News on China's scientific and technological development.

Via JSCH
China playing bigger role in global fabless IC market, says IC Insights
Jessie Shen, DIGITIMES, Taipei
Monday 26 March 2018

China-based companies have shown the largest fabless IC market share gain since 2010, according to IC Insights. China-based fabless chipmakers collectively captured an only 5% share of the global fabless IC market in 2010, and the share climbed to 11% in 2017.

Already 10 China-based fabless companies were included in IC Insights' top-50 fabless IC supplier list in 2017 compared to only one company in 2009. Unigroup was the largest China-based fabless IC supplier and ninth-largest global fabless supplier in 2017 with sales of US$2.1 billion.

It is worth noting that when excluding the internal transfers of HiSilicon (over 90% of its sales go to its parent company Huawei), ZTE and Datang, the China share of the global fabless market would have reached about 6% in 2017, IC Insights noted.

At 53%, US companies accounted for the greatest share of fabless IC sales in 2017 although this share was down from 69% in 2010 due in part to the acquisition of Broadcom by Singapore-based Avago, IC Insights said. Broadcom Limited currently describes itself as a "co-headquartered" company with its headquarters in San Jose, California and Singapore, but it is in the process of establishing its headquarters entirely in the US. Once this takes place, the US share of the fabless companies IC sales will again be about 69%.

Taiwan captured 16% share of total fabless company IC sales in 2017, about the same percentage that it held in 2010, IC Insights said. MediaTek, Novatek and Realtek each had more than US$1 billion in IC sales last year and each was ranked among the top-20 largest fabless IC companies.

European companies held only 2% of the fabless IC company market share in 2017 as compared to 4% in 2010, IC Insights noted. The loss of share was due to the acquisition of UK-based CSR, the second-largest European fabless IC supplier, by Qualcomm in the first quarter of 2015 and the purchase of Germany-based Lantiq, the third-largest European fabless IC supplier, by Intel in second-quarter 2015. These acquisitions left UK-based Dialog (US$1.4 billion in sales in 2017) and Norway-based Nordic (US$236 million in sales in 2017) as the only two European-based fabless IC suppliers to make the list of top-50 fabless IC suppliers last year.

The fabless IC business model is not so prominent in Japan or in South Korea. Megachips, which saw its 2017 sales jump by 40% to US$640 million, was the largest Japan-based fabless IC supplier, IC Insights said. The lone South Korean company among the top-50 largest fabless suppliers was Silicon Works, which had a 15% increase in sales last year to US$605 million.

Fabless IC suppliers accounted for 27% of the world's IC sales in 2017, an increase from 18% ten years earlier in 2007, according to IC Insights.

This is what Trumpf afraid of
Again via JSCh
Chinese Wafer Maker Starts Building USD253 Million Plant to Tackle Foreign Monopoly
DOU SHICONG
DATE: TUE, 03/20/2018 - 13:32 / SOURCE:YICAI

Chinese Wafer Maker Starts Building USD253 Million Plant to Tackle Foreign Monopoly

(Yicai Global) March 20 — Ningxia Yinhe Semiconductor Technology Co. has officially begun construction of its CNY1.6-billion (USD253-million) silicon wafer factory in northwestern China as the nation continues to press ahead with chipmaking technology.

The plant, located at Yinchuan Economy and Technology Development Zone, will be able to produce 4.2 million eight-inch waters and 2.4 million 12-inch wafers a year once built, Ningxia Daily reported. The components will be used in the communications, automotive, medical and defends sectors to generate CNY1 billion annually, the report said.

Yinhe’s large wafers will help tear down the monopoly held by companies from Japan, South Korea and the United States, and reduce a China’s reliance on imports for high-quality components, it added, saying this will, in turn, reduce costs and make the industry more competitive.

Yinchuan Economy & Technology Development Zone was set up in 2001 and focuses on manufacturing, new energy and new materials. It is home to a monocrystal silicon production facility base and China’s largest industrial sapphire production base.

Chinese firms launch most tech IPOs: report
Source: Xinhua| 2018-04-10 19:30:58|Editor: pengying

BEIJING, April 10 (Xinhua) -- Chinese tech firms topped the world in the number of initial public offerings (IPOs) in the second half (H2) of 2017, according to a private report, as a booming new economy created enormous room for internet startups to thrive.

Twenty-three businesses operating on the Chinese mainland went public domestically or on overseas markets, raising a total of 4.65 billion U.S. dollars from July to December last year, the PwC China report said Tuesday.

Both China's number and value of IPOs ranked first in the global tech community, followed by the United States with 14 IPOs raising 2.86 billion U.S. dollars.

