Opinionated - China Chipping Away to Semiconductor Dominance

[j20blackdragon]

Chinese GPU maker Jingia Micro is developing a new GPU that comes close to rivaling the NVIDIA GTX 1080

There are two GPUs in the pipeline — JM9231 and JM9271.

JM9271 offers clock rates above 1,800 MHz, support PCIe 4.0, sports 16 GB HBM VRAM with 512 GB/s bandwidth, 8 TFLOPs of FP32 performance, and a TDP of 200W. With these specs, the card is expected to offer performance equivalent to a GTX 1080.

https://www.notebookcheck.net/Chine...0-and-high-bandwidth-HBM-memory.431309.0.html

The Jingjia Micro JM5400 GPU was tailored for military aircraft displays.

 

[obj 705A]

Competition is good , AMD & Nvidia ask way too much for their GPUs, honestly I'm 100% that if China produces a GPU that is much cheaper than that of US companies & crushes them then the entire gaming community would cheer for China , and American gamers themselves would be jumping up in joy and laugh at Nvidia & AMD.

 

[j20blackdragon]

8 TFLOPs of FP32 performance,

Using some gaming consoles as comparison:

Microsoft says the Xbox One X's "Scorpio Engine" has 6 teraflops, as compared with the original Xbox One's 1.3 teraflops, the PS4's 1.8 teraflops and the PS4 Pro's 4.2 teraflops.

https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/j5xdmg/the-xbox-one-x-has-6-teraflops-heres-what-that-means

 

[JSCh]

YMTC striving to sell own 3D NAND devices | DIGITimes
Siu Han, Taipei; Jessie Shen, DIGITIMES
Tuesday 7 May 2019

Yangtze Memory Technologies (YMTC) is set to enter volume production of 64-layer 3D NAND flash memory chips by the end of 2019, and has been in talks with parent company Tsinghua Unigroup about obtaining the right to sell and market storage devices employing the chips, according to industry sources.

YMTC originally will have Beijing Unis Memory Technology, also a Tsinghua Unigroup affiliate, sell and promote flash storage solutions such as SSDs and UFS devices powered by YMTC's in-house developed 64-layer 3D NAND chips, the sources indicated.

However, YMTC internally believes the company should own the right to sell and market its own products, namely storage devices incorporating 3D NAND chips based on its in-house developed Xtacking architecture, the sources noted.

YMTC is expected to kick off risk production of 64-layer 3D NAND flash chips as early as the third quarter of 2019, said the sources, adding that the process' production yield rate has seen significant improvement and is satisfactory enough to power consumer electronics products.

YMTC also plays a part in Longsys Electronics' plan to develop what the company claims is "100% China-made" flash storage device. Longsys has already built a close relationship with Tsinghua Unigroup according to the pair's strategic alliance signed in November 2018.

YMTC disclosed previously plans to move 64-layer 3D NAND process technology to volume production in the fourth quarter of 2019, and will move directly to the 128-layer generation with volume production scheduled for 2020.

YMTC was founded in 2016 by China's state-owned Tsinghua Unigroup, which owns 51% of the company. China's National Semiconductor Industry Investment Fund (known as the Big Fund) is among other shareholders of YMTC.

YMTC starts mass producing China’s first 64-layer 3D NAND chips
By Li Qiaoyi Source:Global Times Published: 2019/9/2 19:58:40

YMTC starts mass producing China’s first 64-layer NAND chips

A view of the 32-layer 3D NAND flash chip developed by YMTC Photo: IC

Yangtze Memory Technologies Co (YMTC), an affiliate of Chinese semiconductor conglomerate Tsinghua Unigroup, announced on Monday that it has begun mass production of China's first homegrown 64-layer 3D NAND flash memory chips, in a move to push the nation closer to the club of major chipmaking heavyweights.

The chip is the first to be designed and mass produced based on the company's in-house Xtacking architecture. It has a 256Gbit die density, the world's highest for 64- and 72-layer NAND chips, the company said in a statement sent to the Global Times.

