Opinionated - China Chipping Away to Semiconductor Dominance

[zestokryl]

Huawei Desktop PC with Kunpeng 920 Processor Teased and Tested

Huawei has been readying the entire new breed of desktop PCs with a custom motherboard, custom processor, and even a custom operating system. Being that Huawei plans to supply Chinese government institutions with these PCs, it is logical to break away from US-made technology due to security reasons. And now, thanks to the YouTube channel called "二斤自制" we have the first look at the new PC system. Powered by Huawei D920S10 desktop motherboard equipped with Kunpeng 920 7 nm Arm v8 processor with 8 cores, the PC was running the 64-bit UOS operating system, which is a Chinese modification of Linux. In the test, the PC was assembled by a third-party provider and it featured 16 GB of 2666 MHz DDR4 memory and 256 GB SSD.

The YouTube channel put it to test and in the Blender BMW render test, it has finished in 11 minutes and 47 seconds, which is quite slow. The system reportedly managed to stream 4K content well but has struggled with local playback thanks to poor encoding. Being that it runs a custom OS with a custom processor, app selection is quite narrow. The app store for the PC is accessible only if you pay an extra 800 Yuan (~$115), while the mentioned system will set you back 7,500 Yuan (~$1,060). At the heart of this system is eight-core, eight threaded Kunpeng 920 2249K processor. It features a clock speed of 2.6 GHz, has 128K of L1 cache (64K instruction cache and 64K data cache), 512K of L2, and 32 MB of L3 cache.

 

[JustAnotherPerson]

China has virtually no lithography experience or industry. Any Chinese firm trying to develop EUV lithography would have to start from scratch. It would have to close the gap with ASML’s billions of dollars, decades of experience, and the accumulated experience and tacit knowledge of their tens of thousands of employees. And it would have to succeed where experienced, billion-dollar companies failed. There is little chance a Chinese company will make an EUV lithography machine in the foreseeable future.

Carrick Flynn a course a lawyer for Yale school of law who dont understand what he talking about.
This is what an expert in lithography has to say about it.
“I assume that we see only part of what China is doing. It’s like an iceberg, most is hidden from view. Their academicians publish papers on EUV technology, but the work that I have seen has been mostly theoretical. I assume that there is some underlying hardware,” said Harry Levinson, principal at HJL Lithography.

 

[JSCh]

Chinese CPU maker Zhaoxin to release stand alone GPU this year - cnTechPost
2020-07-08 18:53:57 GMT+8 | cnTechPost

In a redesigned official website, Chinese CPU maker Shanghai Zhaoxin Semiconductor talked for the first time about its plans to launch stand alone GPU products.

In the video, a Zhaoxin executive said the GPU products will be based on TSMC's 28nm process and its power consumption is around 70W.

Zhaoxin said that this will fill a gap in China's GPU space.

The video also mentioned that Zhaoxin will launch products for laptops and Pad this year, targeting portable devices.

Zhaoxin will also launch a multi-core server offering that is on par with Intel's mid- to high-end offerings.

On July 7, Zhaoxin said its website (www. zhaoxin.com) was completely redesigned.

The new website presents hot information in the form of videos, and products about Zhaoxin CPUs in the general-purpose processor section.

It also has a solutions section that showcases Zhaoxin CPU-based desktops, laptops, and cloud terminals.

Zhaoxin, which roughly translates to "million core", is a Chinese state-owned holding company established in 2013.

Zhaoxin is 80% owned by a subsidiary of Shanghai SASAC, with the remaining shares mainly held by VIA Technologies.

The company is headquartered in Zhangjiang, Shanghai, with R&D centers and branch offices in Beijing, Xi'an, Wuhan, and Shenzhen.

 

[JSCh]

View attachment 631393

China’s first 100% homegrown memory chips in mass production in Shenzhen
Source:Global Times Published: 2020/7/9 13:31:27

An employee showcases a semiconductor integrated circuit at an industry expo on October 31. Photo: VCG

The first 100 percent homegrown memory chips are currently in mass production in Shenzhen, South China's Guangdong Province, breaking the foreign technology monopoly and serving as an alternative to imported products.

