonics chips and such.

Also, I would caution people to blame all of these 2 years on SMEE DUV being trialed. The entire factory and production line is new for Yandong. There is no doubt that a lot of the time will be spent on fixing issues for other part of their production. This is their first 12-inch wafer plant and there are other domestic tools that are getting qualified.

I don't think it's reasonable to expect SMIC trialing DUVi to take as long because SMIC will already have experience producing 28-40nm wafers on 12-inch lines that are de-americanized.

My question overall is still the 55nm line at ICRD. If Yandong is already doing their own 65nm line and finished debugging it. Why does ICRD still need to do it. It seems like they are qualifying a more advanced variant for of SSA800 dry for 55nm.

Interesting. Loongson is coming out with more SoC. This 2K3000 is an 8 core (LA364) CPU along with its own integrated GPU LG200. According to this, 2K3000's LA364 went through redesign with different IPCs, redesigned processor core and lower bandwidth? Basically, the efficiency improved and the new core is at Cortex A75 level and the usage goes beyond industrial control. Since 2K3000 will be built with 14nm process rather than 28nm (like 2K2000), one can see why the LA364 went through improvement.

It's expected to be cheaper, with higher dimension, smaller surface area and lower power consumption than 2K2000. It's expected to be taped out in the first half of this year.

Above is a table of the different CPU and GPU core designed by LoongSon for different purposes. LG100/120 is their first generation low end GPU. LG200 seems to be second generation more powerful GPU to be placed on their SoCs and such.

Now, it says the main rationale for having 8 cores is to win in certain domestic bids that requires 8 core CPU (which 4-core CPUs like 3A5000/6000 don't qualify). But from what I can see, the low power consumption aspect allows this to be a SoC used on lower end smartphones. Or at least it is a step toward that. I would imagine this gets integrated with openHarmony and Huawei would have places to use it.

This one talked a little bit more about it along with other future Loongson plans
2K3000 is expected to have 3A5000 capabilities but at lower cost and power consumption. Making it I think more appropriate for IoT devices, more demanding industrial computers, lower end smartphone/tablet.

Keep in mind Kirin 810 that was launched in 2019 and made using 7nm process had 2 core of A76 performance along with 6 cores of A55 little core + an integrated GPU. If 14nm redesigned LA364 is at A75 performance, then 8 core LA364 with integrated GPU could very well have better performance than Kirin 810. It seems to me that if Huawei is forced to go 12/14nm route for 5g SoC, then something along the line of 2K3000 should be considered (or something similar to it with higher powered and lower powered core). But we will need to wait and see its power consumption performance.

Exclusive-Dutch officials headed to Washington to talk controls on chipmaking gear - sources​

(Reuters) - Dutch and U.S. officials will meet in Washington on Friday to discuss potential new controls on exporting semiconductor manufacturing gear to China, with a deal possible by the end of the month, according to two sources familiar with the matter.

mst said:

Exclusive-Dutch officials headed to Washington to talk controls on chipmaking gear - sources​

(Reuters) - Dutch and U.S. officials will meet in Washington on Friday to discuss potential new controls on exporting semiconductor manufacturing gear to China, with a deal possible by the end of the month, according to two sources familiar with the matter.

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Great, another article that says absolutely nothing materially and tells us that any agreement won't be announced for some time. What's the point of keep posting these articles?

Lam is hurting.

ASML CEO argues that chip controls would eventually make China becomes self reliance.

KYli said:

Lam is hurting.

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How shocking /s

tokenanalyst said:

Hua Hong Semiconductor plans to establish a 12-inch wafer manufacturing joint venture, with the registered capital increased to US$4.02 billion​

Hua Hong Semiconductor Co., Ltd. announced that the company, Hua Hong Grace, the National Integrated Circuit Industry Fund II and Wuxi City Entity entered into a joint venture agreement on January 18, 2023. Through the joint venture The company established a joint venture and invested USD 880 million, USD 1.17 billion, USD 1.165 billion and USD 804 million in cash to the joint venture respectively.

According to the joint venture agreement, the joint venture company will be engaged in the manufacture and sales of integrated circuits and 12-inch (300mm) wafers using 65/55nm to 40nm processes.

On the same day, the Company, Huahong Grace, National Integrated Circuit Industry Fund II, Wuxi City Entity and the joint venture entered into a joint venture investment agreement to convert the joint venture into a joint venture and increase the registered capital of the joint venture from RMB 6.68 million to RMB 4.02 billion Dollar.

The announcement pointed out that the joint venture company will become a non-wholly owned subsidiary of the company after the completion of the transactions contemplated under the joint venture agreement and the joint venture investment agreement. According to the joint venture agreement and the joint venture investment agreement, after completing relevant filings with the Chinese government, the joint venture company will be held by the Group as to approximately 51%, of which 21.9% will be directly held by the company and 29.1% will be held by the company through its wholly-owned subsidiary Huahong Grace indirectly holds.

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looks like they are able to move on this relatively fast

Might start building fab in first half and start production near end of 2024. Even so, that's still over a year where they are not really increasing 12-inch production since fab 7 is maxing out at 95k wpm in Q2.

mst said:

Exclusive-Dutch officials headed to Washington to talk controls on chipmaking gear - sources​

(Reuters) - Dutch and U.S. officials will meet in Washington on Friday to discuss potential new controls on exporting semiconductor manufacturing gear to China, with a deal possible by the end of the month, according to two sources familiar with the matter.

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Do not be surprised if the Dutch capitulate entirely... Then, much of the West, especially the Americans will gloat immensely... If the Dutch capitulate, it is likely that the Japanese will too... It will provide a pretext for them to do so... China will have to do what it should have done in earnest more than a decade ago when the Cassandras even then were speaking of the probability in the future of the US and its allies placing China in a high tech embargo, regardless of the hit to the profitability of their own companies, and that is go full scale indigenous with regards to the development of any high tech technology that is worth having, be it commercially marketable or not, but certainly highly valuable...

Now, the Chinese trade liberalists in the Chinese state are seeing the value of assisting in the development of indigenous technology across the entire supply chain from material sources, through manufacturing and inspection equipment, instead of just being content as being producers of products that are made using manufacturing equipment supplied from foreign and always potentially highly adversarial countries...

Weaasel said:

Do not be surprised if the Dutch capitulate entirely... Then, much of the West, especially the Americans will gloat immensely... If the Dutch capitulate, it is likely that the Japanese will too... It will provide a pretext for them to do so... China will have to do what it should have done in earnest more than a decade ago when the Cassandras even then were speaking of the probability in the future of the US and its allies placing China in a high tech embargo, regardless of the hit to the profitability of their own companies, and that is go full scale indigenous with regards to the development of any high tech technology that is worth having, be it commercially marketable or not, but certainly highly valuable...

Now, the Chinese trade liberalists in the Chinese state are seeing the value of assisting in the development of indigenous technology across the entire supply chain from material sources, through manufacturing and inspection equipment, instead of just being content as being producers of products that are made using manufacturing equipment supplied from foreign and always potentially highly adversarial countries...

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If the dutch resist, I think I will take about 3 years to capitulate. If not, china will have maximum 6 month to mass produce DUVi.