The 64-layer chip was showcased at the 2019 Smart China Expo held in Southwest China's Chongqing Municipality in late August. It was then expected to be mass produced at the end of the year, according to media reports.

Hailing the mass production as the mark of its success in carving out a road to innovation in high-end chip design and manufacturing, YMTC said it plans to launch 64-layer 3D NAND solid-state drives and universal flash storage to appeal to manufacturers of data centers, corporate servers, personal computers and mobile devices.

Along with the arrival of 5G, artificial intelligence and the super-sizing of data centers, the demand for flash memory will continue rising, Cheng Weihua, co-chief technology officer of YMTC, was quoted as saying in the statement.

Cheng believes the chip's mass production will inject new vitality into the global memory market.

The move is arguably a breakthrough for the company, which was established in July 2016 to ramp up the nation's chip production capacity, market watchers said.

Compared with 32 layers, 64 layers pose more technological challenges, and the successful mass production indicates that YMTC's indigenous technology research and development team has achieved a level that might potentially pit it against global industry heavyweights, Taipei-based market intelligence provider TrendForce said in response to the Global Times on Monday.

The industry has moved to producing 96 layers of 3D NAND, meaning a gap of about 12 to 18 months in technological terms, according to TrendForce.

Factoring in the company's current production capacity, the chip won't have a substantial impact on the market until the second half of 2020, the market intelligence provider estimated.

In another sign of the nation's march toward high-end chipmaking, the government of Shenzhen, South China's Guangdong Province, on Monday signed an agreement with Huawei - which has been investing heavily in its chip push with its Kunpeng server chips, among other chip portfolios - to forge a Kunpeng industry demonstration area and make joint efforts to build a national industry and manufacturing innovation center.

Semiconductor shares led Monday's stock rally in the Chinese mainland. The sector was up nearly 4 percent, outperforming the key Shanghai Composite Index, which closed up 1.31 percent at 2,924.11 points.

 

[JSCh]

‘Darwin NPU 2’ developed to process information faster | Zhejiang University
2019-09-02 Global Communications

The second generation of the Darwin Neural Processing Unit (Darwin NPU 2) as well as its corresponding toolchain and micro-operating system was released in Hangzhou recently. This research was led by Zhejiang University, with Hangzhou Dianzi University and Huawei Central Research Institute participating in the development and algorisms of the chip. The Darwin NPU 2 can be primarily applied to smart Internet of Things (IoT). It can support up to 150,000 neurons and has achieved the largest-scale neurons on a nationwide basis.

The Darwin NPU 2 is fabricated by standard 55nm CMOS technology. Every “neuromorphic” chip is made up of 576 kernels, each of which can support 256 neurons. It contains over 10 million synapses which can construct a powerful brain-inspired computing system.

“A brain-inspired chip can work like the neurons inside a human brain and it is remarkably unique in image recognition, visual and audio comprehension and naturalistic language processing,” said MA De, an associate professor at the College of Computer Science and Technology on the research team.

“In comparison with traditional chips, brain-inspired chips are more adept at processing ambiguous data, say, perception tasks. Another prominent advantage is their low energy consumption. In the process of information transmission, only those neurons that receive and process spikes will be activated while other neurons will stay dormant. In this case, energy consumption can be extremely low,” said Dr. ZHU Xiaolei at the School of Microelectronics.

To cater to the demands for voice business, Huawei Central Research Institute designed an efficient spiking neural network algorithm in accordance with the defining feature of the Darwin NPU 2 architecture, thereby increasing computing speeds and improving recognition accuracy tremendously.

Scientists have developed a host of applications, including gesture recognition, image recognition, voice recognition and decoding of electroencephalogram (EEG) signals, on the Darwin NPU 2 and reduced energy consumption by at least two orders of magnitude.

In comparison with the first generation of the Darwin NPU which was developed in 2015, the Darwin NPU 2 has escalated the number of neurons by two orders of magnitude from 2048 neurons and augmented the flexibility and plasticity of the chip configuration, thus expanding the potential for applications appreciably. The improvement in the brain-inspired chip will bring in its wake the revolution of computer technology and artificial intelligence. At present, the brain-inspired chip adopts a relatively simplified neuron model, but neurons in a real brain are far more sophisticated and many biological mechanisms have yet to be explored by neuroscientists and biologists. It is expected that in the not-too-distant future, a fascinating improvement on the Darwin NPU 2 will come over the horizon.