Powev Electronic Technology Co, a high-tech storage packaging and testing firm based in Shenzhen, is now producing memory chips and Solid-state drives (SSDs) on a mass scale, according to the Shenzhen Special Zone Daily on Thursday.

The company's chip lineup includes the first such products to be wholly domestically produced, with each integrated circuit and all production processes completed in China.

"The lineup was developed to solve a bottleneck faced by the domestic IC industry," said Zhang Zhe, the company's deputy general manager.

The company said the chips and SSDs are used in personal computers and servers, and at least three domestic PC companies have incorporated the products in their offerings.

The Shenzhen Special Zone Daily report said that since the two products were first marketed in April and May, sales were brisk and consumer feedback was positive.

Following tests, a domestic modular firm and a PC firm said the products are "world-leading" in performance and can be used to substitute imported products, the report said, citing the company.

On China's JD.com e-commerce marketplace, the Global Times found consumer comments were generally positive with regard to the performance of the chips, with some reviewers directly expressing their favor of fully homegrown memory chips.

It was reported that the company's business volume increased to 350 million yuan ($50 million) in 2019, up from 2018's 20 million yuan.

 

[艹艹艹]

二斤自制

She's very beautiful

 

[JSCh]

China's first ultra-small 5G communication module put into commercial use - cnTechPost
2020-07-09 19:45:42 GMT+8 | cnTechPost

China's first ultra-small 5G communication module, the AI-NR11, rolls off assembly line at Changhong's Subsidiary Sichuan AI-Link, marking the 5G module's entry into commercial phase.

The 5G module will be widely used in smart industry, smart energy, industrial robotics, healthcare, video security, drones and other fields. The AI-NR11 5G module is designed to meet the stringent size requirements of ultra-small cameras and precision measuring instruments.

The AI-NR11 5G module is in a standard M.2 package and is only 5 mm wider than a 1 yuan coin, the same size as a 4G module.

The module is designed with four antennas and uses SRS technology to quickly and intelligently select the optimal antenna solution to effectively enhance Internet access.

In February this year, 5G industrial internet, 5G video, 5G intelligent transportation and other professional modules were launched at the Sichuan AI- Link.

Among them, the world's first 5G industrial Internet module can be widely used in 5G industrial production line, industrial Internet of things, industrial automation control, industrial automation control, and industrial automation control. Logistics tracking, industrial AR, AGV trolley and other industrial intelligent manufacturing fields.

At present, Sichuan AI-Link has a production capacity of 12 million modules per month.

 

[艹艹艹]

 

[JSCh]

5nm laser lithography breakthrough may lift Chinese chip-making
By Li Xuanmin Source: Global Times Published: 2020/7/9 18:58:40

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

A Chinese research institute has made a breakthrough in a new type of 5 nanometer (nm) laser lithography technology, which industry insiders believe could lay the foundation for research into a self-developed advanced lithography machine, a field in which China lags behind some developed Western countries.

But they stressed that China remains "far away" from producing such a chip-making machine as there are still technological barriers. Lack of sufficient capital also presents an obstacle to translate the theoretical findings into production power.

The Suzhou Institute of Nano-tech and Nano-Bionics under the Chinese Academy of Sciences (Sinano), along with the National Center for Nanoscience and Technology, announced Thursday that they have made important progress on ultra-high precision laser lithography, according to a statement on Sinano's website.

The new tech has broken the traditional constraint in laser direct writing to be able to process at nano-level. The ultra high precision processing is based on a new type of three-layer membrane structure.

In addition to high precision, the technology demonstrates the potential of mass production. The laser direct writing tech could be used to produce up to 500,000 special nano electrodes an hour.

The research result is published in Nano Letters, a monthly peer-reviewed scientific journal published by the American Chemical Society. The paper noted that the new nano processing technology could be widely applied in such sectors as semiconductors, photonic chips and micro electro mechanical systems.

Xiang Ligang, a Beijing-based veteran industry analyst, told the Global Times on Thursday that the new technology will equip Chinese researchers with the theory to make forays into making homegrown lithography machines. "But it will take years for China to close the gap with the advanced Western suppliers, in particular ASML," Xiang said.

