Opinionated - China Chipping Away to Semiconductor Dominance

[cirr]

China has started the march towards 7nm process node with the installation of ASML EUV lithography set for 2019:

http://www.sohu.com/a/195692956_609521

@Bussard Ramjet India?

 

[JSCh]

Thursday, October 19, 2017, 11:05
Homegrown chips power domestic smartphone sector
By Ma Si

Workers on a production line of chip and main board products at a FiberHome Technologies Group factory in Wuhan, capital of Central China's Hubei province. (PROVIDED TO CHINA DAILY)

A nanosecond is a long time in the semiconductor sector while three years is an eternity.

Back in 2013, Chinese smartphone chipmakers had a mountain to climb against global rivals such as Qualcomm Inc in the United States.

They barely even had a presence in the low-end segment of the market.

But all that changed after the government rolled out new policies and domestic players broke through technological barriers.

"Three years ago, we relied chiefly on a price war to crack the market," said Li Liyou, CEO of Spreadtrum Communications Inc, one of the largest chipmakers on the Chinese mainland.

"But as more resources were poured into research and development, we saw a fundamental change," Li added.

Plans to upgrade the homegrown chip industry are in line with the central leadership's call to turn China into a manufacturer of quality.

"We will move Chinese industries up to the medium-high end of the global value chain, and foster a number of world-class advanced manufacturing clusters," Party General Secretary Xi Jinping said at the opening of the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China in Beijing on Wednesday.

Data from research agency IC Insights revealed that 11 Chinese companies were on the global top 50 list for integrated circuit designers in 2016. Only one domestic business was on it in 2009.

Spreadtrum Communications Inc is a classic example of what is happening inside the industry. It produced more than 600 million smartphone chips last year, accounting for over 25 percent of the world's total shipments.

Huawei Technologies Co Ltd, the world's third largest smartphone manufacturer, is also making inroads with its in-house Kirin chips.

In 2014, China's largest telecom equipment maker was struggling to upgrade its semiconductor division, despite putting together a program a decade earlier.

But now most of its smartphones, including high-end models, are powered by Kirin chips. Last month, the Shenzhen-based business unveiled its first artificial intelligence chip, Kirin 970, with superfast computing and strong image-recognition capabilities.

It powers Huawei's new Mate 10 smartphone, which was launched on Monday to compete with Apple Inc's 10th-anniversary iPhone.

"AI can enable real-time language translation, heed voice commands, or take advantage of augmented reality, which overlays text, sounds, graphics and video on real-world images," said Yu Chengdong, CEO of Huawei Consumer Business Group.

Figures released from the China Semiconductor Industry Association showed that the domestic chip sector reported sales of 434 billion yuan ($65 billion) last year, an increase of 20 percent compared to 2015.

Xiang Ligang, a telecom expert and CEO of industry website Cctime, pointed out that Chinese companies are now benefiting from the government's policy to cultivate a domestic chip industry.

The program was put in place amid concerns that a heavy reliance on foreign technology would affect national security.

There were also other reasons, such as the fact that China was spending more on overseas chips than crude oil imports.

In 2014, Beijing set up China's Integrated Circuit Industry Investment Fund to support the sector and spur private financing.

One of the biggest beneficiaries was Tsinghua Unigroup, the parent company of Spreadtrum.

Earlier this year, it signed financing deals worth 150 billion yuan to carry on R&D into new homegrown chips.

This will give the State-owned technology group enough cash to fulfill its grand ambitions in the semiconductor sector, and join the ranks of global giants, such as Intel Corp, Qualcomm and Samsung Electronics Co.

Among the investors are China Development Bank and China's Integrated Circuit Industry Investment Fund.

"The next several years are key ... there is an enormous market out there," said Zhao Weiguo, chairman of Tsinghua Unigroup.

To illustrate that, Tsinghua Unigroup is now working on a $30 billion domestic memorychip production complex in Nanjing, Jiangsu province.

It will become China's largest plant when completed.