 

[JSCh]

Huawei AI processors complete first test in China's power industry
Source: Xinhua| 2019-09-04 17:12:09|Editor: Xiang Bo

SHENZHEN, Sept. 4 (Xinhua) -- Huawei's Kunpeng and Ascend AI processors have been deployed on the full hardware and software stack at the information and data center (IDC) of the Shenzhen Power Supply Bureau Co., Ltd, the company said Tuesday.

As a subsidiary of China Southern Power Grid, Shenzhen Power Supply Bureau set up an ICT lab with Huawei last November, focusing on the innovative combination of AI and the Internet of Energy.

With its powerful Ascend processor equipped with the Atlas 200 AI accelerator module, Huawei has built an intelligent inspection system for power transmission for the bureau.

According to Lyu Zhining, head of IDC, massive tests completed under specific scenarios have shown the stability of Huawei's processors, which meets the requirements for technical performance.

A traditional patrol check of the grid requires a lot of manpower and resources since the safety and stable operation of power transmission could be affected at any moment by road work below the grid, or even a kite caught in the lines, he said.

Lyu added that it only takes two hours now to finish the inspection using the new system, while it used to take the linemen 20 days to do the same amount of work, an 80-time increase in efficiency.

"We're planning to install Huawei's AI chips into all monitoring cameras along transmission lines throughout the city, as well as on our drones," he said.

 

[j20blackdragon]

I return to this thread a few months later. It is August 31, 2018 today.








Kirin 980 officially announced. World's 1st 7nm SoC.
View attachment 495766

Snapdragon 845 blown out of the water.
View attachment 495767

Increase in transistor count.
View attachment 495768

Huawei's in-house modem. Qualcomm not needed.
View attachment 495769

5G modem Balong 5000. Qualcomm not needed.
View attachment 495770

Mate 20, coming October 16, 2018. This fall.
View attachment 495771

Apple presented the iPhone 11 series on Wednesday (Sept. 10). I am back.

Kirin 990

World's 1st 5G SoC Powered by 7nm+ EUV.

Kirin 980 had 6.9 billion transistors.

Kirin 990 has over 10.3 billion transistors.

The Apple A13 has the highest transistor count for a chip that has ever powered the iPhone, with a total of 8.5 billion transistors.

Huawei has world's 1st SoC with integrated 5G modem.

iPhone 11 doesn't have 5G at all.

 

[Bussard Ramjet]

@Bussard Ramjet

You bragging mouth claim US ban will affect China semiconductor chips. Now what happen? Care to explain? Like last time how you brag China is same as India not importing Iranian oil and China scare of US. Then what happen? You still act like a coward and haven't answer that previous inquiry.

Nvidia produces GPUs.

This is an ASIC that is dedicated to a few algorithms.

Obviously the ASIC that is focused and specialized for certain machine learning algorithms will perform better on those algorithms over GPUs.

But most of the general purpose research and development of new models need good CPUs, and to top that all, it needs good GPUs.

China has neither a good, well supported CPU nor a GPU.

 

[JSCh]

China ready for mass production of self-developed LCD screen
Source: Xinhua| 2019-09-18 21:55:05|Editor: ZX

HEFEI, Sept. 18 (Xinhua) -- China's first self-developed 8.5 generation TFT-LCD panel, or thin-film transistor liquid crystal display panel, rolled off the production line Wednesday in Bengbu, east China's Anhui Province, paving the way for mass production.

TFT-LCD is a key strategic material of the electronic information display industry. An 8.5 generation TFT-LCD panel, with a length of 2.5 meters and width of 2.2 meters, can produce six screens of 55 inches, according to its manufacturer, the Bengbu Glass Industry Design and Research Institute of the China National Building Material Group Co., Ltd.

The core technology of the high-definition LCD screen has long been monopolized by a few foreign enterprises.

