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tphuang Profile picture
tphuang
@tphuang
My random thoughts on EVs, clean energy, chips, aerospace and other tech. Find more extended pieces at substack https://t.co/Jmo8iyjHrn
4 subscribers
Dec 8 • 18 tweets • 9 min read
As expected, US's latest National Security Strategy doc embraces old model & rejects new model. We already know about China's dominance in the "New 3" (EVs, Solar & Batteries), but 15th FYP show China's full embrace of Hydrogen & Biomanufacturing. How new replaces the old model. Image China is seeing rapidly declining demand for diesel & gas. Diesel HDT ratio has shrunk to 40% recently as EVs & LNG ones exploded. In pax vehicle mkt, NEV penetration is also at 60% for Nov.

Effect on WTI px, Permian rigs & US mfg is for all to see
Dec 3 • 9 tweets • 5 min read
Welcome to the "Doubao Phone" - Collaboration bw ByteDance & Nubia/ZTE which uses a new BD OS.

Already hailed by some as the 1st real AI-centric phone. Everything here tied to Douyin account & Doubao AI features. AI Agent simply listens to your command & carries out the task Alibaba's great competition to this is its new Quark AI phone which uses Qwen.

In this world, Android becomes less important & the foundational AI model becomes the OS driving everyone.

Nov 9 • 18 tweets • 7 min read
Just how large is China's compute & overall AI infrastructure? A good place to start is just by looking at Doubao/ByteDance numbers, since they are the largest player in the China mkt.
Grew from 4T tokens/day in 2024/12 to 30T tokens/day last month. Same ballpark as Google's 43T Image If we look at In-App AI in China, the top players are Baidu, Douyin (Doubao here), Wechat, Tencent news, Alipay, Gaode, Weibo, Douyin light speed, Baidu fast & Quark.

All major search apps in China also query AI just like Google does in US. Wide spread AI-based searches. Image
Nov 4 • 16 tweets • 6 min read
HW isn't the only one in China working hard at optical module network or SuperNode or OCS.

Xizhi Tech showcased its LightSphere X distributed OCS all optical SuperNode @ WAIC 2025.

It partnered w/ Biren Tech & its BR166L GPU + ZTE to connect together 2000 GPUs in 1 SuperNode. Image
Image InnoLight is the biggest player in the optical module industry. It's rumored to be Google's sole OCS supplier & will also supply 1.6T modules to Google & Nvidia + domestic customers. Eoptolink's 1.6T optical module has also been validated by Nvidia & its 800G supplies Google. Image
Nov 3 • 12 tweets • 5 min read
HW's Atlas 950/960 SuperPoD are truly innovative products. It offsets China's disadvantage in advanced node chip fabrication by increasing memory, optimizing for FP4/8 & building large super node using HW's networking expertise.

More smaller AI die connected like it's all in 1. Image HW utilizes an all optical network built w/ OCS (optical circuit switch). OCS is not new. Google built super nodes w/ 4096 TPUs.

HW tries to scale up this further w/ OXC (optical cross connect) to address limitation of increasing complex web of connections as # of nodes grow. Image
Nov 1 • 7 tweets • 4 min read
Laser is a cornerstone tech for other advanced techs like fiber optics, Lidar, laser cutting/cleaning machines & ofc laser interferometer.

China was weak in high-end laser until recent, but has now built full supply chain. Big players are Han's laser, HGTech & Wuhan Raycus.

Requires upstream breakthroughs in optical/electronic material, optical/laser chips, digital control, solid state laser, mechanical system, power source & gas laser machines.

Different types of lasers require different upstream supply chain.Image See below for domestic ratio of 1-3kw to 10kw+ from 2019 to 2023:

In 2019, China produced 20% of laser it needed above 6kw. By 2023, it produced 86% of its 10kw+ demand, 77% of 6-10kw & 99% in sub-6kw laser mkt.

all this happened while demand exploded across the board. Image
Oct 30 • 7 tweets • 4 min read
We are in 2025Q4 & HW has already showcased Atlas-960 SuperPoD w/ 2.2 TB/s interconnect & 34 PB/s total interconnect + 9.6 TB/s memory speed + the full system-level performance.

ppl on X are using metrics like PP/$ to measure AI-chips. Spend less time thinking about per chip cost or performance.