China Reading, the country's largest online publisher, raised around 1.1 billion U.S. dollars in Hong Kong last November in the world's second biggest technology offering in H2 of 2017.

Analysts attributed the IPO surge of Chinese tech firms to vibrant web-based industries. Innovations powered by internet technology are springing up and the group of tech-savvy young consumers is growing rapidly.

China's new economy, also known as the digital economy, totaled 26 trillion yuan (4.28 trillion U.S. dollars) in 2017, accounting for around 32 percent of national GDP.

From ride-hailing to online financing, innovative startups are sprouting into giants and becoming eager for more investment and financing.

"More Chinese firms in the technology, media, and telecom sectors turned to overseas markets after being blocked by legal and technical barriers in the A-share market, especially those yet to make profits," said Walter Zhang, PwC China assurance partner.

However, the phenomenon is about to change as regulators started to loosen rules to woo more homegrown tech firms to go public on the Chinese mainland.

The China Securities Regulatory Commission has announced a pilot program to help promising startups get listed and allow leading tech firms that have gone public abroad to re-issue shares on the mainland.

"China will become one of the world's hottest IPO markets," said Amanda Zhang, PwC China private equity partner.

There were a total of 53 technology offerings worldwide last year which raised around 13.2 billion U.S. dollars, according to the report.

Shanghai scientists pioneer new data storage tech
By Zhou Wenting in Shanghai | chinadaily.com.cn
Shanghai scientists have invented the world's groundbreaking third type of storage technology with two-dimensional semiconductors, solving the problem of acquiring both data writing speed and nonvolatile memories in semiconducting storage.

This new storage technology may largely reduce the power consumption of storage for supercomputers and allow data stored in the disks to be valid for only a certain period of time before disappearing, said researchers from the Shanghai-based Fudan University.

A paper about their research was published on the website of the United Kingdom-based Nature Nanotechnology on Tuesday.

According to Zhang Wei, a leading researcher on the team, there are so far two storage technologies in the field of semiconducting storage.

"One is volatile storage, such as the internal memory bank in our computers. It features fast data writing speed, but the data stored inside is all lost when the computer is turned off. The other is nonvolatile storage such as flash discs, where the data stored inside can be effective for up to 10 years, but its speed of data writing and retention is poor," said Zhang, who is executive director of the School of Microelectronics of Fudan University.

But the new storage technology meets both requirements of nonvolatile memories and the speed of data writing, which is roughly 10,000 times faster than current flash discs, Zhang said.

Moreover, with the new technology, the storage duration of each disc can be tailor-made from 10 seconds to 10 years, to solve the contradiction of data transmission and security in some special application scenarios.

"People in the future may receive a disc in which the data is only effective for, say, three days, which elevates the security of the information," said Zhang.

"People can also have tailor-made flash drives with the new storage technology. The data stored inside will be regularly emptied at an appointed time," he said.

China will soon eat S Korea lunch


China to rival S Korea in R&D, production of flexible displays
More made-in-China flexible and foldable display panels are set to hit the market with research and production breakthroughs
By ASIA TIMES STAFF APRIL 12, 2018 7:02 PM (UTC+8)

The Chinese Academy of Science announced this week the invention of a room-temperature ductile inorganic semiconductor, claiming its scientists had mounted a big technical hurdle toward mass-producing flexible and foldable displays.

The new inorganic semiconductor, named α-Ag2S, exhibited extraordinary metal-like ductility with high deformation residence and structural integrity even at room temperature, according to a paper submitted to scientific journal Nature Materials.

“Our work opens up the possibility of a new search for ductile inorganic semiconductors/ceramics for flexible electronic devices,” the paper said.

South Korean companies such as Samsung and LG enjoy a monopoly on new display-panel technology such as organic light-emitting diodes and curved and flexible display components, which are marketed with a fat mark-up to off-stream producers.

It’s reported that Beijing invited Samsung to set up a joint venture in China to produce new display panels, but before long Seoul added advanced display panels and components to its list of goods and technologies restricted from being transferred overseas.

Xinhua also reported in 2017 that a subsidiary of the Shenzhen-based display and home appliance maker TCL Corp had splurged some US$5 billion and started building China’s first production line of flexible displays for bracelet-shaped mobile phones and folding tablets.

Beijing-based electronic firm BOE has also started shipping soft displays, based on the active-matrix organic light-emitting diode (AMOLED) technology that has already been in wide use in smartphones and other gadgets. BOE is poised to challenge the stronghold of Korean suppliers.

Xinhua said these companies would join forces to formulate Chinese standards in flexible displays and promote the technologies through experience centers of prototypes of foldable tablets and phones.