Private companies, such as Xiaomi, are also making major strides. The smartphone manufacturer unveiled its first in-house chipset in March.

Named Surge S1, the chip combines four powerful and efficient cores, which can help strike a balance between performance and power efficiency.

"Chip technology is the crown in the smartphone sector, but it is highly cash intensive," said Lei Jun, founder and CEO of Xiaomi.

"If we want to challenge the world's top three players, we need to devote our long-term efforts into the research and development of chips," Lei added.

 

[JSCh]

24 October 2017
Chinese LED chip suppliers to comprise 54% of global production capacity in 2017

Total global LED chip production capacity has entered a new peak expansionary phase in 2017, according to the latest LED market supply and demand analysis by LEDinside (a division of TrendForce). This recent surge of capacity expansion has been a response to the rising demand from Chinese LED package suppliers that began raising their production capacities earlier in 2016.

With Chinese LED chip suppliers recommencing their capacity building activities, LEDinside estimates that the number of metal-organic chemical vapor deposition (MOCVD) chambers (based on the standard K465i design) installed worldwide in 2017 will be 401, representing the largest chip capacity increase since 2011.

“At the start of 2017, major Chinese LED chip makers including San’an Optoelectronics, HC SemiTek and Aucksun revealed that during the year they will be carrying out major capacity expansion plans,” says LEDinside research director Roger Chu. “The new processing operations set up by the domestic chip makers will push China’s representation in the global MOCVD capacity to 54%,” he estimates.

This wave of capacity building for LED chips in China has been to meet the growing demand from the LED package suppliers downstream, Chu adds. Furthermore, domestic package suppliers in recent years have been relocating their operations to second-tier cities due to the rising costs of labor and land in the traditional industry clusters of Guangdong Province and the Pearl River Delta. Local governments in the smaller cities have offered various incentives to get LED companies to build factories in their domains. Consequently, China’s LED industry in 2017 saw another capacity growth spurt comparable to the one during the 2010-2011 period.

There have also been changes in China’s subsidy policy, LEDinside notes. In the past, small- or mid-size domestic LED companies were in a rush to build chip fabrication plants because local governments’ subsidies mainly targeted the upstream of the supply chain. In contrast, the latest round of subsidies targets the LED package industry and its related businesses. China this time wants to generate demand for the upstream by helping the downstream in opening up market channels. Hence, major domestic package suppliers this year have also been expanding their capacities together with the first-tier domestic chip makers.

The rapid and subsidized capacity expansions that is taking place in China is now heavily squeezing the profit margins of long-established LED companies on the global market, LEDinside believes. These international majors in turn have scaled down their own manufacturing or increased the proportion of outsourcing. Either way, Chinese LED companies will benefit and become even larger, concludes LEDinside.



Chinese LED chip suppliers to comprise 54% of global production capacity in 2017 | Semiconductor Today

 

[cirr]

BOE posts 231% surge in Q3 net profit

2017-10-26 10:17

Shanghai Daily Editor: Huang Mingrui

BOE Technology Group, the Chinese mainland's biggest LCD panel maker, surged by nearly the 10 percent daily cap yesterday after posting a 231 percent jump year on year in third-quarter net profit.

Its net profit was 2.17 billion yuan ($329 million) in the third quarter while revenue grew 28 percent to 24.8 billion yuan, Shenzhen-listed BOE said in a statement.

BOE's revenue and net profit will continue to grow in 2017 as it expands production capacity in new facilities in Hefei and Chengdu, said Minsheng Securities.

The share price of BOE surged 9.6 percent to 5.72 yuan, compared with a 0.86 percent rise in the Shenzhen stock index.

LCD or liquid crystal display panel is an upstream and key component used in consumer electronics devices.

http://www.ecns.cn/business/2017/10-26/278499.shtml

 

[cirr]

AMOLED Display Industry Expands As Chinese Firm BOE Rivals Samsung

By Efe Udin -

October 26, 2017



Finally, it appears that Samsung Electronics is no longer alone in the global AMOLED screen manufacturing industry. Today, BOE announced that its factory in Chengdu is set for the mass production of the 6th generation flexible AMOLED screens. With this development, experts believe that the Chinese manufacturer will kick-start a new era in the global AMOLED display industry and give Samsung Electronics some competition.