ASML delivered 7nm EUV lithography machines last year. The Netherlands-based firm also announced in June that it has made a significant development in its multi-beam inspection tool line for 5nm lithography machines.

In China, Shanghai Micro Electronics Equipment (SMEE) announced in June that it expects the first China-made 28nm immersion type lithography machine will be delivered in 2021-2022. SMEE has mass-produced lithographs with the best performance of 90nm processing nodes.

Xiang noted that the Dutch firm monopolized key technologies in making lithography machines, which makes it difficult for Chinese companies to fast track their production. "It's urgent to improve the machines' production yield," Xiang noted.

Industry observers noted that another critical issue lies in the absence of sufficient capital input due to the slow return on a heavy investment.

"Chinese research institutes need to work with companies to translate theories into products. But in terms of profits, making a chip-production machine could cost billions of yuan and it will take years to recover the investment. Most Chinese companies don't see it as a good deal," Xiang explained.

China accounts for one-third of global semiconductor sales, according to media reports. The recent US-led relentless attack on China's high-tech industries, which could cut off some Chinese tech companies like Huawei from advanced chip imports, has created a sense of urgency for the world's second-largest economy to be self-sufficient in the semiconductor industry.

 

[JSCh]

Honor launches tablets with SMIC-made chipsets, starting at $157
2020-07-16 17:05:35 GMT+8 | cnTechPost

Honor today announced the Honor Tablet 6 and X6, powered by the Kirin 710A processor made by Chinese chip maker Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation (SMIC). The devices are priced from 1,099 yuan ($157).

The Honor Tablet 6 comes with a 10.1-inch screen with 1920×1200 resolution and contrast ratio of 1000:1.

The Honor Tablet 6 is 7.55mm thick and weighs 460g.

Honor says the Honor Tablet 6 series comes with a newly upgraded HUAWEI Histen 6.1 sound with better low frequencies and richer sound quality.

The Honor Tablet 6 series comes with a new MagicUI 3.1 system that supports "Parallel Vision" and Honor Magic-Pencil.

The Huawei Education Center App and the Children's Playground App are also pre-installed on the Honor X6 series.

The Honor Tablet 6 is priced from 1,299 yuan and the Honor Tablet X6 (1,200×800 resolution) is priced from 1,099 yuan.

 

[antonius123]

Chinese team develops new 5 nm ultra-high precision laser lithography processing method
2020-07-13 23:01:19 GMT+8 | cnTechPost
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A Chinese team recently published a research paper in the Nano Letters describing a new type of 5 nm ultra-high precision laser lithography processing method.

The research was conducted by Zhang Ziyang, a researcher at the Suzhou Institute of Nanotechnology and Nanobionics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, in collaboration with Liu Qian, a researcher at the National Nano Center.

The team has designed and developed a new three-layer stacked thin film structure. For the inorganic titanium film photoresist, they employed a dual laser beam cross-stacking technique. By precisely controlling the energy density and step size, they achieved a breakthrough of the 1/55 diffraction limit, reaching a minimum characteristic line width of 5 nm.

The research team used this super-resolution laser direct writing technique to achieve large-scale fabrication of nano-slit electrode array structures.

It is worth mentioning that the research team has developed a fully intellectualized laser direct-writing device that exploits the nonlinearity of laser and material It is different from the traditional technology path of shortening the laser wavelength or increasing the numerical aperture.

This breaks the restriction that the receptor material is organic photoresist in the traditional laser direct writing technique. It can use a variety of receptor materials, greatly expanding the application of laser direct writing scenarios.
https://cntechpost.com/2020/07/13/c...recision-laser-lithography-processing-method/

 

[JSCh]

Semiconductor industrial park in central China seeks to secure supply amid foreign restrictions
By Liu Caiyu Source: Global Times Published: 2020/7/22 19:49:21

Workers of HC Semitek, a leading Chinese LED chip maker, produce chips at its subsidiary in Yiwu in East China's Zhejiang Province. (Photo: Yang Hui/GT)

A semiconductor industrial park in Central China's Hunan Province recently announced the start of construction, as part of the latest efforts by Chinese companies to extricate the industry from heavy reliance on foreign semiconductors, while the US turns up the heat against Chinese companies by imposing restrictions on chip makers.

