Moore Threads MTT S80 gaming graphics card with Chinese GPU started selling in China

Chinese company Moore Threads has started selling the MTT S80 gaming graphics card based on the GPU of its own design, as promised.
You can find the graphics card on the online store JD.com, for example.
The card is offered for 2999 yuan (about $411).
However, in addition to it comes with a motherboard ASUS TUF Gaming B660M-PLUS D4.Image source: JD.comThe cost of the above motherboard is about $141.
Thus, the Moore Threads MTT S80 graphics card itself is priced at around $270.
Vendors promise to start shipping the gas pedal on November 16.
The Moore Threads MTT S80 is based on the MT Unified System Architecture (MUSA) which is based on a revolutionary graphics processor named Chunxiao.
It has 4,096 cores and runs at a clock speed of 1.8 GHz.
The card has 16 GB of GDDR6 memory with 14 Gbit/sec per pin and support 256-bit bus.In videocard equipment includes three ports DisplayPort 1.4a and one HDMI 2.1.
It is also pointed out that there is one 8-pin connector for additional power.
The most interesting detail about MTT S80 is the PCIe 5.0 x16 support.
In fact, this is the world's first gaming graphics card with such interface.
It supports both DirectX and OpenGL graphics APIs.
Previously, the manufacturer said that MTT S80 is already optimized for some games.
They include, for example, Crossfire, League of Legends, Diablo 3, Minecraft and Need For Speed Hot Pursuit 3.

Chinese Moore Threads has unveiled the MTT S80 gaming graphics card with PCIe 5.0 support - not even the RTX 4090

Chinese startup Moore Threads, founded only in 2020 but very active in the design and production of innovative graphics processors, introduced two new graphics gas pedals - MTT S80 and MTT S3000.
The first is a gaming, the second is designed for specialized tasks related to AI and machine learning algorithms in the workstation.Image Source: Moore TagsThe MTT S80 and MTT S3000 are the successor models MTT S60 and MTT S2000, which the company released in March this year.
At the heart of each of the new products is a graphics processor MUSA-Chunxiao, based on an advanced architecture MT Unified System Architecture (MUSA).
The GPU contains 22 billion transistors.
The MTT S80 graphics card chip features 4,960 graphics cores and has a clock speed of up to 1.8 GHz.
Moore Threads promises single precision performance of up to 14.4 Tflops.
Thus, its performance is theoretically somewhere between the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 Ti and RTX 3070.
The company notes that by optimizing the MUSA architecture, the performance of new graphics cards with popular graphical APIs has been increased.
Thus, in tasks with DirectX, performance has been increased by up to 3.4 times and in tasks with OpenGL API - up to five times.
Moore Threads also claims up to four times faster performance in encoding tasks and twice as fast in video decoding.
Moore Threads MTT S80 The MTT S80 gaming graphics card uses 16GB of GDDR6 memory at 14Gbps per pin, which is connected via a 256-bit bus.
The maximum memory bandwidth is specified at 448 GB/s.
This gas pedal has four external video connectors - three DisplayPort 1.4a and one HDMI 2.1.
A three-fan cooling system with two expansion slots is responsible for video card cooling.
The most interesting detail of MTT S80 is the PCIe 5.0 x16 interface support.
Technically this is the first gaming graphics card with such interface.
For example, the GeForce RTX 40-series graphics cards do not support this interface - they have PCIe 4.0.
During the presentation of the novelty Moore Threads also reported a list of games that are supported by this gas pedal.
Next year Moore Threads is planning to further optimize the performance of its MUSA graphics architecture for DirectX APIs.
During the presentation of the graphics card, the company demonstrated its performance in games such as League of Legends and Need For Speed.
Moore Threads MTT S3000With its MTT S80 gaming graphics card, the Chinese company introduced the MTT S3000 specialized compute gas pedal with a passive cooling system for server racks.
It uses the same GPU with the same number of graphic cores as the S80 model, but has doubled the amount of video memory in the professional card.
It is 32 GB.
The MTT S3000 graphics chip runs at a frequency of 1.9 GHz, due to which up to 15.2 Tflops has increased its performance in single precision operations.
Unusual for a server-class gas pedal is the presence of external video connectors - the model has two DisplayPort 1.4a.
According to the manufacturer, a gaming model of MTT S80 graphics card will go on sale on November 11.
The company did not disclose its price.