BOE’s 6th generation flexible AMOLED production factory is China’s first fully flexible AMOLED production line, and it is also the world’s second mass production of the sixth generation flexible AMOLED display. AMOLED manufacturing uses the world’s most advanced evaporation process, as well as a flexible packaging technology, so as to achieve a bending/folding display screen. It should be noted that the production this AMOLED screen mainly focus on small and medium-sized smartphones, and mobile phone manufacturers who demand this display the most include, Huawei, OPPO, VIVO, Xiaomi, ZTE, Nubia, and others. Huawei is said to be BOE’s first customer.

For such achievements, BOE said that Chengdu 6th generation flexible AMOLED display production factory will produce screens that will significantly improve the performance of high-end smartphones. This development will initiate a good competition in the industry to meet the growing demand for small, medium size and high-performance display products. The Chinese OLED industry and the global flexible display industry is expected to experience a massive acceleration due to this development.

http://www.gizchina.com/2017/10/26/...y-expands-as-chinese-firm-boe-rivals-samsung/

@Bussard Ramjet

BOE’s 2nd 6th generation flexible AMOLED factory in Mianyang, Sichuan will enter mass production in 2019.

 

[JSCh]

Firms invest in 3rd-generation semiconductor
Xinhua Finance in www.cnstock.com
2017-10-26 16:37

Chinese optoelectronics leader Sanan Optoelectronics Co., Ltd. (600703.SH) is accelerating investment in the third-generation semiconductor industry. This may foreshadow an explosive of the industry. At the recent 2017 China IC Industry Promotion Conference Summit Forum held in Kunshan, the development prospect of 5G and compound semiconductor attracted much attention.

An industry insider believe that with the arrival of the 5G era, the third-generation wide bandgap semiconductor materials, such as silicon carbide (SiC), gallium nitride (GaN), will see development opportunities. A number of listed companies, including Sanan Optoelectronics, Nationz Technologies Inc. (300077.SZ), Yangzhou Yangjie Electronic Technology Co., Ltd. (300373.SZ) and Sichuan Haite High-Tech Co., Ltd. (002023.SZ), have made layout in the sector. Global semiconductor leader Infineon expects that GaN will account for 75 percent of base station RF power device market.

Third generation semiconductor emerges

In the 5G era, a mobile phone may need 16 PA (power amplifier) chips and more base stations, large-scale antenna (Massive MIMO) and filters. This brings development opportunities for third-generation semiconductor. At the recent 2017 China IC Industry Promotion Conference Summit Forum, multiple participants highlighted the development prospect of 5G and compound semiconductor.

“RDA Microelectronics has accumulated much strength in the RF front-end market. Our operating revenue will once again rise back to 100 million US dollars this year, and is expected to continue to grow rapidly in 2018 and 2019,” said RDA Microelectronics assistant vice president Jia Bin. RDA Microelectronics is a major mobile phone communication chip producer. Its products include power amplifiers, converters and receivers.

The energy-saving effect of third-generation semiconductor is commendable. Suzhou Dynax Semiconductor Co., Ltd. vice president Pei Yi said that the efficiency of GaN power amplifier improves 10 percent from traditional LDMOS. This means that each base station can save 50 watts of electricity, and all base stations around the country can save 13 billion watts of watts each year. Therefore, GaN is the best choice for millimeter-wave micro base station power amplifiers.

A market research report from QYResearch shows that the size of the global RF front-end market was 12.5 billion US dollars in 2016, and is expected to reach 25.9 billion US dollars by 2022, with an annual compound growth rate of 12.9 percent.