Taking up an area of about 1,000 mu (666,667 square meters), the semiconductor and integrated circuit research and development and industrialization base located in Changsha, Hunan Province, began construction on Monday.

It is reportedly the biggest industrial park for semiconductor and integrated circuit R&D in the province, with investment exceeding 16 billion yuan ($2.2 billion).

The industrial park will be constructed into a base mainly for producing silicon carbide (SiC) and chips with proprietary intellectual property rights, according to news site Chinanews.com.

Previously, Shanghai had built a large semiconductor, integrated circuit and chips industrial base, with investment reaching more than 160 billion yuan. Since its listing on August 20, 2019, the industrial base in Shanghai's Lingang New Area has signed a total of 289 industrial projects, involving a total investment of 252.8 billion yuan.

Xiang Ligang, a Chinese telecoms industry analyst, told the Global Times on Wednesday that China's expansion of industrial parks for semiconductor and chips production is a response to foreign restrictions on Chinese buyers and will bring the Chinese chip industry closer to self-manufacturing capability.

With such huge amounts of investment and strong support from the local government, Xiang believed these bases will gain momentum for Chinese companies including startups devoted to the R&D of semiconductors, integrated circuits and chips.

The US has been stepping up its restrictions against Chinese companies, including Huawei, by limiting the use of US technology in designing and producing semiconductors, which has prompted many to question whether domestically made semiconductors industries can prop up China in this field.

With broad market demand and as a strategic industry supported by the state, the Hunan project is focused on solving problems for Chinese companies in chip materials and design, and China's heavy reliance on foreign manufacturers, said Lin Kechuang, general manager of San'an Optoelectronics Company, at the groundbreaking ceremony on Monday.

The industrial park in Hunan is expected to complete its first phase of construction and go into operation within two years, and achieve a certain production capability within six years. The project seeks to achieve an annual output value of 12 billion yuan, drive the output value of supporting industries to over 100 billion yuan and at the same time create 12,000 jobs, reports said.

 

[JSCh]

Alibaba T-Head Works with China's Leading Smart Voice Chip Supplier, Allwinner, to Launch New Computing Chips - Pandaily

Ella Cao Posted on July 22, 2020

Dubbed “China’s largest domestic smart voice chip supplier,” Allwinner Technology (Allwinner) has reached a strategic cooperation with Alibaba’s chip subsidiary T-Head to develop a new computing chip based on the T-head “XuanTie” processors, according to Forbes China.

The chip will be used in factory control, smart home appliances, consumer electronics and other fields. The joint venture is expected to produce 50 million chips in three years, according to Forbes China.

The first joint-produced item of the two parties has been developed: the universal computing power chip based on the T-Head RISC-V-based “XuanTie” 906 and 902 processors. The new processors can further shorten the mass production cycle and is expected to achieve new breakthroughs in power consumption, reported by Chinese Tech media TMTPost.

SEE ALSO: Alibaba Unveils New AI Chip Hanguang 800 That Will Optimize Online Shopping​

According to TMTPost, Allwinner’s annual shipments of chips are more than 100 million units. In the past ten years, its core products have been developed based on the ARM architecture.

Founded in 2007, Allwinner describes itself as an “intelligent application processor SoC,” “high-performance analog device,” and “wireless interconnect chip design” manufacturer, according to the company’s website.

 

[JSCh]

Huawei applied for patents on lithography equipment and systems four years ago - cnTechPost
2020-07-22 18:51:00 GMT+8 | cnTechPost

Huawei is reportedly recruiting lithography process engineers, which has sparked widespread interest. In fact, Huawei has already applied for patents for a lithography device and a lithography systems, which seem to have been prepared for the chip manufacturing process for a long time.

According to data provider Qichacha, Huawei's two patents were filed back in September 2016 and parts of them were made public in June 2018 and January 2020, respectively.

Lithography and photolithography are among the world's top technologies, and only a handful of companies worldwide have mastered the technology.

Considering that Huawei is recruiting lithography process engineers, it safe to say that Huawei does indeed have a long history of research in the chip manufacturing process.