Apple's intention to use Chinese YMTC flash memory has angered American authorities

Back in late March Bloomberg reported that Apple is considering the use of Chinese YMTC solid-state memory in its mobile devices, and with the release of the new generation smartphones this topic has found a second life in an unexpected context.
According to the U.S.
parliamentarians, in case of implementation of such cooperation Apple could face sanctions from the U.S.
authorities.Image source: AppleThe two U.S.
senators from the Republican Party, Marco Rubio and Michael McCaul, who oversee the issues related to intelligence and international relations in the U.S.
Parliament, according to the Financial Times, criticized the likely decision of Apple to use 14 memory chips of Chinese YMTC brand in the manufacture of the iPhone.
If such steps are taken by the manufacturer, Marco Rubio promised to subject Apple to inspections unprecedented by the standards of the U.S.
federal government.
In his opinion, they can not allow the presence of products controlled by the PRC authorities in millions of devices used by the Americans in national telecommunications networks.Apple responded to such requests only by denying the fact of using YMTC memory in any products, but acknowledged that it had tried to explore the possibility of its use in the assembly of individual iPhone models, designed for implementation in the domestic market of China.
Outside of the country such devices should not appear in any case.
In addition, all data stored in the memory of Apple mobile devices are fully protected by encryption.In April this year it became known that the U.S.
authorities became interested in YMTC in the context of the supply of its memory chips to the sanctioned Huawei Technologies.
According to the senators, the inevitable exchange of experience between Apple and YMTC in the case of cooperation will allow the latter to strengthen China's position in the technological sphere.
In July this year, U.S.
parliamentarians have already proposed an initiative to add YMTC to the \"black list\" of Chinese companies with which it is forbidden for all manufacturers that use technology of American origin.
The U.S.
authorities are concerned about the alleged active subsidization of YMTC by the Chinese authorities, which as a result allows the company to sell the memory at a price below cost and violate the rules of fair competition in the global market.
YMTC company is a leader in solid-state memory manufacturing in China not only in volume of products, but also in technological area.
At least, it has recently mastered the production of 192-layer 3D NAND chips, albeit so far in the status of engineering samples, but on a global scale, this allows us to talk about the approach of this Chinese manufacturer, founded in 2016, to the industry leaders in the level of technical competence.

Chinese semiconductor industry accused the US of discrimination due to new restrictive measures

Chinese authorities have already formally protested the adoption of a package of laws by their US counterparts, which provides companies with subsidies to build facilities in the US in exchange for, among other things, a promise not to develop production in China for ten years.
In any case, vice chairman of the China Semiconductor Industry Association Yu Xiekang said without going into details at an event in Nanjing that parts of the US package of laws \"clearly discriminate against China\" and that the US initiative generally aims to support China's competitors in the foreign policy arena.
According to the industry association, some clauses of the US government's subsidy program for the national semiconductor industry contradict the fair trade principles supported by the WTO.According to Yu Sekan, the Chinese authorities should continue to support the national semiconductor industry in order to eliminate bottlenecks that hinder its further technological development.
Others at the event added that the U.S.
package of laws introduces more uncertainty into the development environment of the entire global industry, and Chinese authorities, educational institutions and companies should counteract this together.

Former president of Arm left the board of directors of Chinese SMIC

The worsening controversy between the PRC and the United States, provoked by the recent visit to Taiwan of American Parliament Speaker Nancy Pelosi, touched the activities of those companies that work in the segment of semiconductor components production.
After nine years on the board of directors of SMIC, former Arm president Tudor Brown was forced to announce his departure from the position.Image source: Ceres Power HoldingsThis move by the industry veteran, who was president of British processor architecture developer Arm until May 2012, was reported by Bloomberg with reference to his personal comments on the social network LinkedIn.
Tudor Brown admitted that he regretted leaving the board of directors of Chinese contract chip maker SMIC, where he had served for the previous nine years.
He held the post of president of Arm from 1990 to 2012, but left it even before the British developer bought the Japanese corporation SoftBank.According to Tudor Brown, international controversy in recent times only intensified, which forced him to leave the board of directors of the Chinese company SMIC.
It became known recently that the U.S.
export control rules were tightened and now China's SMIC will not be able to receive from any supplier lithographic equipment using U.S.
technology suitable for the production of chips at 14nm and coarser, although previously the border was held at 10nm.
According to independent experts, this has not prevented SMIC from setting up last summer's supply of components with characteristics close to the 7nm products of Taiwan's TSMC.

