Chip Wars

[Randy W]

Apple’s Latest China Challenge: A Crackdown That Could Shrink Its App Store
Country’s push to register foreign apps threatens to remove Facebook, Instagram and X from iPhone App Store in China

from the WSJ (paywalled)

Apple has been making concessions in China to comply with increasing censorship and tightening data-security rules. PHOTO: CFOTO/ZUMA PRESS
 

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Officials told Apple that it must strictly implement rules banning unregistered foreign apps, people familiar with the discussions said. Apple employees expressed concern over how the rules would be implemented and affect its users. The exchanges were previously unreported.

China’s move to restrict the apps would close a loophole in the Great Firewall that allows Chinese iPhone users to download popular Western social-media apps such as Instagram, X (formerly Twitter), Facebook, YouTube and WhatsApp.

While China has for years blocked web access to those sites, iPhone users who download the services’ apps can engage on the platforms if they log on through a virtual private network, or VPN, that connects them to an internet server outside the country. Many users, especially younger people, do this even though China bans the use of unauthorized VPNs.

 . . .

Analysts say those operators are unlikely to register with the Chinese government because they could then have to comply with data transfer and censorship requirements, leaving Apple no choice but to remove them or face legal punishment.

 

 

 

 

[Randy W]

Tipster says 7nm Kirin 9000s made by SMIC is really 5nm Kirin 9000 from 2020 built by TSMC

from PhoneArena

 

"Keep in mind that this is just one person's opinion of what happened."

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But the Mate 60 Pro offers 5G connectivity as a native feature for the first time since 2020 thanks to the Kirin 9000s chip. Analysts have been wondering how Huawei could work around the sanctions and how SMIC could produce such a chip without access to an extreme ultraviolet lithography (EUV) machine. This machine etches extremely thin circuitry patterns on silicon wafers to allow for the placement of billions of transistors. The only company that makes the EUV machine, ASML, is a Dutch firm that has blocked shipments of any of its products to China. 

The X tipster, on his tweet, showed a screenshot that lists the Kirin 9000s as a 5nm chip. One of the pictures from the Mate 60 Pro teardown showed the Kirin 9000s had a date stamp of 2035 which means that this specific chip was made in the 35th week of 2020 or during August 24th-August 30th 2020. So in other words, @RGcloudS believes that the Kirin 9000s is a rebranded 5nm Kirin 9000. As the tipster writes, "Kirin 9000s is actually Kirin 9000 made by TSMC 3 years ago not SMIC." The Kirin 9000 was the first 5nm chip made for a smartphone when it was launched in 2020.

Using some back-of-the-envelope math, @RGcloudS figures that Huawei could have socked away 142 million Kirin 9000E and Kirin 9000 5G chipsets in a three-month period. He adds that there is no way Huawei can target sales of 40 million units of the Mate 60 Pro line if it was counting on production from SMIC's N+2 7nm process node which had a yield under 20%. He also adds, "It doesn't matter how talented you are, you can't produce 7nm with legacy 1980 DUV machine, multiple steps of stacking to create compared to EUV."

Keep in mind that this is just one person's opinion of what happened. Also file away in the back of your mind that the Kirin 9000 from 2020 contained 15.3 billion transistors, very close to the 16 billion inside the A16 Bionic but 24.2% shy of the 19 billion inside the A17 Pro.

 

 

 

 

Edited October 12, 2023 by Randy W (see edit history)

[Randy W]

China’s YMTC makes world’s most advanced memory chip in ‘surprise technology leap’: TechInsights report

• YMTC advance follows on from TechInsights analysis of Kirin 9000S 5G chip found in Huawei’s Mate 60 Pro smartphone released in August
• YMTC memory chip, found in a solid-state drive, shows firm has continued to develop advanced technology despite being hampered by sanctions

YMTC has made surprise tech breakthrough with memory chip, says TechInsights. Photo: Handout

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Yangtze Memory Technologies Co (YMTC), China’s leading memory chip producer, has manufactured the “world’s most advanced” 3D NAND memory chip known to be in a consumer device in a “surprise technology leap”, according to a report by TechInights.

YMTC’s memory chip, found in a solid-state drive launched quietly in July, shows that the manufacturer has continued to develop advanced technology despite being hampered by sanctions after it was placed on the US Commerce Department’s Entity List, according to a Wednesday report by the semiconductor analysis firm.