In addition, there are reports that Huawei HiSilicon semiconductor is still in the process of expansion, is not considering scaling down.

Instead, it's actively looking for foundries to create a design and manufacturing integrated IDM.

Although Huawei HiSilicon is one of the world's top chip design companies, it is still very dependent on TSMC and a few other semiconductor companies for chip manufacturing.

Huawei's entry into the chip manufacturing field, therefore, will certainly face many difficulties, but this is also believed to be the most correct road.

It will take a long time for Huawei's IDM model to mature, and before that Huawei's various businesses will likely be looking for third-party chip supplies.

Huawei HiSilicon could have met about 80% of Huawei's mobile phone chip supply, but because of the U.S. ban, the company may have to use a lot of MediaTek chips.

 

[JSCh]

Chinese chip designer Phytium announces server CPUs based on 16nm process - cnTechPost
2020-07-23 12:59:34 GMT+8 | cnTechPost

Chinese chip designer Phytium Technology today unveiled the Tengyun S2500, the next generation of highly scalable multi-server chip.

The chip inherits the superior performance of its predecessor, the FT-2000+, while adding four direct connections for a total bandwidth of 800Gbps.

It can form a 128- to 512-core computer system, the company said.

Phytium's eco-partners have started the development of servers based on the Tengyun S2500, which is expected to be available for mass production in the fourth quarter of this year.

Tengyun S2500 key specifications:

Based on 16nm process

Main frequency 2.0~2.2Ghz

64 FTC663 cores

Extended support for 2-way to 8-way direct connection

Integrated 64MB Level 3 Cache

8 DDR4-3200 memory channels

Power consumption is 150W

According to Phytium's test data, in terms of overall performance, the dual-channel SPECint score is 1000+, increasing to twice the original score.

Tengyun S2500 continues Phytium's high-end chips before the on-chip parallel system-on-chip (PSoC) architecture, data-friendly massively coherent storage architecture, hierarchical two-dimensional Mesh interconnect network of the three advantages of the structure.

It adds high-capacity shared L3 Cache, multi-port high-speed low-latency direct paths, and enhanced reliability for memory-mirrored storage.

Phytium also announced its future CPU roadmap, with the embedded Tenglong E-series next in line for 14nm.

The Tengrui D series of desktop CPUs will be available in 14nm by the end of this year with the Tengrui D2000, and by the end of next year with the Tengrui D3000 series, which doubles the performance of a single core.

As for the Tengyun S series in the server space, the next-generation Tengyun S5000 series will be upgraded to 7nm and will come out in Q3 2021.

In 2022 it will release the 5nm Tengyun S6000 series, doubling the overall performance.

 

[艹艹艹]

Alibaba says its NFC technology extends distance from 20 cm to 3 meters
2020-07-22 21:37:12 GMT+8 | cnTechPost

Alibaba recently announced that its self-developed NFC technology breaks through the limits of the communications industry, expanding the traditional near-field communication perception distance in any direction from 20 cm to 3 meters, the longest in the world.

Most mobile phone NFC applications have a very short contactless communication distance.

On the one hand, this is due to its operating frequency of 13.56MHz and a communication distance of 0-20cm (in reality, most products are within 10cm).

On the other hand, the shorter distance also makes NFC technology more secure and more suitable for some financial applications. However, the application scope of NFC technology is limited and the expansion of the scene becomes an obstacle.

Dr. Liu Hongqiang, head of Alibaba Cloud's network research team, introduced that the NFC technology has broken through the key bottlenecks in achieving automated logistics, and can be widely used in scenarios requiring long-distance, large-scale, full-category identification of goods information in the future.

For example, in traditional logistics centers, goods in and out of the warehouse are usually manually picked up by workers, take the parcel under the machine scanning completed, workers need to repeat this complex action every day for a long time.

With the application of the latest NFC technology, the machine can be separated by a distance of 3 meters at the same time to complete hundreds of parcels of high-accuracy sensor scanning.

This achievement was accepted by SIGCOMM 2020, the global summit of network communication. Five Alibaba papers were selected, ranking first among all participating Chinese organizations and setting a new Chinese record.