Chinese manufacturers of RAM lag 5 years behind Korean competitors

In contrast to the production of solid-state memory such as 3D NAND, in which the Chinese company YMTC lags behind the world leaders by literally one generation, the production of memory chips such as DRAM is given to Chinese companies with great difficulty.
According to estimates by South Korean experts, China's CXMT lags behind its Korean rivals in this area for a couple of generations and five years.Image source: SMICFor example, as explained by Business Korea, the leading DRAM manufacturing company in China, CXMT has declared readiness to start production with the technology standards of 16 to 17 nm this year, while the Korean SK hynix and Samsung Electronics in comparable terms are going to switch to 12-nm and 13-nm technology combined with EUV-lithography.
Each generation of lithographic technology in memory chip production is separated from the previous one by about two or two and a half years, so Chinese DRAM manufacturers lag behind their Korean colleagues by about five years, according to experts.The same CXMT, according to their data, suffers from a low yield of good products.
Even having mastered the production of memory using 19-nm and 18-nm technologies in 2019, it now receives only three-quarters of good chips from the silicon wafer.
In the next generation, CXMT's yield rate of good products does not exceed 40%.
As a result, the company's share of the global market does not exceed one percent.
According to Korean analysts, the Chinese memory chip industry will not be able to match foreign competitors as dramatically as it did in the display industry.The lag in solid-state memory technology from Chinese companies is noticeably smaller, but still reaches a couple of years.
Korean companies are going to mass produce 3D NAND chips with more than 200 layers by the end of this year or early next year, while China's YMTC is unlikely to do so before 2024.
The company can be kept from further convergence of YMTC with Korean competitors by the introduction of specific sanctions from the U.S., but so far this factor does not limit the development of this segment of the Chinese industry.In the segment of contract production of more complex microchips China is behind South Korea by about five years.
Samsung Electronics is already able to produce 5-nm and 4-nm products for its customers, while China's SMIC has not progressed beyond 14 nm - largely due to U.S.
sanctions, by the way.
Further development of advanced lithography without switching to ultra-hard ultraviolet light (EUV) seems difficult, but this is where U.S.
sanctions against SMIC come into play.

Chinese authorities are mulling extending the electric car subsidy program for this year

According to many experts, China's electric car market could not have become the world's largest without active support from the government, which since 2009 has spent $14.8 billion on subsidy payments to buyers of private and commercial vehicles with traction electric motors.
The subsidy program was set to end this year, but authorities are mulling extending it until the end of next year.Image source: BYDThis was reported by Reuters, citing its own knowledgeable sources.
In April this year, sales of new vehicles in China fell by 48%, while sales of electric cars and hybrids rose by 45% to 299,000 units.
In March, the volume of sales of cars with new types of power units more than doubled, so the Chinese authorities want to compensate the economic slowdown provoked by the new lockdowns with new stimulating measures.Initially, the local authorities wanted to refuse subsidizing the purchase of electric cars by Chinese citizens back in 2020, but the pandemic prolonged the program for a couple of years.
It is noteworthy that about 40% of the Chinese market of electric cars now are cars worth about $4,000, most of them are not covered by subsidies.
But buyers of more expensive models are able to save a couple of thousand dollars from the car.At the same time the value of subsidies in the years decreased, and tax incentives for buyers of cars with power plants of the new type will be reduced.
If this year, the authorities allow buyers to not pay tax on the purchase of the vehicle, from next year will apply a rate of 5%.
Initially, the Chinese government wanted to introduce the tax at a rate of 10%, but in the current economic conditions it was decided to act in stages.

China's YMTC began sending out samples of 192-layer 3D NAND flash memory chips

Yangtze Memory Technologies (YMTC), the largest Chinese manufacturer of 3D NAND flash memory chips, announced that it has already begun sending out samples of the new 192-layer 3D NAND flash memory chips to customers.
A full-scale release of the chips could occur by the end of the year, according to DigiTimes.Image source: YMTC is producing 128-layer 3D NAND flash memory chips in volume production, providing strong competition for manufacturers in Korea, Japan and the United States.
Experts praise Chinese chips for their high density and throughput, which the company has managed to achieve during its transition to the new architecture Xtacking 2.0.
Xtacking architecture is a proprietary YMTC development.
It is the basis for the production of 64-layer NAND chips.
Last year, the Chinese manufacturer switched to Xtacking 2.0 technology, which has provided a number of advantages for the family of 128-layer products.DigiTimes reports that YMTC overcame all the difficulties associated with the mass production of 128-layer memory type 3D NAND and set up its production.
The company has increased its monthly silicon wafer processing capacity to 100,000.
Insiders say that the NAND memory from the company YMTC interested even in Apple, which will consider using them in their products.Chinese manufacturer has set a goal by the end of 2023 to win 7-8% of the world market of NAND memory production.
In terms of volume, this means processing 200 thousand silicon wafers per month.