China's optoelectronic display industry has developed rapidly in recent years and the country has become the world's largest manufacturing base for display terminals. Many Chinese TV panel manufacturers have established a number of 8.5 generation TFT-LCD production lines.

China's annual demand for 8.5 generation TFT-LCD or above has reached 380 million square meters. The mass production of the self-developed TFT-LCD screens will end the country's complete dependence on other countries for the technology and products, said its manufacturer.

 

[j20blackdragon]

According to western media several months ago, Huawei absolutely cannot make a phone without radio frequency (RF) components supplied by American companies. Huawei couldn't possibly integrate 20+ frequency bands in a small module.

Seems like no problem so far.

 

[JSCh]

Domestically-made 12-inch chips mass produced in Guangdong
Source: Xinhua| 2019-09-21 20:37:56|Editor: huaxia

Photo taken on Sept. 20, 2019 shows a view of the facility focusing on the 12-inch wafer production line in Guangzhou, capital of south China's Guangdong. (Provided to Xinhua)

A 12-inch wafer production line in S China's Guangdong has been put into operation.

"The project is aimed at scarce products in the country, such as high-end analog chips, automobile electronics, biomedical testing and 5G front-end modules." said Tony Chen, president and CEO of CanSemi Technology Inc., which owns the production line.

GUANGZHOU, Sept. 21 (Xinhua) -- A 12-inch wafer production line, the first of its kind in south China's Guangdong Province, has been put into operation.

The 12-inch chip production line, which started operation Friday, is at the first phase and at present focuses on manufacturing 0.18um-90nm analog ICs and discrete devices. It is expected to achieve a monthly production capacity of 40,000 12-inch wafers.

With a total investment of 28.8 billion yuan (about 4.06 billion U.S. dollars), the facility began construction in March 2018 in Guangzhou, capital of Guangdong.

The second phase will focus on the world's most advanced 65nm-40nm high-voltage BCD technology.

"The project is aimed at scarce products in the country, such as high-end analog chips, automobile electronics, biomedical testing and 5G front-end modules, which is expected to further drive the upstream and downstream enterprises to achieve a production value of 100 billion yuan," said Tony Chen, president and CEO of CanSemi Technology Inc., which owns the production line.

Photo taken on Sept. 20, 2019 shows the inside view of the facility focusing on the 12-inch wafer production line in Guangzhou, capital of south China's Guangdong. (Provided to Xinhua)

Statistics showed that there are 26 12-inch chip production lines being built and under construction in China, and upon completion, the total production capacity of 12-inch chips will reach 1.11 million per month.

Guangdong already has two chip manufacturers, featuring production of 8-inch and 6-inch wafers, with a combined capacity of about 70,000 wafers per month. It is far short of the chip demands in the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area.

 

[Bussard Ramjet]

Domestically-made 12-inch chips mass produced in Guangdong
Source: Xinhua| 2019-09-21 20:37:56|Editor: huaxia

Photo taken on Sept. 20, 2019 shows a view of the facility focusing on the 12-inch wafer production line in Guangzhou, capital of south China's Guangdong. (Provided to Xinhua)

A 12-inch wafer production line in S China's Guangdong has been put into operation.

"The project is aimed at scarce products in the country, such as high-end analog chips, automobile electronics, biomedical testing and 5G front-end modules." said Tony Chen, president and CEO of CanSemi Technology Inc., which owns the production line.

GUANGZHOU, Sept. 21 (Xinhua) -- A 12-inch wafer production line, the first of its kind in south China's Guangdong Province, has been put into operation.

The 12-inch chip production line, which started operation Friday, is at the first phase and at present focuses on manufacturing 0.18um-90nm analog ICs and discrete devices. It is expected to achieve a monthly production capacity of 40,000 12-inch wafers.

With a total investment of 28.8 billion yuan (about 4.06 billion U.S. dollars), the facility began construction in March 2018 in Guangzhou, capital of Guangdong.

The second phase will focus on the world's most advanced 65nm-40nm high-voltage BCD technology.