Multiple A-share companies made investment

“In the third-generation semiconductor sector, Sanan Optoelectronics will make use of its fund to invest in RF, optical communications, filters and power electronics. It aims to build itself into the next-generation communication GaN device platform,” said Chen Wenxin, the company’s RF marketing director.

As an optoelectronics leader, Sanan Optoelectronics has made large investment in the third-generation semiconductor long. In June 2015, Sanan Optoelectronics introduced into China Integrated Circuit Industry Investment Fund, in order to further expand its IC business which focuses on the III-V compound semiconductor. Later, the company and Fujian Province jointly set up an IC industrial investment fund with a scale of 50 billion yuan (the first phase was7.51 billion yuan .

Sanan Optoelectronics disclosed in the semi-annual report that its subsidiary Xiamen Sanan Integrated Circuit Co., Ltd. has submitted samples to 47 companies, of which 11 chips are mass-produced in a small sale. The company also made investment in optical communication chips and filters. It is reported that Sanan Optoelectronics’ third-generation semiconductor business mainly focuses on mobile terminals. Its products are mass-produced in a small sale. The company can receive nearly 100 wafers order each month, which is expected to contribute to the company's earnings from 2018 to 2019.

In addition to Sanan Optoelectronics, many A-share listed companies, including Yangjie Electronic Technology, Haite High-Tech and Nationz Technologies, have involved in the third-generation semiconductor business.

Yangjie Electronic Technology said in the recent institutional research said its silicon carbide chip technology has reached the leading level in the country. As early as July 2015, Yangjie Electronic Technology raised no more than 1 billion yuan for the development, research and industrialization of SiC chips and device. The company said in its semi-annual report that it will continue to promote the development and the third generation semiconductor project, develop and improve production process 650V/1200V silicon carbide JBS product that can be compatible with the silicon wire.

Nationz Technologies has just begun to enter this area. The company said on August 15 disclosed that its wholly-owned subsidiary Shenzhen Qianhai Nationz Investment Management Co., Ltd. and the Qionglai People's Government, Chengdu signed an agreement on the investment of compound semiconductor eco-industrial park. The former will raise fund to build a compound semiconductor industry chain ecosystem in Qionglai City, with a total investment of no less than 8 billion yuan. The industrial park is expected to take shape in three years.

In addition, Haite High-Tech built a 6-inch second-generation/ third-generation semiconductor IC chip production line via its subsidiary Chengdu HiWafer Semiconductor Co., Ltd. Zhuzhou CRRC Times Electric Co., Ltd. (subsidiary of CRRC Corporation Limited) is high-power SiC device leader in China.

(Translated by Coral Zhong)

 

[cirr]

Rollout of homegrown FGPA chips breaks monopoly

2017-10-31 14:01

Global Times Editor: Li Yan

China has become the second country in the world to design and mass-produce a field-programmable gate array (FPGA) integrated circuit, breaking the U.S. monopoly in the area, Shenzhen-based news site sznews.com reported on Monday.

An FPGA is an integrated circuit designed to be configured by a customer or a designer after manufacturing, and is widely used in sectors including automotive electronics, telecommunications, defense, and the aerospace industry.

After three years of efforts, Guangdong Gowin Semiconductor Corp, a company in South China's Guangdong Province, debuted its FPGA chips at an exhibition in Shanghai last week.

Before the entry of Gowin, there were only three U.S. firms that were capable of the research and development and mass production of the chip.

So far, Gowin has rolled out 11 kinds of FPGA chips and has independent intellectual property rights over its products, said the report.

http://www.ecns.cn/business/2017/10-31/279091.shtml

 

[cirr]

Dawning Information Industry, Cambricon Technology Develop First AI Server With Cambrian Chips

DOU SHICONG

DATE: TUE, 10/31/2017 - 17:49 / KEYWORDS: DAWNING INFORMATION INDUSTRY, CAMBRICON, PHANERON, ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCESOURCE:YICAI

Dawning Information Industry, Cambricon Technology Develop First AI Serve With Cambrian Chips

(Yicai Global) Oct. 31 -- Tianjin-based supercomputer manufacturer Dawning Information Industry Co. [SHA:603019] and artificial intelligence chip startup Cambricon Technologies Corp. have developed the first AI server with Cambrian chips in the first scientific research achievement since the two firms began cooperating last year.