Fugitives in China will have to avoid almost any places with CCTV in the future.

Popular singers are helping to catch fugitives just by having concerts:



Facial recognition tech catches fugitive in huge crowd at Jacky Cheung Cantopop concert in China
Man arrested after he was identified by the technology among a crowd of about 50,000 at the event

Police have arrested a fugitive in southeast China after facial recognition technology helped identify him in a crowd of about 50,000 people attending a pop concert, a news website reported.

The wanted man was detained while attending a show by the Hong Kong pop star Jacky Cheung last week in Nanchang, Jiangxi province, Kankan News reported.

China is viewed as the world leader in adopting facial recognition technology for various uses, including law enforcement.





The initiatives include the creation of the world’s most powerful facial recognition system by law enforcement agencies. The project, launched by the Ministry of Public Security in 2015, was under development in conjunction with a security company based in Shanghai, three people familiar with the matter told the South China Morning Post in October.

The 31-year-old man detained last week, who is wanted for unspecified economic crimes, was said to be in shock when police took him away, according to the report.

He had driven 90km (56 miles) from Zhangshu to Nanchang just to see the concert with his wife, the report said.

The man, who was only identified by his family name Ao, was quoted as saying he felt safe among such a huge crowd and would never have gone to the concert if he knew the police were capable of identifying him.


“Ao was suspected to be involved in an economic crime and was listed on a national online system,” police officer Li Jin was quoted as saying. “He was very shocked and had a blank face when we caught him.”


Uses of facial recognition technology in China include people paying at some restaurants or boarding planes after their faces are scanned for identification.


Jacky Cheung is one of Hong Kong’s biggest pop stars and has been on a world tour since 2016, performing more than 140 concerts across China and the rest of the world.

With facial recognition and ubiquitous cctv cameras, there will literally no refuge for law breakers in the future.

Chinese AI startup dwarfs global rivals with $4.5 billion valuation


Chinese artificial intelligence startups are attracting ever richer valuations as the country bets big on the emerging technology.
SenseTime, which specializes in software that can identify people's faces in surveillance videos, said Monday that it had secured $600 million in fresh funds and is already in talks with investors to raise more money. The latest cash injection values SenseTime at more than $4.5 billion, according to a person familiar with the company's fundraising.

That's more than any other artificial intelligence startup on the planet, according to . The second biggest AI startup is also Chinese: Shanghai-based Yitu Technology with a valuation of about $2.4 billion.



SenseTime tapped big names for cash in its latest funding round, including China's leading e-commerce company, Alibaba (). It had already an investment from US computer chip maker Qualcomm () last year.

The new funding will "help us widen the scope" for putting artificial intelligence to use in different industries, SenseTime CEO Li Xu said in a statement. Specifically, the company said it will pump more money into areas like security, smartphones, advertising and autonomous driving.

The investment comes amid intensifying commitment by corporations and governments in AI research and development, despite warnings from and of the potential misuse of the emerging technology.

The world's biggest tech companies like Google () and Facebook () are pouring resources into artificial intelligence. Last week, Apple () said it had poached Google's AI chief to help boost its own efforts in the technology.



Facial recognition technology in particular is big business in China, including in government efforts to keep tabs on citizens.

SenseTime's software is already used by Chinese smartphone makers like Xiaomi, Vivo and Oppo to organize photo albums or unlock phones by scanning faces.


A demonstration of SenseTime's facial recognition technology at an industry conference.
Alibaba said it is still figuring out how to use SenseTime tech in its businesses. One potential area could be in the company's .

Chinese retailer Suning, which has also invested in SenseTime, is already using the startup's software to develop cashier-free stores. They're similar to , where shoppers can just grab products and walk out, with AI software determining what was taken from shelves and settling the bill electronically.

SenseTime said it has more than 400 partners and clients using its AI applications.

That includes city governments that have paired facial recognition software with the massive number of surveillance cameras trained on city streets. AI software analyzes the footage, scanning faces to identify people or analyzing crowds to detect suspicious behavior.



SenseTime said as far as it knows, Chinese police have only used the company's tech to catch criminals.

But critics the deployment of AI to track Chinese citizens, saying it violates privacy and targets political dissidents.

China has in AI by 2030, aiming to build an industry worth $150 billion. The country's ambitious surveillance plans have helped spur spending on the technology.

Investment in facial recognition tech, including government grants, surged to $1.7 billion in 2017, a more than sixfold increase from the previous year, according to a .

All that cash has made China home to some of the most valuable AI startups on the planet, including SenseTime, Yitu and Megvii, according to CB Insights.

Ultra said:

Its a bit of old news, I searched the forum but I didn't see anyone post it...