"The project is aimed at scarce products in the country, such as high-end analog chips, automobile electronics, biomedical testing and 5G front-end modules, which is expected to further drive the upstream and downstream enterprises to achieve a production value of 100 billion yuan," said Tony Chen, president and CEO of CanSemi Technology Inc., which owns the production line.

Photo taken on Sept. 20, 2019 shows the inside view of the facility focusing on the 12-inch wafer production line in Guangzhou, capital of south China's Guangdong. (Provided to Xinhua)

Statistics showed that there are 26 12-inch chip production lines being built and under construction in China, and upon completion, the total production capacity of 12-inch chips will reach 1.11 million per month.

Guangdong already has two chip manufacturers, featuring production of 8-inch and 6-inch wafers, with a combined capacity of about 70,000 wafers per month. It is far short of the chip demands in the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area.

Hey, would appreciate some insight in China's semiconductor equipment industry, semiconductor materials, EDA tools etc.

 

[S.Y.A]

Chinese GPU maker Jingia Micro is developing a new GPU that comes close to rivaling the NVIDIA GTX 1080

There are two GPUs in the pipeline — JM9231 and JM9271.

JM9271 offers clock rates above 1,800 MHz, support PCIe 4.0, sports 16 GB HBM VRAM with 512 GB/s bandwidth, 8 TFLOPs of FP32 performance, and a TDP of 200W. With these specs, the card is expected to offer performance equivalent to a GTX 1080.

https://www.notebookcheck.net/Chine...0-and-high-bandwidth-HBM-memory.431309.0.html

The Jingjia Micro JM5400 GPU was tailored for military aircraft displays.

good for gaming, but what i am interested in is the deep learning support for Chinese GPUs. will there be any?

 

[Paul2]

Domestically-made 12-inch chips mass produced in Guangdong
Source: Xinhua| 2019-09-21 20:37:56|Editor: huaxia

Photo taken on Sept. 20, 2019 shows a view of the facility focusing on the 12-inch wafer production line in Guangzhou, capital of south China's Guangdong. (Provided to Xinhua)

A 12-inch wafer production line in S China's Guangdong has been put into operation.

"The project is aimed at scarce products in the country, such as high-end analog chips, automobile electronics, biomedical testing and 5G front-end modules." said Tony Chen, president and CEO of CanSemi Technology Inc., which owns the production line.

GUANGZHOU, Sept. 21 (Xinhua) -- A 12-inch wafer production line, the first of its kind in south China's Guangdong Province, has been put into operation.

The 12-inch chip production line, which started operation Friday, is at the first phase and at present focuses on manufacturing 0.18um-90nm analog ICs and discrete devices. It is expected to achieve a monthly production capacity of 40,000 12-inch wafers.

With a total investment of 28.8 billion yuan (about 4.06 billion U.S. dollars), the facility began construction in March 2018 in Guangzhou, capital of Guangdong.

The second phase will focus on the world's most advanced 65nm-40nm high-voltage BCD technology.

"The project is aimed at scarce products in the country, such as high-end analog chips, automobile electronics, biomedical testing and 5G front-end modules, which is expected to further drive the upstream and downstream enterprises to achieve a production value of 100 billion yuan," said Tony Chen, president and CEO of CanSemi Technology Inc., which owns the production line.

Photo taken on Sept. 20, 2019 shows the inside view of the facility focusing on the 12-inch wafer production line in Guangzhou, capital of south China's Guangdong. (Provided to Xinhua)

Statistics showed that there are 26 12-inch chip production lines being built and under construction in China, and upon completion, the total production capacity of 12-inch chips will reach 1.11 million per month.

Guangdong already has two chip manufacturers, featuring production of 8-inch and 6-inch wafers, with a combined capacity of about 70,000 wafers per month. It is far short of the chip demands in the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area.

Lol¸what can I say.

Beijing spent untold Billions on its projects to setup Chinese 12 inch fabs through "national programs," I think more than 10 of them already, and then there comes a private company from Guangzhou and say "We will have a profitable 70k WPM 12 inch fab in 1 year."

 

[onebyone]

https://twitter.com/x/status/1175781803040415746