D2D China: 省一芯 - One Province, One Chip
CXMT anticipation, PRC AI models FTW!?, and WAIC
In which we survey the changing funding realities for semis companies in and examine the many things happenings at the World AI Conference.
Noteworthy Items
Semis and Deep Tech
Lots of interest in China for Jensen’s visit to Japan. Several outlets made the comparison with his trip last year to Taiwan when he locked down memory for Nvidia. The trip to Japan seems to be about lasers for optical networking, and several other critical materials.
We have an abiding, unhealthy fascination with RF semiconductors. This article explores the development of RF chips in China, but is most interesting for the way it demonstrates the PRC’s changing approach to intellectual property and surge in patents.
Everyone else is worried about Chinese AI models, we are worried about Chinese companies winning the race for solid state transformers for the 800V DC.
Seriously, we think PRC companies are going to run away with advanced materials for semis like glass for substrates.
Ulanqab, a city in Inner Mongolia, has the highest number of data centers per capita of anywhere in the world. Someday, we imagine someone will write an article about the China’s “Ghost Data Centers”, the way they wrote about ghost cities a few years ago. Interesting read for understanding how the PRC policy directives landed this city at the perfect spot at the perfect time.
Artificial heart ventricles. A start-up in Suzhou claims they can build full artificial hearts. We hope they can succeed, but their path has been challenging.
IPOs + Funding
In the lead-up to CXMT’s IPO, there has been a huge wave of interest in the stock. The company held a lottery to give away allocation in their IPO. More importantly, more information is coming out about the company. Their production capacity is about 720,000 wafers per month, expected to grow to just over 1,000,000 by the end of the year. And all of that is already booked.
We also found this intriguing look at CXMT’s supply chain, with a focus on packaging.
Sometimes IPOs do not go as planned. Suzhou-based Great Wall Precision, a maker of precision metal parts, originally filed to go public three years ago on the Shanghai Main Board, but attracted attention for some questionable dividend decision ahead of the listing. Now they have filed to list on the ChiNext Board, a lower threshold. Noteworthy for how listing mechanics work in China.
World AI Conference
China hosted the “World AI Conference” (WAIC) last week. We had heard this was an important show but were unable to attend this year. We plan to try to attend next year, but this year they did not announce the dates until almost the last minute. It turns out Xi Jinping attended and apparently they needed to match the conference dates to his availability. Lots of announcements, with the country’s leading AI chip and software companies making appearances.
Here’s a good overview of the event’s highlights.
Huawei had the most prominent presence with the commercial release of their massive GPU cluster - 1,024 cards with a shared memory pool. They have published research on this system, but we believe this is the first public demonstration of a working system.
Dongfang Compute claims to have a “4nm” memory chip. Sounds like this is actually produced on a 14nm process, and uses a combination of software and advanced packaging to deliver the performance of 4nm.
Teardowns and reviews of ten domestic AI chips.
Automotive, Industrial and Macro-Economic
Cautionary tale about government policies for developing technologies products. TCL was once a big beneficiary of those policies, but is now struggling to survive.
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For paid subscribers, the unintended consequences of Beijing’s new Semis Venture investment thesis.