Finally, China manufactures a ballpoint pen all by itself

To anyone outside of the ballpoint pen manufacturing world, it might seem hard to understand what, exactly, is so surprising about this development? China already produces 38 billion ballpoint pens a year, according to China Daily, which is around 80 per cent of all ballpoint pens in the world. That's a lot of pens, but there was a catch: China had long been unable to produce a high quality version of the most important part of the pen, its tip.

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China's inability to produce a complete, high-quality ballpoint pen came to widespread attention in 2015, when Prime Minister Li Keqiang singled out the products at a seminar in Beijing, noting that his writing was "rough" when he used Chinese-made ballpoint pens. For Li, China's failure to manufacture a complete ballpoint pen was indicative of the Chinese economy's weaknesses. "That's the real situation facing us," Li said at the time. "We cannot make ballpoint pens with a smooth writing function."

.......

Li's comments apparently sparked action, however, and this week, after a reported five years of research and development, the state-owned company Taiyuan Iron and Steel Group (TISCO) announced that it would begin mass-producing ballpoint pen tips and replace imports within two years.

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This whole episode is quite interesting:

Li Keqiang made some comments in December 2015:
News came out in Jan 2017 that China's cracked the code for "ballpoint tip" manufacturing.

TISCO had already been in the tail-end of a 5 yr R&D process of producing the high quality feedstock for the tip balls:

So it seems that Li had knowledge that R&D was already underway and fruition was within grasp. So he used that opportunity to make a point to encourage a change of mindset towards quality and R&D. Sure enough, 13 months later success was announced. But of course media across the world took it as a "mockery" chance.

There is also another issue, China was well capable of making the usual stainless steel ball nibs for those pens that range from $2 for 12 piece packet to 50 cents a piece. It is the tungsten carbide high quality ball nibs that China needed to import from the Swiss and Japanese.

And lastly, the low-end pens are dirt cheap. Couple that with the fact that China makes 80% of the world's ball point pens. This means that it is a low end segment where the Chinese companies are competing among themselves. Any company forking out R&D on making better ball nibs would have a high risk of folding-up as any increased profits are not guaranteed. You'll have to sell at a higher price range and you'll need to ensure that you can grab market share away from the likes of Pentel/Pilot/Mitsubishi/Parker etc. And for all that cost and effort, there is only 20% left of the market to tap. That market also are also heavily biased of consumers that just wants to buy a the Made in Japan/America/Switzerland pen and will not look at a Made in China one no matter the quality. In short, likely very little left of the market to tap.

Indeed, it was TISCO, a steel-making entity that financed and worked on the 5yr R&D effort, not any of the pen makers. This likely also under a state directive.[/QUOTE]

Photo: AFP

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Real-time intel on what moves markets

Forget smart cars. China is banking on game-changing smart roads
The ‘intelligent highway’ of the future is ‘so smart it will be able to charge your car’

A section of highway in the eastern Chinese city of Jinan is undergoing a transformation unlike any seen in the world, which may offer a window into the future of transportation itself.

Equipment such as solar panels, mapping sensors and electric-battery rechargers are being embedded in the 1,080 meter-long stretch of road, according to

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this week. The panels will be able to generate enough electricity to power highway lights and 800 homes, according to the developer working on the project, Qilu Transportation Development.

“The highways we have been using can only carry vehicles passing by, and they are like the 1.0-generation product,” Zhou Yong, Qilu’s general manager was quoted as saying. “We’re working on the 2.0 and 3.0 generations by transplanting brains and a nervous system.”

“In the future, when cars are running on these roads, it will be like human beings,” Zhou said. “The road will feel and think to figure out how heavy the vehicles are and what kind of data is needed.”

The possible development underscores the leg up China has over developed markets in one aspect of race to develop driverless car technology: the ability to develop new infrastructure.

As Asia Times columnist David Goldman

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, one industry specialist recently opined on this fact in a conference call held by consulting firm The Information:

“If you’ve been to China […] over the last couple of years and watched it grow, they are literally building new cities all of the time and then they move populations into them. And these cities frequently have infrastructure that is unheard of in the US,” the expert said.

“Just as an example, fences that keep people off the roads. Someone who jumped the fence and runs out into the road and gets hit by a car – that’s the pedestrian’s fault. Simple things like that make the self-driving problem several orders of magnitude easier [emphasis added],” he added.

“So even without looking at their ‘technology pool,’ just their ability to do simple things like that I think really makes China a very, very attractive target for developing autonomy. I think it would be foolish to count them out in any way, shape or form. The China market may end up being something that is very big and profitable for the companies that are there.”

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