The server, Phaneron, got its name from the current geological eon, the Phanerozoic Eon, which started with the Cambrian Period, state-run Xinhua news agency reported today. Phaneron mainly promotes an online business environment, and its 20 AI modules can respond to requests in real time and make rapid judgments on data.

Cambricon’s AI chips perform better, use less power and take up less space than their traditional counterparts. The 2016 World Internet Conference ranked them as as one of the 15 leading scientific and technological achievements.

Dawning Information Industry will continue to work with Cambricon Technologies to develop more information infrastructures equipped with chips according users’ AI requirements for high-performance computers and cloud servers, Dawning Information Industry President Li Jun said.

Dawning Information Industry is an affiliate of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. It is the largest high-performance computer provider in Asia, and its Nebulae supercomputer became the third machine capable of computing hundreds of billions of times per second.

https://www.yicaiglobal.com/news/da...hnology-develop-first-ai-serve-cambrian-chips

 

[cirr]

China firms to invest CNY18 billion to develop 19nm DRAM technology

Josephine Lien, Taipei; Willis Ke, DIGITIMES

[Tuesday 31 October 2017]

China-based GigaDevice Semiconductor and Hefei RuiLi Integrated Circuit Manufacture (formerly Hefei ChangXin IC) will team up to develop 19nm DRAM process technology for the production of 12-inch wafers at a total investment of CNY18 billion (US$2.71 billion), a move widely seen to usher in a new stage of competition in China's DRAM market, according to industry sources.

The tie-up will enable the two firms to jointly compete against the other two major players in the China DRAM industry, Yangtze Memory Technology under Tsinghua Unigroup, and Fujian Jinhua Integrated Circuit affiliated with Taiwan-based United Microelectronics (UMC), to win the crowns in the fields of DRAM, NOR flash and 2D NAND in China.

The collaboration is based on a five-year cooperation agreement signed between Hefei Industry Investment Group (HIIG), which wholly owns Hefei Ruili IC, and Beijing-based GigaDevice, with the former to contribute 80% of the total investment of CNY18 billion and the latter 20%.

New force in China DRAM industry

Under the pact, GigaDevice will enjoy priority access to DRAM products jointly developed for sales to its customers at preferential prices. This, coupled with its existing NOR flash and 2D NAND product lines and the capacity support of Hefei Ruili's new 12-inch DRAM wafer plant, is likely to make GigaDevice a new force in China's memory industry.

In early 2017, Hefei Ruili IC announced an investment of US$7.2 billion to build a 12-inch wafer fab, with a maximum monthly production capacity set at 125,000 pieces. The company is scheduled to start equipment installation in the first quarter of 2018.

GigaDevice, founded in 2005, is now among the world's top-five suppliers of NOR flash products, together with Cypress, Micron, Micronix and Winbond, and it also supplies 38nm and 24nm SLC and MLC NAND products. In September 2017, GigaDevice obtained a significant financial support from China's National IC Industry Investment Fund (aka Big Fund), which is now the firm's second largest shareholder with an 11% stake.

Fierce competitions looming

The emerging GigaDevice-Hefei Ruili camp is likely to trigger fierce competitions in the China memory market. As Yangtze Memory Technology under Tsinghua Unigroup, which mainly focuses on the development of 3D NAND products, has also had the Big Fund as its major shareholder, whether both camps will vie for more financial resources from the fund remains to be observed, according to industry sources.