Think about things on a system level. Why does HW emphasize the all optical connections bw cabinets? Why does HW create its own HBM for inference? What about the push for SiPo chips w/ self generating light for optical modules? What about HW's new UB Mesh protocol?

How is HW able to do 15488 card SuperNodes, but Nvidia can only do 72 or 144?Image
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Image AI chip cost is a tiny portion of overall AI DC buildout cost. America is never going to be competitive vs China in cost per 100 EFLOPS of compute.

Especially not when companies like Meta are building their AI servers in the home of CJNG cartel & wasting expensive AI chips.
Oct 29 • 15 tweets • 8 min read
Next in my series of Wassenaar breakthroughs is on oscilloscope + related Signal Analyzers/Generators & Network Analyzers.

SiCarrier oscilloscope unveiling is the trigger behind this series of threads.
Why are these machines so important & what kind of breakthroughs did we see? Image
Image
Image 1st of all, oscilloscopes are really important in semi industry. You need 60GHz band one to test 7nm chip communication & a 90GHz one to test 3 to 5nm.

You need it for Serdes testing, especially as AI chip interconnect require ever fast speed. 224G requires 50x # of test vs 54G Image
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Oct 28 • 9 tweets • 4 min read
Final part of my series on China's semi material progress in past yr are regarding to Diamond & AlN, the other 2 4th gen semi material.

Diamond is basically the ideal material for heat sink in high power applications. GaO/N epitaxy-on-diamond IC has significant power advantages Image In the past yr, we have seen both Xian Jiaotong University & ZS Tech achieve 2-inch wafer mass production tech. This allows the start of commercial application for diamond substrate in higher cost chips. Image
Image
Oct 26 • 9 tweets • 4 min read
Next in my series of Wassenaar breakthroughs is ceramics & Ceramic matrix composite (CMC) materials.

China succeeded in advancing its own SiCf/SiC + Cf/SiC CMCs in the past couple of yrs + SiN fiber application & continuous fiber production.

What are their applications & where is China making the breakthroughs?Image CMC using Cf/SiC is widely used in aerospace industry in remote sensing satellite cameras.

Such material can achieve near-zero thermal expansion coefficient + improve dimensional stability of space camera components.
Low density can reduce overall weight of camera -> lighter launch cost & increased sat payload capacityImage
Oct 25 • 8 tweets • 3 min read
CXMT shared @ IEEE 2025 ASICON that it is launching LPDDR5X products w/ thickness of just 0.58mm.

Its product lineup including 12/16/24/32GB option w/ speed of 8533/9600/10677 Mbps. This matches what the big 3 offers to the mkt. Likely indicates CXMT has succeeded in 14nm node. Image Samsung started mass production of LPDDR5X last yr on its 12nm node w/ 0.65mm thickness w/ 12/16GB options, so CXMT has surpassed that offering w/ thinner package & larger memory options.

This is rapid progress for CXMT who only started producing 6/12GB LPDDR5 early last yr. Image
Oct 25 • 13 tweets • 5 min read
Next in my series of Wassenaar breakthroughs is Carbon Fiber & other Fibers + Composites.

Toray is the industry leader & has most recently developed T1200 grade CF, but export control basically only allows T300 to be exported.

In the past yr, China has almost caught up to Toray Image
Image Yesterday, I posted about CSST group reaching 95% yield & stable production of its T1100 grade CF product ZA70.

High end CF is critical for modern aerospace industry. Next-gen COMAC airliner is dependent on it. Same w/ the rocket launchers & aero engine.
Oct 24 • 11 tweets • 6 min read
First on the list of broken choke-holds is High speed Analog-to-Digital Converters (ADCs)

Essential in RF, oscilloscopes, monitoring & control, software testing & digital imaging.

A $30B mkt growing toward $50B & controlled by TI & ADI. This is the crown jewel of Analog chips Image See below for Wassenaar Arrangement guidelines for ADC & DACs.

Chart provides better visual overview. Basically, nothing over 1.3GSPS for 8-bit resolution, 600MSPS for 10-bit, 400MSPS for 12-bit, 250MSPS for 14-bit & 65MSPS for 16bit+. Image
Image
Oct 24 • 29 tweets • 9 min read
2019 HW entity listing was start of US/China tech war. It was further ramped up in Oct 2022 & then in 2023 & 2024 by Biden. Many wonder why China did not react harder until recently?