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YMTC’s latest progress in memory chip advancement was first reported in April when unnamed sources told the South China Morning Post that YMTC had doubled down on efforts to work with Chinese suppliers to help manufacture its most advanced chips. This effort was based on YMTC’s “Xtacking 3.0” architecture and the sources said progress had been made in a top-secret project code-named Wudangshan.

Sources said that the project intended to use Chinese equipment only and that YMTC had placed big orders with domestic equipment suppliers, including Beijing-based Naura Technology Group, a leading Chinese maker of etching tools, which are also the primary product line of US-based Lam Research.

However, at the time, analysts flagged many outstanding choke points in China’s chip manufacturing supply chain, such as the lack of viable domestic Chinese alternatives for chip-making tools, such as lithography systems available from Dutch company ASML Holding. The Dutch firm has a near monopoly position in the production of the world’s most advanced extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography machines.

TechInsights did not comment in its report on whether YMTC’s memory chips are thought to have been produced with exclusively Chinese-manufactured tools and components.

 

 

Edited October 27, 2023 by Randy W (see edit history)

[Randy W]

YMTC has made a surprise tech breakthrough.

Read more: https://sc.mp/yupy

#china #memorychip #scmp #scmpnews

from the SCMP on Facebook 
https://www.facebook.com/scmp/posts/pfbid027N9z5kDPF72M4F5ATFQgydKdKN5pGiJcbtPBoAB6oW91FQPvTHdtb8yK59p3mXm9l

China’s YMTC makes world’s most advanced memory chip in ‘surprise technology leap’: TechInsights report

• YMTC advance follows on from TechInsights analysis of Kirin 9000S 5G chip found in Huawei’s Mate 60 Pro smartphone released in August
• YMTC memory chip, found in a solid-state drive, shows firm has continued to develop advanced technology despite being hampered by sanctions

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Yangtze Memory Technologies Co (YMTC), China’s leading memory chip producer, has manufactured the “world’s most advanced” 3D NAND memory chip known to be in a consumer device in a “surprise technology leap”, according to a report by TechInights.

 . . .

At the time, the Wuhan-based chip manufacturer had been on track to challenge memory chip leaders Samsung Electronics, SK Hynix and Micron Technology with a new flagship 3D NAND flash chip, the 232-layer X3-9070. Prospects for mass production of this chip faltered after US equipment suppliers KLA and Lam Research stopped sales and services to YMTC.

However, a recent downturn in the memory chip market and a renewed focus on cost-saving measures in the industry, may have provided YMTC with an opportunity to pull ahead with a more advanced, higher-bit density chip, according to TechInsights.

 . . .

While recent chip breakthroughs in China have stirred domestic excitement about the country’s progress in making home-grown advanced chips, some experts caution that Chinese firms still remain years behind in producing the lithography systems needed to make real progress.

 

 

Edited October 28, 2023 by Randy W (see edit history)

[Randy W]

Um, . . . , uh, . . .  okay. It sounds like an oscilliscope on a chip.

The new chip is light-based and uses photons.

Read more: https://sc.mp/no62

from the SCMP on Facebook
https://www.facebook.com/scmp/posts/pfbid02xX64ooQdNKUZH6zykqTW7wpEsX9CtxCF5Dn196k9uVi4AtgaDiJnm9fsq2KBWTNRl

Chinese scientists create chip than can perform AI task 3,000 times faster than Nvidia’s A100: study

• The light-based chip can only perform selected tasks at present such as image recognition, but can operate much faster than current products on the market
• China is currently scrambling to catch up with the US in the AI race after being denied access to some key pieces of technology

A schematic diagramme of the chip from Tsinghua University. Photo: Handout

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Chinese scientists have produced a chip that is significantly faster and more energy efficient than current high-performance AI chips when it comes to performing some tasks such as image recognition and autonomous driving, according to a new study.

Although the new chip cannot immediately replace those used in devices such as computers or smartphones, it may soon be used in wearable devices, electric cars or smart factories and help boost China’s competitiveness in the mass application of artificial intelligence, researchers wrote in a paper published in the journal Nature.

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The new chip was instead built by China’s Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation using a cheap 20-year-old transistor fabrication process

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However, the chip’s analogue computing architecture limits its application to solving specific problems and it cannot run various programs or compress files like general computing chips in smartphones.

The tasks it can perform include high-resolution image recognition, lowlight computation and identifying traffic, according to Tsinghua’s website.

It also has certain advantages when it comes to AI vision tasks because passive light from the environment carries information itself allowing it to compute directly during the sensing process.

 

 

Edited November 1, 2023 by Randy W (see edit history)