Meanwhile, GigaDevice and Hefei Ruili are scheduled to complete the development and trial run of the 19nm process technology with a yield rate of 90% by the end of 2018, with the timetable quite close to the similar DRAM deployment by the UMC-Jinhua camp. Accordingly, whichever of them takes the lead to kick off volume production of DRAM will firmly capture the title as the No. 1 DRAM supplier in China, the sources said.

http://www.digitimes.com/news/a20171031PD206.html

 

[JSCh]

Feng Rao, Keyuan Ding, Yuxing Zhou, Yonghui Zheng, Mengjiao Xia, Shilong Lv, Zhitang Song, Songlin Feng, Ider Ronneberger, Riccardo Mazzarello, Wei Zhang and Evan Ma, Reducing the stochasticity of crystal nucleation to enable sub-nanosecond memory writing, Science (2017), DOI: 10.1126/science.aao3212

Abstract
Operation speed is a key challenge in phase-change random-access memory (PCRAM) technology, especially for achieving subnanosecond high-speed cache-memory. Commercialized PCRAM products are limited by the tens of nanoseconds writing speed, originating from the stochastic crystal nucleation during the crystallization of amorphous Ge2Sb2Te5. Here, we demonstrate an alloying strategy to speed up the crystallization kinetics. The Sc0.2Sb2Te3 compound we designed allows a writing speed of only 700 picoseconds without preprogramming in a large conventional PCRAM device. This ultrafast crystallization stems from the reduced stochasticity of nucleation through geometrically matched and robust ScTe chemical bonds that stabilize crystal precursors in the amorphous state. Controlling nucleation through alloy design paves the way for the development of cache-type PCRAM technology to boost the working efficiency of computing systems.

 

[cirr]

Tanjiawan firm uplifts China's semiconductor industry

updated : 2017-11-13

A significant breakthrough in the manufacture of wafers with low warp and dislocation density along with little defection or electric leakage has been made by Innoscience (Zhuhai) Technology Co Ltd.

The semiconductor company's 8-inch GaN-on-Si (gallium nitride-on-silicone) production line began operating on Nov 9. It took two years to establish the first complete and mass production line of the epitaxy and chips in the country.

In addition to breaking a technical bottleneck in the domestic semiconductor industry, the technology will boost development of upstream and downstream industries. It also will contribute to the rise of the country's semiconductor and advanced manufacturing sectors, the company says.

Innoscience (Zhuhai) Technology was created by Innoscience Group Inc and Zhuhai Hi-tech Capital in the Zhuhai National Hi-Tech Industrial Development Zone headquartered in Tangjiawan.

Costing 1.09 billion yuan ($164 million), the first phase was launched in December 2015. Given its technical strength, it is expected to become a world-leading wide-band gap semiconductor enterprise integrating research, development, epitaxial growth, chip manufacture, and testing.

Its 100V-650V GaN-on-Si power devices, the design and performance of which are among the most advanced in the world, will be widely used in the power electronics, new-energy, electric vehicle, information and communication, and intelligent industries.

Innoscience will give full play to its technical advantages and bolster itself as a world-class semiconductor enterprise fueling China's innovation and development, said chairman Luo Weiwei.

Luo's remarks were supported by Eicke R Weber, academician of the German Academy of Engineering and Innoscience founder.

Eicke Weber delivers a keynote speech [Photo by Kang Zhenhua / Zhuhai Daily]

Also at the inauguration ceremony were Xu Xiaotian, executive vice president cum secretary-general of the China Semiconductor Industry Association; Rudi Cartuyvels, vice president of the Interuniversity Microelectronics Centre; and Dr Felix J Grawert, president of Aixtron. These frontrunners in the industry spoke highly of the breakthrough made by the enterprise.

http://www.cityofzhuhai.com/2017-11/13/c_110215.htm

 

[JSCh]

Feng Rao, Keyuan Ding, Yuxing Zhou, Yonghui Zheng, Mengjiao Xia, Shilong Lv, Zhitang Song, Songlin Feng, Ider Ronneberger, Riccardo Mazzarello, Wei Zhang and Evan Ma, Reducing the stochasticity of crystal nucleation to enable sub-nanosecond memory writing, Science (2017), DOI: 10.1126/science.aao3212