I will write a series of threads to explain China progress over past few yrs & why it waited so long.Image Today, China called for decisive progress in key tech in advanced semi, machine tool & instrumentation for 15-5 period.

Its tech priorities also match that of Wassenaar Arrangement. In fact, China has broken many chokehold in past yr. Now, it no longer fears Western export control.Image
Image
Oct 24 • 9 tweets • 4 min read
NY times reported on China's significant cost advantage in NPP construction.

How is NPP construction decreasing in cost in China? Well, China really focused on scaling, localizing & clustering supply chain for both cost & natsec reasons. I will discuss the work it has done in this direction.Image A look at China's nuclear plants show a wide variety of 2nd/3rd gen NPP from France, Canada, Russia & US. It was originally most CPR-1000 variants, but new projects are mostly Hualong-1 or AP1000 derivatives.

Scaling up limited designs significantly lower cost of construction. Image
Oct 18 • 21 tweets • 8 min read
Assuming this is the real EU reasoning, while understandable, this is more alarming for Chinese investment than caving into US pressure.

I will explain history of Wingtech investment, current fab situations & why this is so disturbing & must be addressed for future China/EU tech cooperation.Image Wingtech acquired Nexperia for 14.7B RMB back in 2017 & through investment in its R&D, OSAT facility in Dongguan & attracting Chinese customers (many in EV sector), it was able to turn profit by 2022 & pay off debts by 2024.

Keep in mind its R&D increased during this time. Image
Oct 12 • 13 tweets • 7 min read
Reasons are far more than just Helium. It has been a banner yr for China's tech, financial, trade & military development to overcome possible US sanctions.
+ Tariffs hasn't worked:
In Aug, China's export went up YoY despite 33% drop to US. A list of their breakthrough 👇 Image On helium, they broke through on 6N9 grade ultrapure He from NG, which is needed for semi, aerospace & cutting edge science.

China expects to be more than 50% self sufficient by 2028 & can import the rest from Qatar + other countries. Image
Oct 12 • 14 tweets • 6 min read
BHP accepted CMRG demand to settle 30% of spot trade in Q4 in RMB, a huge win for steelmakers like Baosteel & Ansteel.

Just how did China get past this Australian stranglehold as iron ore supplier & what does it mean for RMB internationalization, CIPS & Chinese banking sector? Image China set up CMRG back in 2022 due to its lack of power against iron ore cartel of Australia. As single largest global importer, it now has huge leverage against the mining giants, since they each sell 60-80% of production to China while CMRG only src 20% from each of them. Image
Oct 10 • 11 tweets • 4 min read
Thread on China's export control on superhard material.
In 2024, China imposed control on production equipment & critical process tech like 6-sided top press & MPCVD equipment.

Order No. 55 now cover:
Artificial diamond micropowder & single crystals, grinding wheels, wire saw & DCPCVD equipment & process techImage
Image Just how important is superhard material?
It's widely used in CNC, semi mfg, automotive, PVs, oil & gas exploration, biomedicine & military.

China has a 100B RMB superhard material industry including almost all 6-sided top press, 50% MPCVD, 75% of CBN, 95% diamond wire saws & 50% of large size synthetic diamond single crystal.Image
Oct 9 • 23 tweets • 10 min read
China's updated export control seem to be directed @ US EAR's De Minis Rule (for 0.1% 13 RE elements) + FDP (Chinese tech in mining, smelting, separation, processing, mfg & recycling).

Annex 1 can be modified to include more elements like Ga, Ge & La. Why is it done this way? Image China's emphasis here on advanced semi mfg, R&D + AI chip is a direct retaliation for something from 3 yrs ago. it also added its own BIS 50% rule for entity list firms.

Would signal that it's no longer concerned about further US restrictions on SMEs & AI chips. Huge implication Image
Oct 8 • 11 tweets • 5 min read
If AI buildup can't happen w/o power, then they definitely can't happen w/o Copper & Aluminum.

I will examine China's move in Cu mkt in light of the Grasberg mine halt. It is critical in expansion of power industry + DC & all things new energy. How much Cu is China consuming? Image
Image A simple look @ China's electricity power demand growth from 1985 to 2024 as well as its ultra low industrial user power px ->
China is adding plenty of electricity & able to do so @ very low overhead.
Big difference vs the huge jump in areas of US surrounding AI DCs. Image
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