Abstract
Operation speed is a key challenge in phase-change random-access memory (PCRAM) technology, especially for achieving subnanosecond high-speed cache-memory. Commercialized PCRAM products are limited by the tens of nanoseconds writing speed, originating from the stochastic crystal nucleation during the crystallization of amorphous Ge2Sb2Te5. Here, we demonstrate an alloying strategy to speed up the crystallization kinetics. The Sc0.2Sb2Te3 compound we designed allows a writing speed of only 700 picoseconds without preprogramming in a large conventional PCRAM device. This ultrafast crystallization stems from the reduced stochasticity of nucleation through geometrically matched and robust ScTe chemical bonds that stabilize crystal precursors in the amorphous state. Controlling nucleation through alloy design paves the way for the development of cache-type PCRAM technology to boost the working efficiency of computing systems.

Phase-shifting computer memory could herald the next generation of RAM

By Robert F. Service
Nov. 14, 2017 , 11:54 AM

Computer manufactures are always looking for the next best technology, and thanks to an impressive bit of materials science, a little-used form of random access memory (RAM) could soon be taking over the insides of your personal computer. That’s because materials scientists in China have recently found a way to speed up—by more than a factor of 10—so-called phase-change random access memory (PCRAM), which can hold onto information even when your computer’s power is off.

For decades, computers have been getting smaller, faster, and cheaper. But advances in memory technologies have slowed in recent years, prompting researchers to consider alternatives. Dreamed up in the 1960s, PCRAM has always been a promising candidate for RAM—the rewritable scratch pad that a computer’s central processor uses while making its calculations. But it was much slower than most common forms of RAM—including static RAM (SRAM) and dynamic RAM (DRAM)—which can hold information only temporarily.

To serve as computer memory, a gizmo must be able to faithfully record either a 0 or a 1. PCRAM does this by switching between two states (hence, the phase-change name): a regimented crystalline order that allows for the easy flow of electricity and a glasslike jumble of atoms that does just the opposite. PCRAM records one number when it’s in a high-conductance crystalline state and another when it’s in a low-conductance glass state. Sending a relatively large current through the material heats the bit and changes its state, writing or rewriting the data.

The problem has been that the most commonly used phase change material—an alloy of germanium, antimony, and tellurium known as GST—can be an uneven performer, sometimes switching from amorphous to crystalline in 10 nanoseconds, which is just as fast as the DRAM in today’s computers. At other times, it can take hundreds of nanoseconds to write data bits, which is too slow to be competitive. Now, however, Feng Rao, a materials scientist at the Chinese Academy of Sciences’s Shanghai Institute of Microsystem and Information Technology, and colleagues have found a way to write all PCRAM bits quickly, making it faster than most alternatives, including NAND flash—one of the other kinds of memory that’s able to store information absent a power supply.

Nearly a decade ago, researchers working on GST realized that even in its amorphous state, the phase-change material could harbor crystalline precursors, cubic arrangements of atoms that can act as nuclei for switching to a full-fledged crystal. So, Rao’s team carried out systematic computer calculations to see whether adding different metal atoms to the GST mix would help stabilize nuclei at the elevated temperatures that take place during the phase switching.

Those simulations, Rao says, revealed that “scandium is the key.” Adding the element creates strong bonds with neighboring antimony and tellurium atoms, forming cube-shaped nuclei that remain intact even when enough electricity is zapped through the material to raise its temperature to 600 K, which promotes a fast switch between the amorphous and crystalline phases. And when the researchers synthesized their new phase change material, they found that the nuclei consistently caused the material to switch between the two states in less than 1 nanosecond, they report this week in Science.

Hongsik Jeong, a PCRAM expert at Tsinghua University in Beijing, says the new speed boost is “almost the ideal value for storage class media applications.” In fact, even without the speed boost, PCRAM has just begun to be used in some data center servers. So, the souped-up version could soon expand its reach. However, Jeong adds, the faster PCRAM must still prove that it can be scaled up, withstand the high temperatures found in standard chip-manufacturing conditions, and still be able to rewrite bits of data many trillions of times to match DRAM’s performance. If PCRAM can pass those hurdles, the trend toward smaller, faster, cheaper computers will likely continue well into the future.

doi:10.1126/science.aar4935



Phase-shifting computer memory could herald the next generation of RAM | Science | AAAS

 

[JSCh]

China gets big boost in semiconductor equipment localization
Jean Chu, Taipei; Willis Ke, DIGITIMES [Friday 8 December 2017]

China has taken a big stride forward in the localization of semiconductor equipment needed to support domestic chip production, as some major equipment makers have achieved technological breakthroughs and successfully developed key equipment such as vertical oxidation furnaces and chemical-mechanical polishing equipment, according to industry sources.

The sources said that Beijing-based Naura Technology Group has recently installed a set of vertical oxidation furnace,THEORISO302, developed by its wholly-owned subsidiary North Microelectronics, at the 3D NAND flash chips production line of Yantze Memory Technologies (YMTC) under the Tsinghua Unigroup.​

The THEORISO302 furnaces have also been adopted on the production lines of Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp (SMIC) and Shanghai Huali Microelectronics, with the equipment's processing applications covering logic, DRAM and NAND chips, the sources said.

So far, Naura Technology has successfully tapped into the mainstream semiconductor production lines in China with a spate of equipment including etching machines, PVD (physical vapor deposition), vertical oxidation furnaces, cleaning machines, LPVCD (low pressure chemical vapor deposition) and gas quality and flow controllers, among others. The company expects to have 40 more products verify by first-tier customers in China in 2018.​

Meanwhile, another China maker CETC Electronics Equipment Group has come out with its newly developed 8-inch chemical-mechanical polishing (CMP) equipment that can perform polishing, cleaning and wafer transmission functions and is designed based on international standards to meet a variety of processing requirements for different semiconductor materials such as silicon, copper, tungsten, aluminum, oxide, nitride, tantalum, and polymer.

The 8-inch CMP equipment is pending accreditation by SMIC's 8-inch wafer fab in Tianjian, marking the first time that China-made CMP equipment will enter the IC volume production line, industry sources said.​

On another front, China-based semiconductor equipment makers are facing challenges from international competitors with regard to patent issues. For instance, US-based MOCVD (metal-organic chemical vapor deposition) equipment supplier Veeco Instruments has filed a request with a local court in New York asking it to issue an injunction against sales of graphite plates designed and manufactured by Germany-based SGL Carbon Group to China's Advanced Micro-Fabrication Equipment (AMEC) for production of MOCVD equipment, alleging that SGL Garbon infringe Veeco's patented technology.

Veeco also petitioned to China's State Intellectual Property Office (SIPC) to declare AMEC's patented MOCVD-used graphite plate invalid, but the petition was vetoed by the SIPC.​

China gets big boost in semiconductor equipment localization | DIGITIMES

 

[AndrewJin]

All low tech garbage, no call centre style high tech, shame of china

 

[TaiShang]

Aug 04, 2017 05:59 PM

China Powers $100 Billion Microchip Explosion
By Yang Ge

A total of 17 new chip plants are slated to be built in China over the next two years. Above, a superconductive chip on display in October 2015 at the University of Science and Technology of China in Hangzhou, Zhejiang province. Photo: Visual China

Beijing’s resolve to build a world-class microchip sector has touched off a $100 billion spending spree on new production facilities, in a massive investment wave likely to create short-term equipment and material shortages and potentially lead to a longer-term global glut.

But China’s road to global prominence in making microchips that are central to future digital economies could be filled with potholes, especially for the field of young and inexperienced domestic companies that are taking up the cause using billions of dollars in largess from Beijing, analysts said.

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https://www.caixinglobal.com/2017-08-04/china-powers-100-billion-microchip-explosion-101126529.html

@Martian2 , @cirr , @AndrewJin